Three Lessons We Learned From the 2023 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament

BY JONATHAN WILLIS

The 2023 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament was the most surprising March Madness we’ve seen in the modern era. For the first time ever, there were zero No. 1 seeds in the Elite Eight, and a No. 1 seed lost in the first round for just the second time since the field expanded to 64 teams. Additionally, there were zero No. 1, No. 2, or No. 3 seeds in the Final Four for the first time, and that led to a lot of busted brackets.

There are three lessons we can take from this most recent March Madness going forward. These are all things to keep in mind when making your selections for your NCAA Tournament bracket and when considering your 2024 March Madness picks and 2024 March Madness futures at BetOnline.

Lesson One: Do Not Trust Top Seeds That Were Unranked in the Preseason AP Poll

Credit to Ken Pomeroy for highlighting this incredible fact in a tweet on March 14. Pomeroy noted that in the 64-team era (since 1985), there have been 36 teams that were No. 1 or No. 2 seeds in March Madness despite being unranked in the very first AP Poll. None of those 36 teams went on to win their regional, which is a remarkable stat considering they were all either No. 1 or No. 2 seeds.

Purdue and Marquette were both unranked at the start of the year, and both the Boilermakers and Golden Eagles massively underperformed at the NCAA Tournament. Purdue became just the second No. 1 seed ever to lose in the first round (joining Virginia who was also unranked going into the season). Meanwhile, Marquette was crushed by Michigan State in the second round despite winning the Big East Conference Tournament.

Lesson Two: More Upsets Will be the Standard and Not the Exception Going Forward

The advent of NIL coupled with the one-and-done collegiate careers we continue to see with top high school recruits means that the best teams in the country are not as strong as they were in the recent past. That benefits smaller schools with more continuity that can develop a core group of players and then go to the portal in order to get a missing piece or two. We saw Florida Atlantic use that formula to make the Final Four in just their second NCAA Tournament appearance in school history, and the Owls were one point away from making it to the national championship game. The team they lost to (San Diego State) was chock full of veterans that led their program to within one win of a championship too.

Lesson Three: Avoid Backing Conferences with a Lot of Mediocre Teams (AKA the 2023 Big Ten)

If you spent time watching the Big Ten during the 2022-23 college basketball season, it was clear that there was only one very good team (Purdue) and that team was flawed. Some analysts thought the Big Ten might place as many as 10 teams in the NCAA Tournament as 11 of the 14 teams in the conference won between 9 and 12 conference games, and they ended up with eight bids. That gave the Big Ten as many NCAA Tournament teams as any other conference, yet only one of those eight teams made it to the Sweet 16 (Michigan State).

The Big Ten got that many teams in the NCAA Tournament because their mediocre teams were able to beat up on one another and give each other Quad 1 and Quad 2 wins in order to make March Madness. We didn’t see the ACC rewarded for its mediocrity this year (even though the ACC beat the Big Ten in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge), but the Big Ten was and combined to go 6-8 as a conference.