Craig Bowen 
That whoosh you heard on Friday night changed into the sound of millions of brackets throughout America simultaneously bursting into flames. The sporting spectacle whose overarching allure is chaos was in the end graced with the mother of all upsets as the University of Maryland-Baltimore County upended pinnacle-ranked Virginia to turn out to be the first-ever No16 seed to defeat a No1, springing the greatest of NCAA men’s basketball event surprises within the maximum shocking way possible.
Ultimate disappointed: UMBC stuns Virginia to become first-ever No16 seed to top a No1. Read more. The little-regarded Retrievers didn’t merely defeat the Cavaliers, the top typical seed inside the discipline who had lost only twice all season and received the Atlantic Coast Conference through 4 games earlier than walking the desk within the convention tournament. They emerged from a half-time stalemate to break Virginia’s spirit all through a 2nd half that by no means felt close down the stretch, choosing their teeth with a national-best defense that had surrendered a mean of 53 points all season.
Final score: No16 UMBC 74, No1 Virginia 54.
You study that efficaciously. The same UMBC who misplaced to Albany through forty-four factors much less than two months in the past, that finished 2d to Vermont inside the America East and wished a last-2d three-pointer inside the convention event very last to punch their first NCAA price ticket in extra than a decade, won by 20 points over university basketball’s great group and made a mockery of the pundits each armchair and professional.
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The University of Maryland-Baltimore County sprung a disappointment for a long time on Friday night time in Charlotte, toppling Virginia inside the first spherical of the NCAA event. No16 seeds had performed one hundred thirty-five first-round games in opposition to No1s entering Friday night time’s contest and misplaced all of them via a mean margin of almost 25 points. There were some close calls down the years. Princeton famously came inside one point of beating top-seeded Georgetown in 1989. One year later, Murray State took Michigan State to overtime before fading. Western Carolina had two photographs in the last seconds to topple Purdue in 1996, two times missing their hazard at records. But the blowouts far outnumbered the near misses. None had even come inside single digits of the holy grail because of Arizona’s 9-point win over Weber State in 2014.
Until Friday.
Surely there had been more consequential upsets in NCAA match lore: North Carolina State’s buzzer-beating stunner over Houston’s Phi Slama Jama in 1983 and Villanova’s epochal triumph over Georgetown in 1985 have been each in national championship video games and became archetypes of the cutting-edge-day March Madness mythos as it ballooned into the mainstream spectacle that today generates almost $1bn in TV money. Louisiana State (1986), George Mason (2006), and VCU (2011) had been every No11 seed who scored Elite Eight upsets over No1s to complete fantastic runs to the Final Four. Florida Gulf Coast, one in every of a few No15 seeds to knock off a No2, brought a stirring encore in opposition to San Diego State to crash the Sweet 16. All UMBC received on Friday was a second spherical date with Kansas State on Sunday.
Virginia protects Nigel Johnson.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Virginia shield Nigel Johnson walks off after the Cavaliers’ stunning first-round loss to UMBC. Photograph: Bob Donnan/USA Today Sports
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But there has been something approximately No16 over No1, one of the remaining matters in sports that had by no means ever came about, that took on a mythology of its very own and made natural fodder barroom debates: the kind of psychic blockade as soon as associated with the 4-minute mile and the sound barrier. One day it could take place, we informed ourselves yr after yr, even because it felt much less and less possible with every passing event. Now it ultimately has. And it couldn’t have come at a better time for university basketball, which has performed out the season amid a spreading FBI probe into big bribery, fraud, and cheating at the very best echelons of the game that’s already ensnared dozens of top programs, prompting the NCAA to launch an impartial investigation led with the aid of former US secretary of nation Condoleezza Rice.
Yet for one night time, the vital purity of the knockout format managed to overshadow the issues mounting at the gates, setting a first-class factor on why the NCAA match endures as one of America’s maximum valued wearing traditions: Throw together sixty-eight groups in a one-and-accomplished layout, and there’s no telling what is going to happen. Unlike football, where the massive guy will beat the little man 10 instances out of 10, basketball is a sport wherein one untimely harm, one whistle-happy referee, or one hot hand can depart a closely preferred pinnacle seed scratching for its existence. The higher team doesn’t usually win.
On Friday night time, the hot hand belonged to UMBC’s Jairus Lyles, who poured in a sport-excessive 28 points on 9-for-eleven capturing and etched his name along with the lengthy roll of formerly anonymous heroes who vanish from American life as quickly as they regarded, but whose cameos bear in our wearing focus: Arceneaux and Lewullis, Pittsnogle and Farokhmanesh, McFadden and Blizzard.
There’s no real purpose. A college basketball match needs to hold a state of 320m souls in its thrall for 3 weeks every 12 months. However, it doesn’t take long to find out there’s very little that makes me feel approximately March Madness. It’s right there in the name. It’s an event that showcases a unique cross-segment of America, from urban facilities to outlying areas that pass unrepresented through expert sports teams, brought collectively beneath one tent like no different occasion in sports. The entire corporation factors without delay into the mainline of why human beings watch sports activities: they’re unpredictable.
