For years, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament has been lauded by its unpredictable nature and the possibility of a lower-seeded, relatively unknown team defeating a powerhouse. These upsets are usually found in the opening Round of 64; the 32 games that occur make an upset almost statistically inevitable.

However, this year’s opening round of the NCAA Tournament was much more uneventful than usual, as most highly seeded teams advanced past their lower-seeded opponents. Only six lower seeded teams defeated a higher seed in the Round of 64. Astonishingly, three of these six teams were eleventh seeds, the University of Southern California (USC), University of Rhode Island (URI), and Xavier. Cincinnati was the only sixth seed to move past the Round of 64.

The other three victorious lower seeded teams were ninth-seeded Michigan State, twelfth-seeded Middle Tennessee State and tenth-seeded Wichita State. The wins for Michigan State and Wichita State were quite commonplace; they took down seeds that were close to them, as they took down an eighth and seventh seed respectively. Middle Tennessee State’s victory was, in some ways, expected largely due to how the twelfth seeds have defeated the fifth seeds ten times in the past five years, an impressive winning percentage for a lower seed. Thus, the victories of the eleventh seeds were the biggest surprise of the first round.

The remaining field was rounded out by teams seeded first through eighth in each region. This included each of the four first seeds (University of North Carolina, Gonzaga, Kansas, and Villanova), as the first seeds continued their undefeated streak in the Round of 64.