These are the lowest seeds to get to each round of the NCAA Tournament

Everyone loves a Cinderella story, and March Madness is a perfect stage for Cinderella teams to have a story book run in the NCAA Tournament.

No low seeds left

With college basketball being what it is in this new age of NIL and transfer portals, you would think there would be more parody than ever. We have seen powerhouses like Kansas and North Carolina knocked out of the tournament in the first round, proving that legacy means nothing in the new world of college hoops.

Having said that, no 13 seed or higher advanced to the second round of the tournament this year. It’s the first time since 2017 that we haven’t seen a 13, 14, 15 or 16 in make it to the weekend of the Tournament.

As always the 5 vs. 12 match up gave teams plenty of problems in the first round. Two 12 seeds (McNeese State and Colorado St.) pulled upsets, and Michigan barely scraped by UC San Diego to survive and advance.

McNeese State were the darlings of the tournament with their superstar student manager Amir “Aura” Khan, but Cinderella didn’t make it to midnight this year. Colorado St. still has a chance but the play a tough Maryland side on Sunday. There were no 16 seeds making through to the weekend, there will be no 15 seeds making it to the Sweet 16, and we won’t see a run like St. Peter’s had in 2022 when the Peacocks made the most incredible run of any low seeded team in tournament history.

How many 16 seeds have won in the first round?

First things first. The 16 seeds used to have no shot against the 1 seeds in the tournament. With the inclusion of the First Four (in 2011) which usually involves two games between four potential 16 seeds, you would think it would have only got harder, but that’s not the case. Two 16 seeds have stunned the one seeds, and both happened within the last decade. The first team was the University of Maryland, Baltimore County who beat down No. 1 overall seed Virginia 74-54 in the 2018 tournament. Next was Fairleigh Dickinson who pulled a historic upset over Purdue in 2023, beating the Boliermakers 63-58.

Lowest seeds to get to Sweet 16?

While no 16 seed has made it past the opening weekend the Big Dance there have been four 15 seeds that made it to the Sweet 16. The first was Dunk City squad, Florida Gulf Coast in 2013. Then came a run of three straight years that the 15 seeds made the Sweet 16. From 2021 to 2023 the tourney featured three 15 seed Cinderellas. First it was Oral Roberts, then it was Saint Peter’s and then Princeton in 2023. St. Peters was the only team of those four to win their Sweet 16 game after beating Kentucky, then Murray State, and then Purdue but fell short of the Final Four losing to North Carolina in the Elite 8.

Lowest seed to get to Final Four

No team lower than an 11 seed has ever made it to the Final Four. This year Colorado St. has a chance at history being the last remaining 12 seed, but there is still a long way to go before breaking the record of an 11 seed getting to the final weekend. Six different 11 seeds have made it to the last four, the first being LSU in 1986. Twenty years passed before another 11 seed went back to the Final Four, when George Mason did it in 2006. VCU did it in the 2011 season, and Loyola Chicago made a historic run in 2018. IN the last five years there have been two teams that got past the first two weekends of the tourney, UCLA in 2021 and NC State last year. None of them won their semifinal game.

Title game

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That takes us to the title game. Thousands of teams, and millions of brackets have been filled out since the NCAA introduced March Madness in 1939. Over the last century, there have been eight 8 seeds to get to the title game. Butler in 2011, Kentucky in 2014 and North Carolina in 2022 all went to the National Championship, but it was Villanova who stunned Patrick Ewing and Georgetown in the 1985 tournament and became the lowest seed to ever win the Big Dance.