NCAA Tournament 2023: Top 10 most likely 2nd round upsets to happen
By Joey Loose
The NCAA Tournament has not failed to deliver, and we’re only one round into the nation’s best postseason event. There’s nothing fair or right about this single-elimination tournament, but that’s just how college basketball works. There have been memorable shots (sorry Virginia) and amazing moments, but nothing tops the two upsets we saw in the opening round.
When we released our article earlier in the week on potential first-round upsets, nobody could have expected exactly what happened on Thursday and Friday, with 15-seed Princeton upended 2-seed Arizona and then the biggest upset of them all: 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson ending Purdue’s season to become just the second 16-seed to pull the ultimate upset.
Moving forward, these kinds of upsets won’t happen again, though either Princeton or Fairleigh Dickinson could certain give their next opponents a run for their money. However, the Round of 32 is where things start to get pretty interesting with some of these matchups. It may not be as eye-opening or mind-blowing as one of those performances, but a 1 or 2-seed falling in this round is still a pretty big upsets.
We’ll be looking carefully at what awaits in the second round and pointing out the 10 most likely upsets. There are a couple games where the seeds are just one apart, but some of those certainly would still technically count as upsets. Two games opened up with the lower seeds as the betting favorites, and as a result both Duke and Kentucky will not be considered on this list despite being the lower seed. We’ve already seen that anything goes in March Madness, but which of these teams will actually pull off these second round upsets?