One weekend into the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, March Madness hasn’t lived up to its name.
When the brackets settled Friday night after the round of 64, half of the remaining 32 men’s teams came from college sports’ two most-powerful conferences, the SEC and Big Ten. And by Sunday night, when just 16 teams remained, that major-conference dominance extended even further, with all 16 spots occupied by either the SEC (seven), Big Ten (four), Big 12 (four) and ACC (one).
It’s the fewest number of conferences ever represented in the Sweet 16. Since tournament expansion created the Round of 16 in 1975, every Sweet 16 has featured at least seven conferences, with a record of 11.
Yet midnight arrived early for Cinderella in 2025.
The last, best hope for a “mid-major” conference to advance to the tournament’s second weekend was 12th-seeded Colorado State of the Mountain West, which lost to Maryland of the Big Ten on Sunday night on a buzzer-beater.
As with most college sports developments in recent years, conference realignment has played a role.
As conferences have grown, the odds their schools will make up a larger share of the tournament’s bracket has increased.
Sixth-seeded BYU, which beat Virginia Commonwealth and Wisconsin to advance to the second weekend, had represented mid-major conferences until 2023 when it joined the Big 12 — one of the NCAA’s “Power Five” conferences, a number that dropped to four last year upon the collapse of the Pac-12 — after the conference went looking to add new members following Texas and Oklahoma’s departure for the SEC.
The tournament’s opening weekend still featured a handful of surprises. Twelfth-seeded McNeese State, the champion of the one-bid Southland Conference, beat fifth-seeded Clemson of the ACC, and 11th-seeded Drake of the Missouri Valley Conference beat Missouri of the SEC in the opening round.
Yet the tournament that derives much of its lore — and value from its $8 billion media-rights deal with CBS and Turner — from its unpredictability and parity has instead been mostly chalk. In the Midwest region, in particular, a lower seed won only one of 12 possible games through the first two rounds.
The Big Ten won its first 10 games of the tournament. And the SEC, which last week was celebrating a single-conference record of placing 14 teams in the 68-team bracket, watched as a record seven advanced to the Sweet 16.
Of the 16 teams that began the tournament seeded first through fourth, 12 remain alive. Following Sunday’s loss by two-time defending champion Connecticut, this year’s tournament will crown a new champion.
It just won’t come from out of nowhere.
