The charm of March Madness partly lies in the wonderful Cinderella stories and the inspiring journeys of teams which either overachieved or managed to find their best basketball in moments of supreme pressure. However, the emotional power and resonance of this tournament is also centrally found in the heavyweights who failed, the highly-seeded teams whose dreams were instantly crushed and who never reached their potential. The thrill of victory is fun, but the agony of defeat is also a core part of this tournament\u2019s mass appeal and why the event connects with so many Americans on such a natural level. Here are the four biggest disappointments from the 2022 NCAA Tournament. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kentucky<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The discussion starts here. Kentucky has not been to the Final Four since 2015, which is a surprisingly long time for a program of this stature. Coach John Calipari has struggled to get Kentucky over the hump. He has had some really good seasons in the past seven years, making the Elite Eight in 2017 and 2019, but he lost in each of those games. The 2019 loss to Auburn was especially painful. Kentucky had beaten Auburn earlier in the season and the Tigers were an SEC rival Kentucky was supposed to comfortably handle. Auburn was a No. 5 seed while Kentucky was a No. 2 seed. The Wildcats were favored in that game but did not play well and couldn\u2019t return to the Final Four. This year, Kentucky gained a No. 2 seed once again and was viewed as the favorite in the East Region by many pundits, given that top-seeded Baylor was battling multiple injuries and, as things turned out, wasn\u2019t in good position to make a deep run. The Bears were handled by North Carolina in the second round. Kentucky\u2019s loss to 15th<\/sup>-seeded Saint Peters might be viewed as a bigger upset than 16th<\/sup>-seeded UMBC beating top-seeded Virginia in 2018, given that Saint Peter\u2019s makes a smaller investment in men\u2019s basketball relative to Kentucky than UMBC did relative to Virginia. Kentucky was a 17.5-point favorite and lost outright. That is a spectacular disappointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Auburn<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Tigers won the SEC championship over Kentucky. A team which was better than Kentucky in the regular season should have been able to make a deep run, at least to the Elite Eight, but Auburn flamed out in the second round. It\u2019s not so much the fact that Auburn lost, however, which makes the Tigers such a disappointment. The real reason is that they got crushed by 18 points by Miami, a No. 10 seed. The score was 79-61, and Auburn just didn\u2019t put up much of a fight in a game Miami dominated from start to finish. The Auburn guards were terrible. Coach Bruce Pearl failed to get those guards to improve in the latter portion of the season. Auburn did not maximize the gifts of Jabari Smith, a future NBA lottery pick who will likely go in the top three. That\u2019s a waste of talent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Big Ten<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Wisconsin Badgers and Illinois Fighting Illini shared the Big Ten regular season championship. Not all Big Ten teams were expected to make the Sweet 16, but Wisconsin and Illinois were. They were higher seeds in each of their two NCAA Tournament games. Wisconsin had the added benefit of playing in Milwaukee. Yet, neither team played well in this tournament. Both sides survived shaky openers but then were thoroughly outplayed in the second round. Co-champions of a major conference should get to the second weekend of March Madness, but Wisconsin and Illinois fell short.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Mountain West<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Mountain West\u2019s four teams were all eliminated before the end of the first full day of the tournament. Wyoming was eliminated in the First Four. Colorado State was eliminated on the morning of first-round Thursday (March 17). Boise State was eliminated early in the afternoon on that same Thursday, and San Diego State was eliminated on Thursday night. It was a complete wipeout which changed the way this season will be remembered in the Rocky Mountain region of the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The charm of March Madness partly lies in the wonderful Cinderella stories and the inspiring journeys of teams which either…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":16031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaab"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21910,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21909\/revisions\/21910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}