Even before the brackets for the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament came out Sunday night, March Madness was a muddled mess.
About the closest thing to a sure thing: the University of Connecticut.
Coach Dan Hurley’s Huskies (31-3), the reigning national champions, received the overall top seed in the NCAA tournament, joined by Houston (30-4), Purdue (29-4) and North Carolina (27-7) as No. 1 seeds in a 68-team bracket that started going haywire earlier than usual.
Of those top teams, only UConn heads into the tournament this week coming off a win. That played into the Huskies, the Big East champions, receiving the No. 1 overall seed.
The others lost in their conference tournaments, with Houston humbled in the Big 12 title game, North Carolina falling to surprising N.C. State in the Atlantic Coast Conference final and Purdue stumbling in the Big Ten semifinals Saturday. Yet those were hardly the only surprises over the final weekend of hoops before the main event takes center stage.