Almost nobody thought Syracuse was going to be in the Final Four
If you have 10-seed Syracuse in your bracket's Final Four, you are probably feel pretty smug: Only 0.4 percent of NCAA men's basketball tournament brackets listed the Orange progressing to the Final Four, SB Nation reports. And for a smart reason reason, too: Syracuse's defeat of top-seeded Virginia on Sunday was historic. No 10th-seeded team has ever made the Final Four.
The number of people who predicted this insane Final Four matchup — Villanova vs. Oklahoma, and Syracuse vs. North Carolina — is expectedly small, too. Of the 13 million people to have filed brackets with ESPN, only 1,140 predicted the Final Four to look the way it does right now.
Even more incredibly, Cinderella-story Syracuse almost didn't even make the bracket in the first place:
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Syracuse wasn't supposed to make the dang NCAA Tournament. The Orange had a legitimately lackluster season. They went 9-9 in the ACC. They lost a game to garbage St. John's. St. John's! After beating Syracuse, St. John's went on to lose 21 of their final 22 games.Syracuse had an RPI ranking of 68, lower than any team ever selected to make the NCAA Tournament with an at-large bid. They had more losses to teams that missed the NCAA Tournament (five) than they had wins against teams that made it (three). Of 144 bracketologists represented in the Bracket Matrix, less than half considered the Orange a tourney team. [SB Nation]
Syracuse will meet top seed North Carolina Saturday evening. While North Carolina is the heavy favorite (-9.5), Syracuse's incredible progression is proof that in March Madness, anything can happen.
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