by The first round of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is now in the books and if you picked conservative with very few upsets, then you are sitting pretty right now. Only 4 double digit seeds won a game and none lower than 12th. It was extremely “chalk”. The lowest seeded team to win was 12th seeded high point over Wisconsin.
All in all, only 4 teams seeded 10th or lower won a game, one of the lowest first round total for wins 10th seeded and out in several decades. This was an extremely chalk first round.
The 9th seed was the lowest seed to sweep, winning all 4 games over the 8 seeds.
The 11 seeds did surprisingly well going 2-2.
If you picked every top seed 1-7, for those 28 matchups, you would have went 24-4 in those matchups which would have gotten you off to safe but solid start. Again, simply picking all the 1-7 seeds would have gotten you 24 points right there, not to mention if you split the 8 vs 9 matchups like many did, you’d have a 26-6 record and sitting near the top of your standings.
And, if you have 26 wins going into the second round, there is an extremely good chance you have at least 10 if not more teams still alive when we reach the sweet sixteen next Thursday. In fact, you still have a chance to have all 16 teams you picked in the sweet sixteen alive when we get there next weekend.
I say it every year, you have 8 sessions of 4 games each in round one. If you go 3-1 in each and finished round one at 24-8, it may not look glamourous, but you’re right in the hunt to win it all.
Here is a full look at what went down by seed in round one.
1 Seeds went 4-0
2 Seeds went 4-0
3 Seeds went 4-0
4 Seeds went 4-0
5 Seeds went 3-1
6 seeds went 2-2
7 seeds went 3-1
8 seeds went 0-4
9 seeds went 4-0
10 seeds went 1-3
11 seeds went 2-2
12 seeds went 1-3
13 seeds went 0-4
14 seeds went 0-4
15 seeds went 0-4
16 seeds went 0-4
