They don’t call it March Madness for nothing. Every edition of the NCAA Tournament delivers us with a bevy of surprises. Some might say that this was one of the least surprising tournaments ever since we had all four 1-seeds making the Final Four, but I would disagree – there’s a reason there were no perfect brackets! So here are our biggest surprises of March Madness, and we’re going to try to keep it all on the court – so the insane volume of commercials with Maxwell the Pig and Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles” in 2025, while surprising, does not qualify
1. The Dominance of the SEC – We knew going into the tournament that the SEC was good, but we didn’t know they were THIS good. The league set a record with 14 teams qualifying for the Big Dance, surpassing the 2011 Big East’s mark of 11. But the performance once the tournament started was more impressive, as 9 SEC teams advanced to the round of 32, 7 made the Sweet 16, 4 qualified for the Elite 8, and 2 made it all the way to the Final Four, with Florida or Auburn guaranteed to play for a national championship. Way back in 2011, the 11-team Big East only got 3 teams to the Sweet 16 and one to the Elite 8, which cements this year’s SEC class well above that one. This level of dominance by one conference is unprecedented, and we may never see it again.
2. No lead is safe – In the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament, we saw two comebacks for the ages in the West regional. Texas Tech overcame a 13-point deficit with under 5 minutes to play to force overtime against Arkansas, and they prevailed in the extra period. Then, two days later, it was the Red Raiders who were on the wrong side of a comeback as Florida overcame a 9-point deficit with 3 minutes to play. In both of these games, the eventual losing team had over a 96% win probability at its highest. Seeing two comebacks like this in the same NCAA Tournament is uncanny, but for it to happen in the same arena two days apart is even crazier.
3. The All 1-Seed Final Four – I remember when I was a kid and filled out my brackets, I used to often put all four 1-seeds in the Final Four. They were the best teams, so why wouldn’t they all advance until they played another equally great team? Well, maturing is realizing that even though these teams were objectively great, it’s still really hard to win four straight games over teams that you are only marginally better than, for the most part. Then, in 2008, four 1-seeds advanced to the Final Four for the first time ever. This year, it happened again. It speaks to how truly great and dominant these four teams are, and in any other year, they would all be favorites to cut down the nets on Monday night. But this year, they’re just one of the four, and it’s truly anyone’s guess as to what will happen from here on out.
4. The Game-Winners – Including the First Four, we’ve had three truly memorable game-winning shots this Tournament. From Alabama State’s full-court Hail Mary to Derik Queen’s buzzer-beating runner to Houston’s genius inbounds play, we’ve had 3 March Moments to remember. And astoundingly enough, all of them came off of an inbounds play with less than 4 seconds on the clock, which is a historically difficult situation to score in, and these three teams made it look easy.
5. The Chalk – At the end of the day, this NCAA Tournament may be remembered as the tournament of chalk. Individually, a lot of the games were very easy to predict. If you had picked either the Vegas favorite or the KenPom favorite in every individual game, you would have picked at a record of 55-9 to this point. This includes every single game in the Sweet 16 and the Elite 8.
