Why a Cinderella is so hard to find this NCAA Tournament

Before we begin to unpack the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, it’s important that we all agree on one thing: Just because there’s a No. 11 next to the Texas Longhorns does not mean we are talking about some plucky underdog making the Sweet 16.

“We’re all adults here,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said moments after losing to Texas in the second round. “That is not a Cinderella team. That’s a really talented basketball team with a really, really, really good coach that has incredible resources and has a great history of doing great things in the Tournament. So, that’s just an 11-seed that had some tough losses during the year.”

Preach. A double-digit seed that comes from one of the richest athletic departments in the country is a far cry from the teams we typically discuss when we talk about unlikely March runs.

Usually, we’re talking about mid-major teams — teams such as Saint Peter’s or Florida Gulf Coast. Mercer and Lehigh knocking off Duke. UMBC and Fairleigh Dickinson taking out No. 1 seeds. Often times, we’re talking about teams that had to win their conference tournaments to earn auto-bids to the big dance because there was no other way in, but occasionally it’s a team like Miami (Ohio) that sneaks into the field as an at-large. As RedHawks coach Travis Steele has explained, that path is becoming more and more difficult to reliably follow, with high-major teams unwilling to schedule teams like his on an annual basis.

We’re just three years removed from Florida Atlantic’s run to the Final Four, but Cinderellas feel farther than ever from the current state of this tournament. The 11th-ranked Longhorns are the only double-digit seed through to the Sweet 16. VCU (the No. 11 seed in the South Region) and High Point (the No. 12 in the West) pulled off true Cinderella-esque wins in the first round, but neither survived the weekend. Chalk reigned, and with it came all the bluebloods.

Just like last year.

This year’s NCAA tournament marks the fourth straight year without multiple double-digit seeds reaching the Sweet 16. That’s never happened before. For as exciting as it can be at the Final Four when you have all four No. 1 seeds (like last year), it really takes away so much of the luster of the first half of the tournament when March Madness isn’t, well, very mad at all.

So, what’s going on? Why is Cinderella harder to find than ever before? Here are four reasons why:

The oft-cited culprits: NIL and the transfer portal

We can’t ignore the elephant in the room. These chalky tournaments are occurring as college sports finds itself in the middle of the NIL/revenue-sharing era. Athletes can be paid, which means the schools that can pay (or raise) the most money can accumulate most of the elite talent. The best-resourced schools can also essentially raid the smaller schools, picking off their best players by offering bigger and more lucrative opportunities. I know coaches who track the players who earn all-conference honors from low- and mid-major leagues, treating those lists like cheat sheets for which guys to go after. Auburn recently had an assistant coach spotted courtside at the Atlantic Sun tournament, drawing the ire of Queens coach Grant Leonard, who accused the coach of trying to “get ahead” on recruiting his players. Auburn coach Steven Pearl’s response was, basically: So what? It’s legal.

Money might not have been such a big deal if it weren’t for the loosening of the transfer rules. Players can now transfer without sitting out, and they can transfer every single year if they want to. That creates a pseudo and perpetual sense of free agency for players. Which, again, makes it harder for smaller schools with fewer resources to compete in those bidding wars. Therefore, the mid-major rosters get weaker.

But NIL deals do not only make the rich richer by allowing Goliaths to poach the best talent from the Davids. They also entice athletes to stay in school longer, so fringe NBA Draft picks now often return to college (where they might be making the same or even more money than they would with an initial pro contract). Money used to be the main motivator for players with NBA Draft eligibility, even if their stock would likely increase with another year of collegiate development. Now, they can get paid (well) and get better (in college) at the same time.

Conference realignment deserves some of the blame, too

When Butler reached back-to-back national championship games, it did so as a member of the Horizon League. VCU went from the First Four to the Final Four as an at-large team out of the Colonial Athletic Association. Then, those teams moved up to different conferences, as the conferences above them broke open/grew bigger/changed.

The ACC forced the eventual demise of the old Big East, which prompted the so-called ‘Catholic 7’ schools to re-form as the new Big East; that conference took Butler and Xavier from the Atlantic 10 and Creighton from the Missouri Valley Conference, weakening both. The Atlantic 10 then added George Mason and Davidson to replace the departures of Butler and Xavier (to the Big East), Temple (to the American) and Charlotte (to Conference USA). The early- to mid-2010s shifted so much of the college basketball landscape, and by the time it had settled again, the SEC added Oklahoma and Texas in 2021, forcing tectonic realignment once again … and the mid-majors scrambling as some of the flag-bearers for their conferences got called up to new leagues.

As Dan Wolken pointed out in Yahoo Sports, one of the outcomes of the myriad rounds of realignment is that there are weaker mid-major teams making the NCAA Tournament. Per Wolken’s data, the average pre-tournament KenPom ranking of the No. 15 seeds in 2016 was 124, the average No. 14 seeds was 105, the average of No. 13 seeds was 84 and the average No. 12 seeds was 73. And this year? Those KenPom numbers tell a different story: The 15-seed average is around 179, the 14-seed average is 142, the 13-seed average is 113, the 12-seed average is 76. Maybe that doesn’t seem like a dramatic drop-off, but when you’re looking for teams that can win in the margins to pull off a bit upset, that’s a drastic difference in ability. Could mean the difference between a good three-point shooting team and one that’s just OK. Or a team that’s more consistent over the course of 30-plus games vs. one that has high variance.

There’s more accurate seeding thanks to the NET rankings

There wasn’t much to complain about back on Selection Sunday. Usually, we’re used to debating snubs and seeding decisions. This year, the selection committee (rightfully) included 31-1 Miami (Ohio) in the field, so there wasn’t a huge outcry. And maybe there were a few small seeding debates we could join — St. John’s and Vanderbilt both felt a little low, but selection committee chair Keith Gill had good reasons for both.

Ultimately, it seems like the combination of NET rankings and all of the available predictive metrics have given the selection committee the right tools to craft its bracket. RPI was a deeply flawed metric, and it led to brackets that seemed imbalances and seeding decisions that were head-scratchers. The NCAA went away from RPI and created the NET ahead of the 2018 season, which was a smart move. Strength of Record and Wins Above Bubble are also really helpful relatively new metrics that help not just evaluate how teams have done against their schedule but also how they project against and compare to other teams moving forward. If teams are more accurately seeded, you’re less likely to have a No. 12 seed that probably should have been a 10 facing off against a No. 5 seed that maybe should have been a 6. The higher seeds have the advantage that they’re supposed to, which creates less of a pathway for upsets to occur.

And, of course, seeding is affected by which teams play each other and where those games are. Strong mid-majors have trouble getting high-major programs to play them, which then makes their resumes weak because they have few (or no) Quad 1 games to show the selection committee. Purdue coach Matt Painter explained recently that high-majors are going to look out for what’s best for them, and it doesn’t help them to schedule too many mid-major teams (that could either drag down strength of schedule metrics or hand you a damaging loss) and when they play them it doesn’t make sense to play them anywhere but at home. And maybe not even at home, if they’ve already got a full, challenging schedule that checks all the boxes for what the coaching staff is looking for that year. Alabama coach Nate Oats said he looks closely at the Tide’s buy games because he doesn’t want to end up playing any Quad 4 games.

The bigger, stronger and more bully-ball teams are playing as such

Florida coach Todd Golden made a really interesting observation this week when speaking to SI’s Kevin Sweeney. Golden pointed out that a few years ago teams around the country were focusing on three-point shooting and spacing the floor with stretch fours. Now, the top teams have massive frontcourts and play through the paint. They also own the glass and prioritize offensive rebounding.

“That was kind of the wave for a couple years, teams that sold themselves as playing a ‘pro-style’ offense and spread out … but when you play that way, you allow a lot of volatility to enter the equation,” Golden told SI. “When you have the opportunity to recruit bigger, stronger, faster athletes and play a style that allows you to raise your floor with high two-point field goal percentage and get on the glass, that just gives you a better chance to be consistently successful.”

Even if you play a mid-major that shoots well from three, you’re going to control the game because you control the glass. Even if you shoot more 2s than 3s in a game, you’re getting offensive rebounds and more shot opportunities than your opponent over the course of the game. And you wear down your opponent physically.

Golden has been on both sides of the Cinderella equation, first at the University of San Francisco and now at Florida. And now that he’s a Goliath aiming for back-to-back national titles, he thinks he’s found one way to further stymie the future Davids.

“Recruiting bigger — that to me is a way to protect yourself from some of these really good mid-major teams,” Golden said.

Golden has to think that way because there are still good mid-major teams in the sport right now — and there will continue to be good mid-major teams in future NCAA tournaments. Oats said it’s going to be harder for those teams to make deep runs in March but that there are still going to be upsets.

And for those at schools trying to see if Cinderella’s slippers still fit? Well, they believe it’s still possible to bust brackets, too.

“America is dying for a mid-major,” Utah State coach Jerrod Calhoun said. “Everybody in the country roots for the underdog.”