They are the five letters no No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament ever wants to see: upset.
Five years and one day after UMBC pulled off the biggest upset in college basketball history by beating the tournament’s top overall seed, Virginia, it happened again.
Fairleigh Dickinson, like Maryland-Baltimore County a little-known No. 16 seed, knocked off No. 1 seed Purdue 63-58 on Friday night.
UMBC’s legacy five years after beating the Cavaliers became this: If you don’t watch out, No. 1 can mean one-and-done. Add Purdue and All-America center Zach Edey to that very short list.
While there were some close calls before 2018, No. 1 seeds had gone 135-0 before UMBC routed Virginia 75-54 at Charlotte’s Spectrum Center. Now they are 2-151. The women’s side of March Madness has seen only one 16 knock off a 1: Harvard over Stanford in 1998.
This year’s tournament had been expected to be wide open, with no juggernaut teams and top seeds vulnerable to schools eager to capture that “One Shining Moment” and place their name alongside UMBC.
Ryan Odom, the Retrievers’ coach that season, said after the 2018 game “these are the moments that you dream of” while his players celebrated in a cramped locker room. Diminutive 5-foot-8, 140-pound guard KJ, Maura and his teammates joked about there being “no more perfect brackets” and possibly becoming the focal point of a future ESPN “30 for 30” episode.
Some players struggled to process the enormity of the moment, hugging each other long and hard.
“It felt like my soul left my body, man,” UMBC guard Jourdan Grant said that day.
Odom, now the coach at Utah State, a No. 10 seed that lost in the opening round of this year’s tourney, said Wednesday the win over Virginia was “a memory that will last a lifetime.”
“It takes a special group. It takes a lot of luck in order to have a chance to win any game in the NCAA Tournament,” he said.
Former UMBC guard Joe Sherburne said it remains the single greatest day of his life.
“You can measure my life by this: before that day, and after that day,” Sherburne said Wednesday. When friends introduce him to people, the first thing they say is “Joe played for UMBC.”
Sherburne, who works as a financial adviser, remembers the day well.
As UMBC’s lead over Virginia grew to double digits in the second half, he sensed something special, something miraculous was happening. He struggled to concentrate on the next play call while sitting on the bench during TV…