2023 March Madness Preview: Four Cinderellas That Can Bust Your Bracket

That person down the hall at work who picks teams based on uniform colors and mascots and the hoops junkie who watches the Big East, the Big West and every league in between are asking the same question in the 90 or so hours between the NCAA Tournament field being revealed Sunday night and the round of 64 tipping off shortly after 12 PM EST on Thursday:

Who will be this year’s Cinderella?

If the NCAA had its way, the answer would be no one. 

This is despite — or more accurately, because — the last dozen NCAA Tournaments have included plenty of bracket-busting Cinderellas storming on to the national stage for a week or two…and sometimes three.

Butler made back-to-back appearances in the championship game in 2010 — when Gordon Hayward missed a title-winning half-court buzzer beater by a pixel or two — and 2011.

Day 86 posting random @ButlerMBB highlights every day until season starts

2010 NCAA National Championship Game: @gordonhayward was inches away from hitting the greatest shot in NCAA history. #Butler fell short vs @DukeMBB, 61-59, but what an amazing ride it was! #ButlerWay 🐶🏀 pic.twitter.com/fKocHpronl

— Butler Basketball Guru (@ButlerGuru) September 7, 2022

Since the NCAA men’s basketball Tournament expanded to 68 teams in 2011, 17 mid-majors have made it to the Sweet Sixteen, with five making it to the Elite Eight and four going to the Final Four: Butler and VCU in 2011, Wichita State in 2013 and Loyola-Chicago in 2018.

Three No. 15 seeds have reached the Sweet Sixteen, with Saint Peter’s — a New Jersey school with an endowment roughly 37 times smaller than Kentucky’s — becoming the first to advance to the Elite Eight last year after beating the Wildcats, Murray State and Purdue. In 2018, the upset most of us were beginning to think we’d never see — a No. 16 seed toppling a No. 1 seed — happened when UMBC routed Virginia.

This, of course, annoys the NCAA, which is not in business to see the little guys topple the behemoths. And I’m not just talking as an unabashed fan of mid-major hoops (hey did you all see that great Hofstra win over Rutgers in the NIT last night?).

When Wichita State finished the 2013-14 regular season with a perfect 35-0 record, the Shockers’ reward was a No. 1 seed and a second-round date with Kentucky, the bluest of blue bloods. The Wildcats earned a 78-76 win and went all the way to the championship game before falling to Connecticut. 

VCU has made the NCAA Tournament nine times since it reached the Final Four — and Friday’s game against Saint Mary’s will mark the Rams’ sixth first-round clash against a fellow mid-major and their second against the Gaels.

I dunno if this is normal or not, but 6 of VCU's last 10 First Round NCAAT games have come against non-Power 6 teams.

2012: #12 v #5 Wichita St
2013: #5 v #12 Akron
2014: #5 v #12 SFA
2017: #10 v #7 SMC
2019: #8 v #9 UCF
2023: #12 v #12 SMC

— Troy Machir (@TroyMachir) March 14, 2023

And the men’s basketball team representing a school located in Richmond, VA has been sent to Portland twice as well as suburban Detroit (where VCU was routed in the second round in 2013 by Michigan, which made it to the national title game), San Diego, Oklahoma City and Salt Lake City. This year, the Rams only have to trek to Albany, N.Y. — where Saint Mary’s will be playing more than 2,900 miles from home.

The VCU-Saint Mary’s game is one of three first-round games pitting mids against each other. We like to call this “mid-on-mid crime.” San Diego State will face Charleston on Thursday afternoon while Memphis battles Florida Atlantic on Friday night. The plan is being laid out in real time: By culling the mid-majors in the first round, there’s less opportunity for them to mount a Cinderella run.

But this is the great thing about March: No matter what the NCAA does (at least until it expands the tournament to 96 teams, which is a rant for another time), it can’t stop the madness from happening, especially on Thursday and Friday.

While no mid-majors reached the Sweet 16 in 2016, 2017 or 2019, mid-majors seeded 10th or lower combined to win 13 first-round games in those tournaments. (This doesn’t include Gonzaga, which won as a no. 11 seed in 2016 but is not a mid-major…that’s also another rant for another time)

Saint Peter's, with an endowment of $37 million and fewer than 3,600 students on a 30-acre campus, just beat Kentucky, which has an endowment of $1.4 billion, more than 30,000 students on a 918-acre campus and 34 players drafted by the NBA in the last 10 years. MARCH!!!

— Jerry Beach (@JerryBeach73) March 18, 2022

So after 700-plus words on why the NCAA doesn’t want Cinderella to crash the big dance, here’s a look at four potential bracket-busters for this week and perhaps beyond, along with our picks for the Final Four and national champion.

And here’s an important reminder: There’s probably a Saint Peter’s, an Oral Roberts or a UMBC lurking, a team ready to mount a run that will be impossible to predict and impossible to forget. That’s why we tune in this time of year, even if our brackets are kindling by Friday afternoon.

CHARLESTON (No. 12 seed in the South Region)

Full disclosure: Charleston plays in the Colonial Athletic Association, Hofstra’s league, so I’ve seen them more than any other team in the tournament and would enjoy seeing them win a game or two. But riding the Cougars to the Sweet Sixteen — which I’m absolutely doing — isn’t just a homer pick.

The Cougars are reminiscent of VCU in 2011, when the Rams played “Havoc,” an intense full-court press that was difficult to prepare for in CAA play, never mind on the short notice of the NCAA Tournament. Charleston goes nine-deep with a roster on which no one’s averaging 30 minutes per game. Its leading scorer, Dalton Bolon, averaged 12.3 points per game and was scoreless in the 63-58 win over UNC Wilmington in the CAA championship game on Mar. 7. 

.@AEWonTV @TonyKhan Y’all gotta send this team a belt. Off the charts wrestling vibes, and even did @bryandanielson’s chant after winning the conference. https://t.co/EhpicGGJY7

— Kyle Kensing 🏈🏀 (@KyleKensing) March 13, 2023

The Cougars rank 17th in the country in offensive rebounding percentage, per KenPom, but are also ranked 71st in offensive efficiency and have scored 37.2 percent of their points from 3-point land, the fifth-most among tournament teams. Almost as remarkably, Charleston also ranks 72nd in defensive efficiency. That’s a well-balanced team. 

And Charleston — a fearless squad of experienced castoffs from all over the world — is battle-tested and uniquely built to shrug off the pressures of March after going 31-3 and knowing falling short in the CAA tournament would result in a trip to the NIT.

The Cougars’ roster includes four graduate transfers as well as two players from Division II schools, another from an NAIA school and four players born overseas. Their unquestioned leader is Bolon, a strutting 24-year-old graduate student nicknamed “Psycho D” who began college in 2016 at Division II West Liberty, where he played one season with a patch covering his badly injured left eye. The rest of the nation is going to learn about Bolon and his teammates over the next two weeks.

And three more double-digit seeds I think can win at least a game:

FURMAN (No. 13 seed in the South Region)

The winner of San Diego State-Charleston faces the winner of Virginia-Furman in round two. Anyone up for the battle of South Carolina?

Virginia is famously feast-or-famine at this time of year — the Cavaliers’ last four NCAA trips have resulted in a second-round loss, a first-round loss as the No. 1 seed, a championship and a first-round loss — and their p-l-o-d-d-i-n-g style (they average 61.5 possessions per 40 minutes, which ranks 360th out of 363 Division I teams) leaves them vulnerable on nights the shots aren’t falling. They were 4-of-22 from 3-point land in the historic loss to UMBC. 

Southern Conference champion Furman, meanwhile, can get up and down the floor (an average of 68.4 possessions per 40 minutes, 124th-most in the nation) and has the 33rd-ranked offense at KenPom. The Paladins also score 35 percent of their points from beyond the arc, which ranks 12th among NCAA Tournament teams. If they’re hot from 3-point land Thursday, they can make the school’s first trip to the NCAA Tournament since 1980 last until Saturday.

KENT STATE (No. 13 seed in the Midwest Region)

The Golden Flashes, who face Indiana on Friday night, haven’t won an NCAA Tournament game since mounting a run to the Elite Eight in 2002. But the Mid-American champ is traditionally a tough out — Buffalo won first-round games in 2018 and 2019 and Ohio won a game in 2021 before Akron fell to UCLA 57-53 last year — and Kent State ranks 38th in defensive efficiency at KenPom. 

Indiana has scored just 22.7 percent of its points from 3-point land. The most recent team to win an NCAA Tournament game with such a meager output from beyond the arc was Minnesota in 2019. Given that Kent State (ranked no. 144 in tempo at KenPom) and the Hoosiers (ranked no. 142) play at almost exactly the same pace, a cold shooting night for the latter could provide the Golden Flashes a path to the second round.

IONA (No. 13 seed in the West Region)

This one is admittedly a bit of a gut feel, especially with the Gaels opening Friday against Connecticut, which might be the most all-or-nothing team in the field. Iona, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference champion, is solid enough as a top-80 team in offensive efficiency, defensive efficiency and tempo and enters the tournament on a 14-game winning streak.

But Connecticut is a top-20 team in both offensive (No. 6) and defensive (No. 18) efficiency. Four of the five teams to rank in the top 20 in both categories last season made it to at least the Sweet Sixteen, plus Arizona (No. 7 offensive efficiency, No. 21 defensive efficiency). This is absolutely a team that could get to the Final Four and cut down the nets on Apr. 3.

Yet the Huskies went just 1-5 in Big East games decided by six points or fewer and have yet to win an NCAA Tournament game under fifth-year head coach Dan Hurley. With the understanding this could vaporize my entire bracket, I’ll take my chances in a close game on the belief that Iona’s Rick Pitino — the 70-year-old coaching genius who absolutely knows he’s headed back to a power conference after this season and is loving every second as the center of the coaching carousel — will craft the game plan that earns him a few extra bucks from St. John’s.

FINAL FOUR

With three of the top five teams at KenPom — No. 1 seed Houston, No. 2 seed UCLA and No. 4 seed Tennessee — all weakened by late-season injuries and another no. 1 seed, Purdue, looking to get beyond the Sweet Sixteen for just the third time this century, this feels like a truly wide-open tournament. 

South: Alabama (over Arizona)
East: Duke (over Kentucky in a regional final rematch of the greatest game ever played, the 1992 East Regional final)
Midwest: Texas (over Miami)
West: Kansas (over UCLA)

As tempting as it is to channel the spirit of Michigan in 1989 — when the Wolverines won it all under interim head coach Steve Fisher — with Texas and interim head coach Rodney Terry, we’ll take Kansas over Alabama in the final as the Jayhawks become the first repeat champion since Florida in 2006-07. And if it doesn’t go that way? That’s the fun of March and early April.