Despite shooting itself in the foot with the loss at Princeton in the regular season finale, Penn still had a very good shot at a 14 seed — and even somewhat of a shot at a 13 seed — entering conference tournament play. The Ivy champ generally can count on upsets in conference tournaments to raise its seeding a spot or two, but there was no such help this year.
In the last two weeks, there have been 20 conference tournament games played involving the lone surviving members of conferences who would be ranked ahead of Penn on the s-curve. In other words, 20 games in which a team could bump Penn up one spot on the s-curve by winning. Those teams went 0-20 in those games — with six of the losses coming at the buzzer or in overtime. The lack of upsets was so extreme, a win on Tuesday might not have even helped Penn’s seeding.
As a result, barring a charitable bump from the selection committee, Penn will find itself with just the second seeding of 15 or lower for the Ivy champion in the past 17 seasons. The only other such occurrence was in 2000-01, when Princeton was seeded 15th and faced 2 seed North Carolina, which is fitting considering the parallels between 2000-01 and this season. The Quakers almost certainly will face Memphis, Texas, Ohio State, UCLA, Illinois, North Carolina, Gonzaga, or possibly Iowa — and probably in front of a hostile crowd.
For the fan of March Madness, however, there is a big upside to this. With the exception of Hampton (who probably won’t make it out of the play-in game), San Diego State (who was an at-large candidate even without winning the Mountain West), and South Alabama (who was 65th in the RPI, just 10 spots below Western Ketucky), every other single-bid conference representative was the highest-rated team in its conference. This means we could be talking about the strongest overall field since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64/65 teams.
The likely 15 seeds this year are similar in quality to 13 or 14 seeds in previous seasons, and there are quality teams like Albany and Belmont who are probably looking at 16 seeds. The Great Danes and Bruins held second-half leads on the road against likely 2 seeds UCLA and Ohio State, respectively. Don’t be surprised to see an inordinate number of first-round upsets this week, and if a 16 seed is ever going to shock a top seed, this might be the year.
