March in America is a time that’s become synonymous with Cinderella slippers, improbable upsets and incomprehensible drama. This year March feels a little different. For the first time in 18 years, the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament won’t include a team that’s an 11 seed or higher (meaning seeded lower down to No. 16). Arkansas, the lone No. 10 seed, is one of seven SEC schools remaining in the 16-team field and is coached by 3x Naismith Coach of the Year and Basketball Hall of Fame inductee John Calipari.
What Happened To The Tournament We Love?
It feels like we’re not even in the same reality, much less the same decade, as we were when St. Peter’s made its run to the Elite 8 as a No. 15 seed in 2022 or when Fairleigh Dickinson improbably beat No. 1 seed Purdue the next season.
FDU’s win in 2023 also largely overshadowed Princeton’s win over Arizona the previous day, marking the second straight year a No. 15 seed won a tournament game. No 15 or 16 seed pulled an upset off in 2023, but we did see Jack Goehlke and No. 14 seed Oakland knock off No. 3 seed Kentucky in Calipari’s final game at UK.
The argument could be made that those very upsets, combined with the growth of the NIL landscape, are why the 2025 NCAA Tournament has been what it’s been thus far. Those teams showed coaches around the country that veteran-laden, mid-major groups with experience together were teams that power programs reliant on one-and-done 5-stars were vulnerable to.
How did those power programs respond? By changing their entire recruiting philosophy to prioritize mid-major and other small school portal transfers over incoming freshmen. Quite literally overnight, college basketball went from a sport largely dictated by high school recruiting classes to one that was heavily reliant on the NCAA transfer portal.
Not only has it changed the game for power conferences who want to pluck talent from mid-majors, it’s also opened up the door for mid-and-high-majors to pluck talent from programs lower on the totem pole. Some even outside of Division I entirely.
The Portal Giveth, The Portal Taketh Away
Take Drake for example. The Bulldogs didn’t miss a beat after coach Darian DeVries left for West Virginia, hiring coach Ben McCollum from DII powerhouse Northwestern Missouri State. McCollum brought his DII all-stars, including 2025 Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year Bennett Stirtz, to Drake and went 31-4 with an NCAA Tournament win.
As it typically goes, the Bulldogs’ over achievement this year meant that McCollum’s time in Des Moines was short-lived. Drake’s season ended with a 77-64 loss to Texas Tech in the Round of 32 on Sunday night. At 8:15 AM local time on Monday morning, the University of Iowa Basketball account on X posted a picture of McCollum’s signature white shirt with a Hawkeye yellow tie.
— Iowa Men’s Basketball (@IowaHoops) March 24, 2025
The message, of course, was that McCollum had officially agreed to make the two-hour move to Iowa City. Most reports indicate that Stirtz and some other players are following him.
Historical Precedent
The aforementioned 2007 NCAA Tournament was the most recent tournament to be plagued by chalk. However, the reality is that the landscape of college basketball in the mid-2000s allowed for mid-major schools to be seeded fairly. As Bracketeer.org’s Rocco Miller pointed out on X, the Sweet 16 that season featured No. 4 seed Southern Illinois out of the Missouri Valley Conference and No. 7 seed UNLV out of the Mountain West.
The most comparable tournament in recent memory is probably the 2015 edition, which saw three of four No. 1 seeds advance to the Final Four and two No. 1 seeds play for the national title. 2015 was also a relatively down year for early-round Cinderellas, with only four NCAA-defined upsets occurring in the first round. For context, there were three such upsets in the first round this year.
The 2017 NCAA Tournament was also somewhat chalky, with two No. 1 seeds meeting in the title game for the second time in the 2010s decade. That tournament also saw a largely drama-less opening round, as it marked the last time before 2025 that no team higher than a No. 12 seed won a game in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
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