This year there have been some big upsets in the Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament.

But, how upsetting has it 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 a 9 seed knocks off an 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 a bracket with the higher seeded team winning each game. If your bracket matches the reference bracket and they win, then you get points. For the Final Four, the points are given when a #1 seed wins.

Here is what a perfect bracket would look like.

So, now for the big question after the 2nd round: How upsetting is this tournament?

The UF for the second round was 40 and the BP was 20.

The BP through the second round this year is fairly low.  There have only been ten years with a lower BP after the first two rounds.

The UF is a bit higher as some of the upsets have been big ones. This will also be reflected in the next category. There have only been three years with lower UF numbers after the second round.

Another stat I keep track of is the number of double digit seeds that advance to each round. The second round started with seven double digit seeds. In the second round four of the double digit seeds won and advanced to the Sweet 16. There is only one year where more seeds advanced.

You see that I have already placed a 1 in the Elite 8 column. This is because it is guaranteed the one will advance as two double digit seeds meet each other in the Sweet 16. Will there be more than one that will advance? We will find out this week.

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the tournament turns out. Will this year remain near the bottom in BP and the top of the UF?

The records are 2011 with a BP of only 57 and 2021 with a UF of 128.

I don’t think there will be any records set this year unless the rest of the 1 seeds lose in the next round.

Steven