TAMPA, Fla. — As college basketball fans prepare for the chalkiest semifinals in NCAA basketball history, a question hangs over the men’s Final Four in San Antonio, Texas, and the women’s Final Four at Amalie Arena.
Have the transfer portal and name, image and likeness compensation killed Cinderella?
Our answer: Probably not. Chalk isn’t permanent marker.
The concern is justified after both tournaments featured few shocking losses. The lack of parity was most pronounced on the men’s side, where all four semifinalists (Auburn, Duke, Florida and Houston) are No. 1 seeds for the first time since 2008 and the second time ever.
“People talk about the same schools in the (men’s) Final Four, seems like every year,” UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma said Thursday.
His game’s bracket isn’t much better. Three women’s semifinalists (South Carolina, Texas and UCLA) are top seeds. The lone exception is nobody’s underdog — Auriemma’s 11-time national champions, No. 2 seed UConn.
If mid-majors are becoming feeder programs for the richest heavyweights, the argument goes, deep tournament runs become harder for the next George Mason, Butler or VCU in the men’s game, and they’re even more unlikely for women.
For the first time since 2008, the Men’s NCAA Tournament Final Four features all No. 1 seeds.#MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/6yRbBw7ddR
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) March 30, 2025
History might disagree. Auriemma lived through this a decade ago. As his Huskies prepared for a Final Four of all top seeds in this same city, he highlighted the blue-blood men’s field of Duke, Kentucky, Michigan State and Wisconsin.
“Those guys hardly ever get to the Final Four,” Auriemma said sarcastically.
Parity comes and goes. If Cinderellas didn’t disappear a decade ago, they might not be endangered now.
Though this season’s top-heavy results are extreme, they’re not outlandish. San Antonio’s four previous men’s Final Fours had one true Cinderella, No. 11 seed Loyola in 2018. No other team was seeded worse than third. The only mid-major programs were Utah from the WAC in 1998 and Conference USA’s Memphis a decade later.
The women’s Final Four history is similar. In four events in Tampa (including this year), no program was seeded worse than second. Since 2002, nine semifinals have featured all No. 1 seeds or three No. 1 seeds and a No. 2.
Some Sundays, the selection committees simply get the seeding right. Some seasons, the favorites keep winning. And three-time All-American Chiney Ogwumike is fine with that.
“A lot of times, people watch March Madness for those Cinderellas and all those types of things,” said Ogwumike, an ESPN analyst who played in three women’s Final Fours at Stanford between 2010-2014. “But at its core, you want to reward the best teams that have been there all year long.”
Especially if those teams are not the usual suspects. Though South Carolina and UConn are perennial contenders in the women’s Final Four, Texas hasn’t been to this stage since 2003. UCLA has never been this far in the tournament’s current format. Last year, No. 3 seed North Carolina State made the women’s semifinals for the first time this century.
After 22 years, @TexasWBB is going back to the #WFinalFour ‼️#MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/egjSE0kQdg
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessWBB) April 1, 2025
“It’s a slow build,” said ESPN analyst Andraya Carter, a former Tennessee guard. “We’re not all of a sudden going to have a 4 and a 7 (seed) in the Final Four. But we’re still seeing different 1 (seeds).”
It’s the same with the men’s field. Auburn had never made the Final Four until Bruce Pearl led the Tigers there in 2019. Houston had a drought of almost four decades before Kelvin Sampson rejuvenated the Cougars.
Upsets, like programs, ebb and flow. Consider what happened the year after Auriemma coached in Tampa’s all top-seeded women’s semifinals. The last two rounds in 2016 featured UConn and a trio of Final Four rookies (Oregon State, Syracuse and Washington) that had never even made a Sweet 16 in 15 years.
The men followed up their historically loaded 2008 semifinals with a 2009 tournament that had three teams seeded 10th or worse earn first-round upsets in one region alone.
It is, however, worth acknowledging the possibility that the national landscape has evolved. UConn can poach a starting guard (Kaitlyn Chen) from Princeton — a perfect addition. Auburn can add an All-American (Johni Broome) as a transfer from Morehead State. The portal works both ways but seems to be helping major programs more at the expense of mid-majors. It’s also possible that the growing financial gap between the biggest brands and everyone else will make the problem worse as schools prepare to share revenue with players later this year.
Even in that scenario, there’s a rosier way to look at heavyweight Final Fours. It’s the one Roy Williams stressed 17 years ago in San Antonio.
His Tar Heels were in the top-seeded quartet with Kansas, Memphis and UCLA. Instead of wondering about the lack of upsets, Williams leaned into the successes, calling it “the greatest gathering of any four teams at a Final Four.”
The talent was remarkable: national player of the year Tyler Hansbrough, No. 1 pick Derrick Rose, NBA MVP Russell Westbrook, five-time NBA All-Star Kevin Love and three Hall of Fame coaches (Williams, Bill Self and John Calipari). In the title game, Kansas’ Mario Chalmers hit a miracle shot to force overtime against Memphis and, eventually, end the Jayhawks’ 20-year championship drought. It was one of the most memorable college basketball moments of the past quarter-century.
This year’s tournaments also have epic potential. The four men’s teams rank among the top seven in KenPom’s net efficiency ratings since 2002; by that metric, all are better than the 2008 Jayhawks.
The women’s bracket still features one of its biggest names (UConn’s Paige Bueckers), a tough Texas team, the most star-studded roster Cori Close has assembled at UCLA and a South Carolina program seeking its third national title in four years. Its Final Four teams have 11 total losses.
“Whoever gets through this semifinal and final will have done it against the best of the best,” Longhorns coach Vic Schaefer said. “It is a gauntlet, for sure. So we’ll kind of see how it all shakes out this weekend.”
(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; photos of Bruce Pearl, Geno Auriemma, Cori Close and Jon Scheyer: Stew Milne, Jeffrey Brown, Ben Solomon, Tyler McFarland / Getty Images)
