Picking the right upsets is the best and most difficult part of filling out a March Madness bracket, and there’s no bigger upset than a No. 1 seed losing.
No. 1 Virginia losing to No. 16 UMBC in the first round in 2018 will forever be historic, but what happened the other 143 times No. 1 and No. 16 seeds clashed? The 1s won.
Unsurprisingly, the top-seeded teams have an excellent track record of making it far in the tournament. In fact, the past four national champions were No. 1 seeds: Baylor (2021), Virginia (2019), Villanova (2018) and North Carolina (2017).