We've Reached the End Of The NCAA Tournament's Pushover Games

For most of my life (certainly my life after I turned 10 years old) there was pretty much an inevitability that the No. 1 team would bulldoze the No. 16 team in the first round. Sure, there were some scares ... and those scares were treated like upsets ... but for the most part it was just a formality.

That's gone.

In 2018, UMBC became the first No. 16 team to topple a No. 1 seed when they spanked Virginia in Charlotte. The Retrievers didn't just upset the Cavs -- they stomped them. Virginia would go on to win the national championship in 2019 and UMBC went on to become the posterboy of "look, it really can happen".

Today, Farleigh Dickenson beat No. 1 seed Purdue, 63-58, in what to me is an even bigger shocker. FDU went blow for blow with Purdue. Punch for punch. UMBC got hot in that Virginia game and ran away -- FDU were in a fight and made huge shots, huge defensive plays and huge coaching decisions that won this game. Purdue wasn't just off -- FDU put them there. FDU is the smallest team in the tournament and just took out the team with the 7'4 player of the year, Zach Edey. It wasn't as if Edey was having a bad game. FDU limited him to just one shot attempt in the final 12 minutes of that game. They won.

So what hadn't happened in the first 33 years of this tournament has now happened twice in the last five tournaments. 

It isn't just UMBC and FDU. Yesterday No. 16 Northern Kentucky took No. 1 Houston to the brink before losing. Last night, No. 15 Princeton beat No. 2 Arizona ... marking the third straight season a No. 15 has beaten a No. 2. Two years ago, Oral Roberts was a 15th seed that went to the Sweet 16. Last year, St. Peter's became the first No. 15 seed to reach the Elite 8. That St. Peter's team also beat Purdue during their run.

It is over. The days of just showing up to the tournament -- no matter who you are -- and thinking you have one win in the bag is over. 

It really is amazing. It used to be upsets were because these smaller teams would bomb threes to possibly beat bigger programs with bigger players. But now the bigger programs also bomb threes and are used to playing against teams that bomb threes. Yet these upsets are bigger and happening more frequently.

That isn't to say we won't still have blowouts. It is basketball and a tournament and teams have great games and off days. But we can't just assume anything anymore. The Big Ten and Pac-12 champions went 0-2 in the NCAA tournament. The NEC champions are 2-0.