Sixteen seeds are an all-time 2-150 against No. 1s in the NCAA Tournament, with the first 16-seed upset coming recently in 2018 with UMBC taking down Virginia, and the second-ever win coming last year with Fairleigh Dickinson taking down Purdue.
With a few recent 16-over-one upsets, fans have been spoiled with these types of games, with it almost becoming an expectation every year in the tournament that a one seed will be challenged — this year being no different. At the top of the South Region sits the favorite to do it this year, the Longwood Lancers, who have a battle with the behemoth Houston in Memphis on Friday. Amidst the few who have the unlikely upset picked in their bracket, Longwood has a scarcity of advantages over the juggernaut, but it’s always fun to speculate.
The Height Factor
Houston’s tallest rotational player, Ja’Vier Francis, stands at just 6-foot-8, and their team leader in rebounds, the 6-foot-7 J’Wan Roberts, are the two big men who run the court for the Cougars, with head coach Kelvin Sampson preferring a shorter lineup at times. This has mainly worked for his team this season despite being the the bottom half of the nation in defensive offensive rebound percentage according to KenPom (30.3%).
Longwood, on the other hand, looks to exploit this one weak spot in an otherwise statistically-perfect Houston team. The Lancers bring in better height than Houston, with 7-footSzymon Zapala and 6-foot-8 Elijah Tucker standing out as impact players that will be vital in securing important rebounds. Sitting at third in the nation in opposing rebounds per game, Longwood has been skilled at keeping the other team off the glass all season, and a win in the rebound column on Friday could go a long way in yet another 16-over-one upset.
“They’re not a tall team, but what they lose in lack of height they make up in intensity and their competitiveness, and they’re long,” said Longwood head coach Griff Aldrich. “Francis is obviously a really long defender, and Roberts should probably be on their football team as well. I think, yes, while we have height, they constantly double the post. It’s one of the trademark signatures of their defense, so we’ll be selective. That will be an important part of our offensive scheme, and we’ll need to execute well.”
The Pace Factor
Similar to how the Virginia Cavaliers took a loss to 16-seed UMBC, the Cougars pit themselves in an offense that has not been typically good at coming back late in games. Houston is 0-4 in games where they have been trailing with less than five minutes left. And, with the 14th-slowest tempo in the country, the Cougars have been unable to mount comebacks in the few games they have lost this season.
Longwood is a similarly slow-paced squad that sits in the bottom-half of the country in pace of play, meaning that Friday night will most likely display to fans a low-scoring game. The winner will be the team that can take an early lead. With the Lancers showing an atypical high-scoring style of play in recent wins over UNC Asheville (scored 85 points as a team) and High Point (scored 80 points as a team). If their offense is firing as well as it has in the postseason up to this point, the team may not be making a quick trip back to Farmville, Virginia.
The Fate Factor
Aldrich has been in this situation before. Under Ryan Odom’s staff at UMBC in 2018, Aldrich coached from the bench a Retriever team that pulled off the first-ever 16-over-one upset in NCAA Tournament history. Now, in his sixth season as head coach of Longwood, Aldrich is in position to do it again.
“We’ve addressed that with the team very briefly,” said Aldrich about his former role at UMBC. “But I think each team has its own journey, and I think there’s some really important elements the UMBC team that won, which is, number one, they believed. They believed in themselves. They had experiences early in the year. They were a very confident team, very similar to our team. They were connected. They really enjoyed one another, and for us, we want to be Longwood, not a UMBC or Fairleigh Dickinson repeat. We want to write our own story, and I think these guys have some really compelling characteristics. Their character and their resiliency, and then their chemistry is really strong, [so] we’ll see how far it takes us.”
