2019 and 2024 both lost their best players for the season. You just don’t have another Doke or McCullar on your bench. No team does.

2021 was a screwy Covid year. Just throw that one out.

2017 was an Elite Eight matchup against a good Oregon team, but what also happened that year? Oh yeah, losing a starting center to injury.

So basically, we’re going to have a bad loss in the tournament when we lose a star player to injury. Shocking.
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2018 Nova was just a historically great team. No shame there.

We got them back in 2022. So it’s all good.
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Also leaving out last year's loss just because Self wasn't coaching is pretty dishonest. Like they were some scrappy rag tag team that overperformed because of a backup coach and Self shouldn't get credit.
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Actual results in the NCAA Tournament is meaningless especially with team turn over every year. Nobody really knows what your going to get. Just shows of your team is lucky.

Consistent high seeding is all that matters.
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Self would not have lost to Arkansas.
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Ncaa tournament isn't a "crapshoot". A good team will almost certainly win it every year.
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I think of it like a weighted lottery.

Luck certainly plays a role, but being a good team that can create matchup problems will always give you a better chance.
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And then we'll watch Uconn win another one.
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I’ll just say that the 2022 team was almost certainly not a top 5 Self team, but it was a Self team that had probably the most favorable draw of any Self team ever. Luck plays a huge role in the tournament.
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Lol no it doesn't. Luck is a KU fan cope.

How does uconn keep winning it, are they the luckiest team of the 21st century?
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They’ve done it with 3 coaches, so probably.

It’s not like it’s one coach that’s figured out some formula to win it all.
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That doesn't NOT make it a crapshoot, IMO.

You'll generally have 4 teams that win ~85-90% of the regular season games and it's pretty rare they all make it to the national semifinals... what other league has such a high winning percentage for its best teams, yet such a low chance of even making it to the semifinals, much less winning it all?

Hell, UConn was a 4 seed last year and was barely ranked in mid-February... they were 4th in their division. No other league allows them to play for a championship.

If all of the 1 seeds made it every year, or even most of them, I'd tend to agree that end of the day, the best teams win every year... but, IMO the fact that most of those teams don't make it out of their region for even a chance to play the last two games makes it far more random than any other league.
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UConn is about the worst possible example of "good teams win NCs" and the best example of luck that their is for March Madness.
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They were at one point ranked as high as #2 and then straight stomped everyone on their way to winning that title.
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Fucking Kevin Ollie won a title as a 7 seed
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