Four reasons why we might be overreacting to no Cinderella teams advancing to the Sweet 16.
Every year there’s a storyline that develops from the first week of the NCAA tournament that dominates the national sports conversation for those three days that separate the second round and the Sweet 16. Typically, play resumes on Thursday, the focus returns to the court, and the “big story” from the week before morphs into endless discussions about the Final Four before it disappears forever.
This year’s first week big story may have a bit longer of a shelf-life.
The topic, of course, is NIL and the transfer portal eliminating Cinderella teams from the dance, and the resulting question of whether or not she’s ever going to return.
Considering the results of the first week, the conversation was unavoidable.
Not only did power conference chalk reign supreme during the tournament’s opening week, but it do at a historic level.
Every top four seed advanced out of the tournament’s first round for the first time since 2017 and just the fourth time in the modern era of the event. The average margin of victory in the round of 64 was the highest of all-time.
The madness only got more predictable in the second round, with zero teams seeded higher than 10th advancing to the tournament’s second weekend for the first time since 2007. Power conference teams represent the entirety of the Sweet 16 for the first time ever, and a record low of only four total conferences (the four most powerful) are represented in the second weekend. The previous low was seven conferences.
The Big Ten won its first 10 games of the tournament. No conference had ever done that before. The SEC sent seven teams to the Sweet 16. No conference had ever done that before.
Put simply, the haves of the sport have dominated this year’s tournament at levels previously not seen.
The easy conclusion from all of this is also the simplest: Two conferences have more money than any two conferences have had in the history of college sports. The financial gap between the power conferences and the mid/low major conferences has never been this big. And the new transfer and NIL rules open the door for the schools with all the money to have the best players, the best coaches and the best everything else on an annual basis.
TLDR: The Cinderella is already dead. The 2025 tournament is just the first time everyone could see the corpse.
The idea that multiple SEC vs. Big Ten regional semifinals and the closest thing to a Cinderella being a group of former 5-stars coached by John Calipari is going to be the new normal in college basketball may wind up being entirely accurate. But let’s look at the reasons why maybe this is an overreaction.
Reason 1: It’s one year
Sure, the portal and NIL have grown increasingly more important since their inception, but it’s not like they weren’t around the previous two years.
We’re just under 24 months removed from watching a 5th-seeded San Diego State team from the Mountain West and a 9th-seeded Florida Atlantic team from Conference USA battling it out in the Final Four. That tournament also saw the second 16 over 1 upset in the tournament’s history, Furman stun Virginia at the buzzer in the first round, and 15-seed Princeton crash the Sweet 16.
A year later, we had Yale, Grand Canyon, James Madison and Oakland pull first round stunners. Three of those four coming against power conference opponents.
Maybe we need to wait for evidence beyond a single tournament to draw any sweeping conclusions about the future of March Madness in this new era.
Reason 2: It’s as much about conference consolidation as anything else
A lot has been made of just four conferences being represented in the tournament’s second weekend. That’s understandable. The fact that the previous record low was seven is jarring.
It’s also important to note that just four conferences being represented is also at least partially due to the most recent helping of conference realignment.
Two years ago, BYU was a member of the West Coast Conference. Two years ago, Houston was a member of the American Athletic Conference.
Both those programs, particularly Houston, were doing pretty well in their old homes.
Reason 3: One shot, one inch, one call can change an entire narrative
The “Cinderella is dead” talking points previously laid out scream pretty loudly.
However, imagine a world where Maryland’s Derik Queen’s last second shot is five inches higher and it clangs off the rim instead beautifully banking through the net (or … and don’t throw anything at me here … he’s called for traveling). In this very realistic world, Colorado State’s presence immediately eviscerates the “no team seeded worse than 10th” and “no team from a non-power conference” talking points.
It’s still a chalky tournament, no doubt, but the “we’ve seen the end of major upsets in this event” talking point loses a little steam.
Reason 4: This isn’t quite as abnormal as everyone is making it out to be
When you hear “first tournament without a mid-major team in the Sweet 16 in a billion years,” sure, it’s an attention grabber.
When you look a little bit closer and see that the only “mid-major” in the second weekends of the 2016 and 2017 tournaments was Gonzaga, and that the only “mid-majors” in the second weekend of the 2019 tournament were the Zags and Houston, well, it resonates a bit less.
The big guys are dominating the second weekend this year, but the big guys have dominated the second weekend in most years.
One last thing, just because we didn’t have a 13 through 16 seed advance this year doesn’t mean that the little guys struck out completely. This tournament still saw two teams from the Mountain West advance in the same year for the first time since 2010, it saw McNeese State from the Southland topple Clemson from the ACC, and it saw the Missouri Valley’s Drake Bulldogs take down Missouri from the big, bad SEC.
Some years the madness is just a little more sane than others.
Is Cinderella truly dead? Maybe. There’s certainly evidence to support the belief. But that evidence is largely rooted in the results of four days of basketball.
Maybe she’s just taking a breather.
