Only one of the No. 12 seeds in the 2024 NCAA Tournament — Grand Canyon, James Madison, McNeese, or UAB — needed to win their first-round game to avoid the first instance of consecutive years without a 12-over-5 upset since the tourney expanded to 64 teams in 1985.
That happened on Friday night with James Madison’s win over Wisconsin — and again later that night with the Grand Canyon’s win over Saint Mary’s.
With a 2-2 record, 12-seeds improved their first-round record to 58-114.
While their first-round winning percentage (.337) remains arguably lower than the annual hype suggests, it’s far higher than that of 13-seeds against 4-seeds (.212). The difference (+.125) is bigger than any other single-seed jump. For example, the difference between 14-over-3 winning percentage (.147) to 13-over-4 (.212) is only +.065.
We know 12-seeds provide the biggest seed-to-seed improvement in overall winning percentage, but what about ATS winning percentage?
After going 0-4 ATS in 2023, they went 3-1 this year and have now covered in 57.1% of games since 2013.
While that’s good enough for a 10.6% ROI, it’s worse than the 13-vs-4 ROI (12.9%) and ROI of other seed-to-seed jumps.
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