Bracket-Busters

03/17/2023

By: Jeff Yoder

#15 Princeton & #13 Furman Play Bracket-Busters On Day 1 of the NCAA Tournament

Are you not entertained? The opening game in the Round of 64 went down to the wire between Maryland and West Virginia before the Terps escaped in the 8-9 matchup (67-65). And that was just the beginning. Moments later, 13-seed Furman stepped into Cinderella’s slipper with a game-winning 3 from JP Pegues to beat #4 Virginia, a shot that epitomizes what we love about March. The chaos didn’t stop there. As the day rolled on, 15-seed Princeton finished off 2-seed Arizona with a 9-0 run to shock the Wildcats (59-55). The 10-seed Penn State also put a beatdown on 7-seed Texas A&M. When the dust settled, three double-digit seeds are playing into the weekend.

Day 1 Upsets

#13 Furman def. #4 Virginia (68-67)

#15 Princeton def. #2 Arizona (59-55)

#10 Penn State def. #7 Texas A&M (76-59)

Any Perfect Brackets Left?

Not in our group. Just 10 percent of The Sportsletter’s Bracket Pool participants correctly picked 12 or more of the first 16 games, and no one called more than 13. Elsewhere in the world — from a collective analysis of 20 million-plus brackets across the internet — just 787 had a perfect first day. That’s less than 0.003 percent.

Top Seeds Who Looked Good

Kansas (1) and UCLA (2) had the largest margins of victory in their opening-round matchups, but that was to be expected from the 1- and 2-seed in the West Region. Alabama (1) and Texas (2) also cruised to victories of 20-plus points while 5-Seed Duke played as well as any team on Day 1 by handing pesky Oral Roberts a blowout loss.

Top Seeds Who Looked Bad

Houston (1) struggled to put Northern Kentucky (16) away, and they played Marcus Sasser who re-aggravated a groin injury that could be detrimental moving forward. Tennessee (4) and San Diego State (5) also look shaky at times before narrowly escaping their mid-major opponents.

Sharpshooters From Day 1

Andrew Funk (PSU): 27 pts (8-for-10, 3pt)

Sir’Jabari Rice (TEX): 23 pts, 6 rebs, 3 asts (7-for-10, 3pt)

D’Moi Hodge (MIZZOU): 23 pts (5-for-10, 3pt)

Other Top Performances

Gradey Dick (KU): 19 pts, 11 rebs, 5 asts, 3 stls

Jaime Jaquez Jr. (UCLA): 17 pts, 8 rebs, 5 stls

Jeremy Roach (DUKE): 23 pts

Boo Buie (NU): 22 pts, 5 rebs, 5 asts

Johni Broome (AUB): 19 pts, 12 rebs, 5 blks