March Madness upsets: the full analysis

We counted all 2,520 men's tournament games from 1985 to 2025. First-round upsets are only the start. The second round is wild too, low seeds almost never survive the last weekend, and the shape of March barely changes.

The first round, line by line

Lower seeds won 333 of 1,280 first-round games, about one in four.

Each matchup below has been played exactly 160 times.

The 9-over-8 game is a coin flip that leans low.

The famous lines sit below it: the 12, the 11, and the 10 each win about four times in ten.

The 16-over-1 miracle has happened twice in 160 tries.

How far each seed actually goes

Every seed gets 160 teams in 40 years: four regions, one team each.

Here is where those 160 teams stop.

Read the 1-seed row and the 12-seed row together.

A 1 seed reaches the Final Four 66 times in 160. A 12 seed reaches the Elite Eight twice, and the Final Four never.

Five seeds own the strangest line on the table: nine Final Fours, zero titles.

The deepest champion ever is an 8 seed: Villanova, in the first year of this count, 1985.

The second round is not safe either

Winning once buys a low seed a harder game, usually against a top seed.

Lower seeds still won 184 of 640 second-round games, about 4.6 a year.

The 11 seed is the best bet to win twice: 27 of its 62 winners did.

The 9 seed is the trap: it wins the coin flip, then meets a 1 seed. Only 8 of 83 won again.

Small print on the 15s: only 11 have ever won a first game, and 4 of those 11 reached the Sweet 16. One, Saint Peter's in 2022, went to the Elite Eight.

Patterns that keep repeating

• The 11 seed keeps getting better. Its first-round win rate by era:

• A Cinderella almost always shows up. A double-digit seed reached the Sweet 16 in 38 of 40 tournaments, the last 17 in a row. A normal year has about two of them.
• Somebody's 5 seed goes home early. At least one 12 beat a 5 in 34 of 40 years. At least one 10 won in 37 of 40, and at least one 9 in 37 of 40.
• The last weekend still belongs to the top. One seeds have won 26 of 40 titles. A Final Four of all four 1 seeds has happened only twice, in 2008 and 2025.
• No seed line is owed anything. Six 11 seeds have reached the Final Four. Zero 12, 13, 14, 15, or 16 seeds ever have.

The Upset Forecast for March 2027

The 2027 field does not exist yet.

Nobody honest can forecast teams in November.

But the shape of the tournament is the steadiest thing in sports, and the shape can be counted.

The average year has 8.3 first-round upsets, and the middle year has 8.

29 of 40 years landed between 6 and 10. Only 5 years had 5 or fewer.

The recent game runs a little wilder: the 12 tournaments from 2013 to 2025 averaged 9.0.

Here is where those upsets should come from, ranked by how many each line produces in a normal year:

And here is a typical first weekend, start to finish:

• About 8 upsets on Thursday and Friday, led by the 9, 10, and 11 lines.
• About 4 or 5 more on the weekend, as low seeds win second games.
• About 2 double-digit seeds in the Sweet 16, next to about 10 teams seeded 4 or better.
• One or two 1 seeds in the Final Four (the average is 1.65), and a champion who is most likely a 1 seed, as 26 of 40 have been.

These are history's averages, not predictions about any 2027 team.

Which teams are standing on those lines right now, and which of them the numbers doubt, is tracked on the rankings page: the bands, the vulnerable favorites, and the Cinderella Radar, refreshed every week of the season.

The field is set on Selection Sunday, March 14, 2027.

When it is, every line above turns into a real choice on a real bracket, and the choosing stays yours.

How this differs from the ratings sites

KenPom, Torvik, and the other ratings sites rate teams, and they are good at it. This page borrows one of their numbers and names it every time.

What none of them publishes is the tournament itself, counted: how many upsets a normal year holds, which seed lines bleed, what a typical first weekend looks like.

And the tools that fill in a bracket for you, in 30 seconds, for a price? That is the one thing this site will never do. The counts are on the table. The calls stay yours.

How we counted

Counted from every men's tournament game, 1985 to 2025.

Main bracket only. First Four and Opening Round games are not counted.

That is 40 tournaments and 2,520 games. There was no tournament in 2020.

Game results come from the public game-by-game record: Wikipedia tournament pages, compiled in the march-madness-games-csv dataset.

The 2027 tournament grows to 76 teams. Twelve Opening Round games come first, and the winners join this same 64-team bracket, so the counted frame still applies.

History is a guide, not a promise.