Mostly reasonable, but you have to admit that Underwood has severely underperformed in his only two tournament appearances here. That’s concerning. Especially considering the golden goose probably isn’t coming back for his senior year.
Ok I will kind of buy that last year was a “severe underperformance” by seed.
But as we are seeing it’s becoming quite common to see 1 and 2 seeds knocked out early. We played a top ten KenPom and #16 ranked team in the second round for crying out loud. When was the last time that happened to a 1 seed in second round?
#1 Wichita State vs #8 Kentucky in 2014 is the closest I can find and Kentucky was 13th KenPom and 22nd in polls. Regardless of seed it’s hard to call losing to a top 20 team severely underperforming. There is simply more parity than there’s ever been.
And this year we lost to a team that was favored to beat us by 4.5 points. 4-5 games are usually a tossup. Historically, 4 seeds win their second round game 59% of the time while 5 seeds win 53% of the time. There’s literally no way you can spin losing what’s typically a toss up game as “severe underperformance.”