Saturday, March 17, 2018

no. 16 beats no. 1

CHARLOTTE — And on the 136th attempt, the basketball gods relented.

A No. 16 seed has finally beaten a No. 1 in the NCAA tournament. And even if you could see it coming somewhere, some time, in the future, it wasn’t supposed to be this.

College basketball has never seen a bigger upset than Maryland-Baltimore County 74, Virginia 54.

But it happened Friday night in the South Regional, taking down a team that just last week completed a golden 31-2 season with both the ACC regular season and conference tournament titles. And it was executed by team ranked 188th in the country according to the Ken Pomeroy efficiency ratings, a team that lost to the likes of Stony Brook and was beaten 44 points by Albany in the middle of its conference season.

It’s too improbable for words, except that it happened.

“Unbelievable — it’s really all you can say,” UMBC coach Ryan Odom said.

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