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This Day In Sports…March 16, 2018:
Everybody said it had to happen someday—a No. 16 seed beating a No. 1 in the NCAA Tournament. But not like this. UMBC, a 20.5-point underdog, becomes the first 16 to win a game in the Big Dance, not just defeating No. 1 overall seed Virginia, but routing the Cavaliers 74-54. After a sluggish first half that ended in a 21-21 tie, the Retrievers exploded for 53 second half points against one of the nation’s best defensive teams—Virginia came into the tournament allowing just 53 points per game. And their bench exploded with joy at the final horn.
Virginia’s Kyle Guy summed up the other side: “First time in history for anything is always hard for whoever’s on the wrong side of it.” The Cavaliers would use the moment as fuel, though, winning the national championship the following season. “That situation made me take a look at a lot of things,” UVA coach Tony Bennett said a year later. “There’s no way I would have gotten this close to my team. In a way it drew me closer to my family, to my faith. But also, what can we do to be better in certain situations as a team? You think differently. Through any adversity, there’s such wisdom in it.”
UMBC’s coach was Ryan Odom, who would land at Utah State in 2021. He took the Retrievers to the NCAA Tournament in his second season there, and he would do the same at USU and VCU, where he moved to following two seasons in Logan. With the Aggies, Odom went 26-9 in 2022-23 and made March Madness. Now, after two years at VCU, he’s the head coach at (ironically) Virginia, where he was a ballboy in the 1980s. And Odom’s back in the Big Dance. The Cavaliers are 29-5 after falling to Duke in the ACC championship game.
Until UMBC’s landmark night, 16th-seeded teams had been 0-135 against top seeds since the tournament was expanded to 64 teams in 1985. But five years later, it would happen again. And by consensus, it was the biggest upset in NCAA Tournament history, as Fairleigh Dickinson took down Purdue 63-58 in the first round in 2023. The 16th-seeded Knights were 23.5-point underdogs, more than UMBC was when it upset Virginia. FDU was also a First Four team and had won just four games the previous season. The Knights came into the tourney at No. 298 (out of 363) in the KenPom computer, the lowest-ranked team in the Big Dance.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
