One of the beautiful things about college basketball is that on any given day, no matter the level of competition, any team can beat any other team just by some dumb luck, a few lucky breaks or unforeseen circumstances.
That beauty has never been more on display than it has in the first week into the 2015-16 season.
Here’s a quick little run down of all the “upsets” that have occurred in the first eight days of the season:
- Nov. 13 – Western Illinois tops No. 17 Wisconsin at the Kohl Center 69-67. Prior to this game, Wisconsin had won 13 straight season openers and had won 51 straight non-conference games against unranked opponents.
- On the same day, Belmont topped Marquette on the road, North Florida beat Illinois in Springfield, Ill., William & Mary won by 17 at NC State and Monmouth won in overtime at UCLA.
- Nov. 14 – Georgetown falls in double overtimeat home to Radford and Alabama State tops Virginia Tech on the road.
- Nov. 16 – No. 6 Virginia goes on the road and drops one at George Washington. The Cavaliers went undefeated in non-conference play last season.
- No. 25 Oregon, despite missing two of its top players (Dylan Ennis and Jordan Bell) upended No. 20 Baylor at home, Long Beach State topped BYU (played at Long Beach) and Southern picked up a 76-72 road win at Mississippi State.
- Nov. 17 – Tulsa dropped No. 9 Wichita State 77-67 at home.
- Others: George Mason topped both Ole Miss and Oklahoma State to advance to the championship game of the Charleston Classic; Iowa annihilated Marquette 89-61 on the road; Xavier won comfortably at No. 24 Michigan 86-70 and Ohio State dropped a home game to UT-Arlington.
These are just games that stood out the most. Plenty of other contests have had surprising results, but it also kind of depends on how you view teams. For example: Cincinnati beat Robert Morris at home. That much isn’t surprising, but the fact they won that game by 62 points is.
Nov 14, 2015; Washington, DC, USA; Radford Highlanders guard Rashun Davis (5) makes the game-winning three point field goal over Georgetown Hoyas guard D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera (4) with 1.7 seconds left in the second overtime at Verizon Center. The Highlanders won 82-80 in double overtime. Mandatory Credit: Geoff Burke-USA TODAY Sports Essentially, what’ we’ve learned so far this season is that college basketball has never been more unpredictable than it is right now.
Though the indication this summer was that this would be the case, nobody really saw this level of parity in college hoops coming.
One could make the argument that some of these previously mentioned “upsets” aren’t really upsets, and one could be right in some cases. Whether or not an upset is an upset all depends on how you view teams. Just because a team has a number attached to its name on TV doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
However, we have entered a bit of a Twilight Zone scenario in college basketball, but it’s one we really should’ve seen coming.
Mid-majors are now stronger than ever in terms of competition because they keep their players, for the most part, for all four years. This results in those matchups with teams that lose players every year to transfers and the NBA more and more vulnerable to these sorts of upsets.
Wisconsin, for example, lost a lot from the team that made two straight Final Fours. Despite that, because “Bo Ryan has never finished lower than fourth in the Big Ten” is a heavily used narrative, everybody projected them to finish, you guessed it, fourth in the Big Ten, which put them in the lower teens in most polls.
“Forget about how good other teams in the country are or that the Big Ten should be a very top-heavy conference. This is Wisconsin and this is Bo Ryan,” was the underlying logic for that No. 17 ranking.
It’s not just Wisconsin that this madness surrounds, though. They were just the first to fall victim. Plenty of others will fall in games nobody expects them to lose. Heck, No. 1 North Carolina could very well fall at Northern Iowa Saturday. These things happens.
Perhaps what is most surprising, though, is that a lot of these games by high-major programs have been lost at home. Home records are sacred. It’s the reason certain teams (won’t name names; too many for that anyway) load up their non-conference slate with what should be cupcake victories at home.
Mar 20, 2015; Columbus, OH, USA; Valparaiso Crusaders guard Keith Carter (0) dribbles the ball during the second half against the Maryland Terrapins in the second round of the 2015 NCAA Tournament at Nationwide Arena. Mandatory Credit: Joe Maiorana-USA TODAY Sports But this isn’t about protecting your house, so to speak. No, this is more about where the current state of college basketball is. The mid-major and smaller major teams now have more of an advantage, a greater advantage than they’ve ever had, against their high-major foes.
Top programs are losing more and more of their players to the pros (Kentucky) or to transfers (Memphis), leaving them far more susceptible to losing games like this. While the rate at which these upsets are occurring is the most surprising part of it, that they are happening isn’t.
Take a team like Valparaiso, for example. Through eight days of regular season action, they are already 5-0, two of which came against projected NCAA tournament teams and one of those was on the road. They’re on the road this weekend and, honestly, they could beat No. 25 Oregon and Oregon State and it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
Valpo returns pretty much everybody from last season. They have one of the deepest teams in the country, not just at the mid-major level. The Crusaders are a consistently solid-to-great program every year and they have the luxury of returning all of their important pieces.
It’s teams like Valpo, like Stony Brook (who went to overtime with No. 17 Vanderbilt on the road) and like Belmont that will be constant threats for the next five weeks or so. Their names could be popping up left and right with the term “upset” attached to them, but maybe it’s not that much of an upset anymore.
High-major programs are having a harder time keeping their top players away from the millions of dollars in the NBA. Some programs (Kentucky) know how to adjust on the fly, but not everybody has caught up. Also, these top new freshmen aren’t all going one place or another.
They’re much more spread out this season than they have been in recent years, making for a wider range of good teams rather than just a few good ones and a couple amazing teams.
When you see results such as the ones that have appeared in the first week of action, don’t overthink them. They’re going to happen, because they do every year, but they may come faster and more frequently than in the past because that’s how today’s college basketball landscape is set up.
Next: Looking At College Basketball's In-Season Tournaments
2015-16 is the year of parity in college basketball, which can make it frustrating to follow at times, but makes for an increasingly entertaining product.
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