NCAAB

The 5 Biggest First Round NCAA Tournament Upsets Since 2000

Brett Oswalt  —  @bRo14thekid Mar 14th, 2017
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2. (14) UAB over (3) Iowa State, 2015

Poor Iowa State.

The Cyclones are the only victim to find this list twice. 14 years after their loss to Hampton, the Big 12 Tournament champions were knocked out by the 14-seeded UAB Blazers. UAB was just 19-15 before entering the NCAA Tournament, but the Blazers surprised everyone and won their own conference tournament.

The Blazers continued their hot streak (no pun intended) and held the Cyclones to 59 points on 36.9% shooting from the field, including a 26.1% clip from three. On the other side, UAB got the one-point edge with a combined 35 points from Robert Brown and William Lee.

As you can imagine, the numbers didn't care much for UAB (1.88 nERD). Our nERD metric was largely in favor of Iowa State (14.38 nERD) for obvious reasons, but games like this is why March is so much fun.

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