Even in a college basketball world increasingly defined by upsets and Cinderellas, no one could have envisioned this.
The Final Four is set for the 2023 Men's Division I Basketball Tournament -- aka March Madness.
And the remaining survivors is a list that virtually no one could have predicted.
In fact, it's unprecedented in the annals of the beloved tournament.
Among the last four teams standing are UConn, Miami, San Diego State and Florida Atlantic -- a fourth seed, two fifths, and a ninth.
According to ESPN reporter Field Yates, it's the first time that there hasn't been at least a third seed to reach the Final Four.
The sum of those four teams' seedings works out to 23. It's the second greatest sum in Final Four history, surpassed only by 2011, which featured an 11th seed in VCU and a ninth seed in Butler.
This year's tournament was thought to be relatively wide open from the outset. The first two rounds provided plenty of confirmation of that suspicion.
In the opening round, No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson knocked off No. 1 Purdue in the East Region, marking the biggest upset in tournament history and only the second time a first seed lost in the Round of 64. In the South region, No. 15 Princeton shocked Arizona in the opening round.
Next, the Round of 32 saw the elimination of No. 1 Kansas by No. 8 Arkansas in the West region, while the East region's second seed, Marquette, was bounced by No. 7 Michigan State.
All of it set the stage for this unwieldy and unlikely Final Four, which prompted a wide range of responses from sports fans on social media. Most fans and journalists seemed to view the potential decline of powerhouse programs in favor of insurgents as a positive development:
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