GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — Illinois' Brad Underwood knows all about the traps awaiting a favored team in March Madness. He remembers springing two himself as a double-digit seed while coaching Stephen F. Austin.
“It’s what we talk about all year,” Underwood said before the third-seeded Illini faced 14th-seeded Penn in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. “It’s not just getting in the tournament, but the margins are very small. Every team here is great.”
Lower-seeded teams have long filled March with shocking upsets to earn the almost honorary title of Cinderella. And years of tournament reels have proven anything can happen, particularly with top teams often leaning on younger high-end NBA prospects against older and more experienced teams.
But this year, fans looking to identify the most likely upsets won't have an easy time picking them in the first round of the NCAA bracket, not with big point spreads for the first-round favorites Thursday and Friday.
And that comes after a chalky year i n which all four No. 1 seeds reached the Final Four for just the second time since seeding began in 1979.
For example, two of the No. 5 region seeds — Wisconsin in the West, Vanderbilt in the South — were favored by at least 10 1/2 points on BetMGM Sportsbook as of early Thursday, coming in the 5-versus-12 matchups considered prime territory for first-round upsets.
Region 4-seeds Nebraska (versus Troy), Kansas (Cal Baptist) and Arkansas (Hawaii) were all picked by at least 13 1/2.
Midwest No. 6 seed Tennessee was set as an 11 1/2-point favorite on Miami (Ohio) after the RedHawks' First Four win against SMU on Wednesday.
And that's before getting to the massive spreads for No. 1 seeds like reigning national champion Florida (35 1/2 against Prairie View A&M) and Michigan (30 1/2 against Howard), or 2-seeds like Purdue (25 1/2 against Queens) and Iowa State (24 1/2 against Tennessee Tech).
For those top teams, the mission is to handle these games as efficiently as they have just about everything else all year.
“Every team is good here, so we are not thinking about the favorites to win the game,” big man Aday Mara said from top-seeded Michigan. “We are just thinking about if you lose the game, you go home.”
The 2025 tournament that saw Florida, Houston, Auburn and Duke reach the Final Four joined the 2008 finale as the only years with every 1-seed reaching the season's final weekend.
Yet only two years earlier, UConn won its first of two straight national titles in an unusual Final Four that was part of what had been a more volatile first four tournaments since the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2023, no 1-, 2- or 3-seed in the national semifinals for the first time since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985
Player movement through the transfer portal had seemingly scattered experienced talent across the country to create the potential for more of those March moments. Yet the arrival of the revenue-sharing era allowing schools to pay athletes directly beyond what they could earn for use of their name, image and likeness (NIL). And that's driving more talent to top programs that can pay for it, whether in poaching the mid-major ranks or snagging a player from a peer league.
Where does that leave the upstarts?
“So much of this is a mindset and a look and an approach, the rest follows suit," Hawaii coach Eran Ganot said. "If you don’t have that mindset, you’re cooked. It’s with great humility and great respect.
“Whatever name popped up, we were going to play a championship-caliber program that’s won a lot of games. We don’t try to outsmart ourselves. We don’t scoreboard watch, who do we want to play, who we don’t want to play. It’s a bring-it-on mentality, understanding it’s going to be difficult. That’s kind of been our deal all year.”
Still, there are variables that can create opportunities for surprises.
Injuries have already played a big role in limiting the upside of some teams, such as South 6-seed North Carolina having lost Associated Press second-team All-American Caleb Wilson to a late-season thumb injury. Or West 6-seed BYU losing No. 3 scorer Richie Saunders to a season-ending knee injury in February, increase the load on star freshman and AP first-team all-American AJ Dybantsa.
And there are other variables, such as Midwest 4-seed Alabama seeing No. 2 scorer Aden Holloway being indefinitely suspended after his Monday arrest on a felony drug charge.
Or there's simply the challenge for favorites like No. 1 overall tournament seed Duke and fellow 1-seed Arizona playing in the sport's brightest spotlight while leaning on young talent.
The oddsmakers like their chances.
But March Madness has earned that moniker for a reason, too.
“I think the biggest thing is just understanding that these games have a higher stake,” Blue Devils freshman point guard Cayden Boozer said.
“If we don’t show up the right way, we’re going to lose, we’re going to go home and we’re not going to achieve what we want to do.”
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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
