This year has been a very upsetting Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament and it still is not over.

Do you know how upsetting it has been compared to previous tournaments?

Each year, I keep track of two numbers during the tournament. The first is UF or Upset Factor. The second one is BP or Bracket Points.

UF (Upset Factor) is a number that is a sum of the seed differences when a lower seed knocks off a team with a higher seeding. For instance, when a 15 seed knocks off a 2 seed the UF is incremented by 13. If an 9 seed knocks off a 8 seed then the UF goes up by 1. If a 10 seed beats a 15 seed, there are no UF points since the higher seed was the winner.

BP (Bracket Points) is probably familiar to most sports fans. When scoring your bracket you get 1 point for a first round win, 2 points for the second round and then 4, 8, 16 and 32 for the following rounds. Basically, you fill out the bracket with the higher seeded team winning each game. You then add up the points based on the tourney results. For the Final Four, the points are given when a #1 seed wins.

Here is what a perfect bracket would look like.

So, how upsetting has the tournament been this year up to the Final 4?

For analysis of the first two rounds see: An Upsetting Start

Here are the results through the first four rounds. The tournament this year makes it to the Final 4 with 68 BP and a UF of 128.

The UF so far this year has already set an all-time high, beating out the UF of 111 set in 2014. There is potential for the UF to climb even higher in the last two rounds so this is definitely the most upsetting tournament.

For BP, there will not be a record low. This is always the case when number one seeds make it to the Final 4.

You can have a number one seed win the tournament and still have a very upsetting tournament.

To have high UF there must be a lot of upset by 10+ seeds. Here we see the list sorted by number of 10+ seed who made it to the second round. Of course, they have to continue to win. In 2016 there were 10 and only 2 of them made it on to the Sweet 16.

1999 is the year with the most 10+ seeds to make it to the Sweet 16, but only one of them continued on to the Elite 8.

This year is one of four years where two teams make it to the Elite 8.

Finally we have one team that made it on to the Final 4.

Will this be the first year that a 10+ seed makes it to the Championship game?

There were so many bracket that got busted this year. Was  your bracket one of them?

Steven