NCAA Tournament: Ranking the unlikeliest Final Four runs since 2000
By Joey Loose
1. 2006 George Mason (11-seed)
Making this type of list and finding a rational order for these runs seems almost impossible, but there are good reasons to have this George Mason run at the top of the list. The Patriots were a solid program at the time, but there was nothing super remarkable about this team going into the season. They were picked to finish near the top of the CAA, but they weren’t preseason favorites. Head coach Jim Larranaga knew the talent his team had, and the entire country would find out as the season progressed.
The Patriots started the year 1-2 after tough losses against Wake Forest and Creighton but started piling up the wins as the season unfolded. Led by Jai Lewis and Tony Skinn, George Mason had one of their best regular seasons in program history, getting ranked in the Top 25 in late February for the first time in program history. After two late-season losses to Hofstra, including in the CAA semifinals, the Patriots’ fate was up in the air, but they were in the Tournament field as an 11-seed.
What transpired was one of the most impressive Tournament runs we’ve ever seen. First, the Patriots got the first-round upset over Michigan State, a Final Four team the previous season. In the second round, the upset 3-seed North Carolina, the defending champions. George Mason got a relative break in the Sweet Sixteen, holding on to beat 7-seed Wichita State, but their Elite Eight matchup was their biggest test. The Patriots won an incredible overtime game over 1-seed Connecticut, the betting favorite to win the national championship again; instead it was George Mason headed to a historic Final Four.
They became just the second 11-seed to make the Final Four, twenty years after LSU accomplished the feat. This George Mason team won neither the regular season nor conference title in the CAA but still got that 11-seed and proved they belonged. It’s not just that they won these games, doing so against Michigan State, North Carolina, and Connecticut was powerful, knocking out three of the very best programs of the decade.
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We’ve ranked these incredible Final Four runs of recent years, but do you agree with the order? How do you think the legacies of San Diego State and Florida Atlantic compare to some of these other Cinderella-type runs?