UMBC stuns No. 1 overall seed Virginia in biggest NCAA tournament upset ever

It finally happened.

Never again will the longest-running March Madness question need to be asked. Yes, a No. 16 seed can beat a No. 1.

It finally happened. And when it did, it wasn’t by way of a miracle last second shot, or a gritty come-from-behind effort where everything went right for David and everything went wrong for Goliath. It was a straight up ass kicking.

UMBC — which stands for the University of Maryland Baltimore County, a fact the entire country is about to become very familiar with — scored the biggest upset in the history of the NCAA tournament Friday night with a 74-54 throttling of No. 1 seed Virginia. The 20-point victors had entered the game as 20-point underdogs.

It feels fitting that when a No. 16 seed finally did the unthinkable, it wasn’t a win over a team that most had already deemed unworthy of its lofty status. It was a thumping of the freaking No. 1 overall seed in the entire Big Dance.

Sure, Virginia had its fair share of doubters because of its failure to breakthrough and crash a Final Four in recent years. But there was no one doubting the Cavaliers’ 2017-18 resume. There was no one who thought Tony Bennett’s team was overly susceptible to being on the wrong end of an all-time stunner at some point this weekend.

We’re talking about a Virginia team that played 21 ACC games this season and won 20 of them. A Cavalier squad that wasn’t just rated (by opinion and statistics alike) as the best defensive team in the country this season, but as one of the best defensive teams in the modern era of college basketball.

That same team got torched by a UMBC Retrievers squad that had tasted defeat 10 times. A UMBC team that lost to Albany 83-39 in America East play on Jan. 21, and 81-53 to Vermont (at home!) two weeks later.

Try and process this: Heading into this game, Virginia was allowing just 53.4 points per game and had held 16 of its 32 opponents to 53 points or fewer. UMBC scored 53 points on the Cavaliers in the second half. The Retrievers wound up scoring more total points than any UVA opponent this season. More than North Carolina, more than West Virginia, more than Duke.

It also feels fitting that UMBC’s upset came in the rarest of years where there was actually significant buzz about a 16 seed potentially knocking off a one, but that buzz centered around a different team. The Penn Quakers were the squad everyone was keeping an eye on heading into the tournament’s first two days. While the Ivy Leaguers kept things interesting against Kansas for about 30 minutes on Thursday, they ultimately fell short of what their bottom seed brethren from Baltimore was able to accomplish.

Virginia was the last of the four No. 1 seeds to play its first round game, so heading into Friday night’s contest, top seeds had been a combined 135-0 against No. 16 seeds. The legitimate scares in those games had also been few and far between. Only five of those 135 games had been decided by five points or fewer, and only 16 had been settled by single digits.

Far more frequently, the No. 1 seeds have been able to name their final margin of victory in March Madness. A whopping 90 of those 135 victories came by 20 points or more, and 47 had come by 30 points or more.

After this year, you’ll never hear about those numbers again.

You’ll also never have to ask what UMBC stands for.