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 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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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.
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