10. 1997 Arizona Wildcats
Arizona was a mere #4 seed in the Southeast region, which is why they're only tenth on this list even though they ran to the national championship. But they did have to beat three number one seeds to win the title, the first time that had ever happened. After knocking off Kansas in the Sweet 16, Arizona still had to get by scrappy underdog Providence, the #10 seed, who had taken down #2 Duke in the second round. It took overtime, but Arizona made the Final Four. They proceeded to beat North Carolina (who had future NBA stars Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison), the #1 seed from the East, and finally defending champions Kentucky, again in overtime.
9. 2008 Davidson Wildcats
Led by Stephen Curry, #10 seed Davidson fell just short of the Final Four, but still had a captivating run. Paired against Cinderella stalwart Gonzaga in the first round, Davidson took them down behind Curry's 40 points, then upset #2 seed Georgetown 74-70. In the Sweet 16, facing #3 Wisconsin and their fearsome defense, Curry scored 33 points as Davidson won easily, 73-56. Only #1 Kansas could stop the Wildcats, winning 59-57. Curry scored another 25 points but was successfully double-teamed in the final seconds as the Jayhawks forced him to pass rather than having a decent look at a possible game-winning three-pointer that would have made Davidson the only #10 seed ever to crack the Final Four.
8. 1987 Providence Friars
Providence seemed to have lucked out early in the 1987 tournament - after defeating #11 UAB in the first round, they needed overtime to knock out #14 Austin Peay, which had bounced #3 Illinois in the first round. Providence proved they were better than lucky, however, by toppling #2 Alabama 103-82 in the Sweet 16 and then knocking off top seed Georgetown 88-73 in the Southeast regional final. Georgetown had beaten the Friars 84-66 in the Big East Tournament semifinals just two weeks earlier. Providence's run ended at the hands of yet another Big East team in the national semis as Syracuse defeated them for the third team that year, 77-63.
7. 2000 Wisconsin Badgers
The Badgers weren't the only longshot in the 2000 Final Four. Top seed Michigan State was joined by #5 Florida - which needed a buzzer-beater to escape its opening round game against Butler - along with #8 seeds Wisconsin and North Carolina. But it was Wisconsin who really captured everyone's attention thanks to their smothering defense. After an opening-round win against Fresno State, the Badgers shocked #1 seed Arizona 66-59 in the second round, then stymied #4 LSU 61-48 before facing off against conference rival Purdue, the #6 seed, in the West regional final. Though they had gone just 8-8 in the Big Ten, Wisconsin was 2-1 against Purdue before the tournament, including a win in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals fifteen days earlier. They won again, 64-60, to earn a Final Four date with Michigan State, which had beaten them twice in the regular season and a third time in the Big Ten Tournament semis. Though Wisconsin's defense held the eventual champs to just 19 first-half points and 35% shooting for the game, the Spartans prevailed 53-41 as Wisconsin's own offensive issues came back to haunt them.
6. 1986 LSU Tigers
LSU needed double overtime just to upset #6 Purdue in their first round game, but they promptly ran to the Final Four by knocking out the top three seeds in the regional. The Tigers had been ranked 14th in preseason polls, but went just 9-9 in the SEC and entered the tournament as the #11 seed in the Southeast. They knocked off #3 Memphis State 83-81 in the second round (Memphis had been to the Final Four the previous year), then took out #2 Georgia Tech 70-64, and finally bumped off top seed Kentucky - which had beaten the Tigers three times already that season - by a slim 59-57 margin. Eventual champions Louisville ended LSU's giant-killing run with an 88-77 win in the national semis.
5. 1999 Gonzaga Bulldogs
In many ways LSU's run was more impressive than Gonzaga's. Heck, the Bulldogs were only a #10 seed, and they didn't even make the Final Four! But LSU plays in the SEC, after all. Gonzaga comes out of the unheralded (especially at the time) West Coast Conference, a conference only known previously for producing the 1990 Loyola Marymount team that might have cracked a slightly longer version of this list. But Gonzaga really kicked off the last decade-plus of mid-major darlings with their 1999 run that included a first round defeat of #7 Minnesota, a second round shock of #2 Stanford, and a 73-72 nail-biter over #6 Florida before finally falling to eventual champion #1 UConn in the regional final. Amazingly, despite their reputation as a Cinderella and despite their eventual rise as high as a #2 seed (in the 2004 tournament), Gonzaga has never again made it as far as the Elite Eight.
4. 2010 Butler Bulldogs
This would be higher except Butler was a #5 seed in the 2010 tournament - and if you can get a seed that high out of a mid-major conference, it usually means you were pretty good. Butler, in fact, was 28-4 entering the tournament and had gone undefeated in the Horizon League, with key out-of-conference wins over a ranked Ohio State team and Xavier. Even the most optimistic fans could not have expected what happened, though. After a commanding win over #12 UTEP in the first round, Butler slipped past #13 Murray State by just two points. In the Sweet 16, they jumped to a ten-point halftime lead on #1 seed Syracuse before giving it all back and then some in the second half. The Orange went up 54-50 with 5:28 to play on a Kris Joseph dunk... and then, right at the point when Cinderella has blown its lead and folds, Butler went on an 11-0 run over the next 4:54 to seal an eventual 63-59 win. Butler took a seven-point halftime lead on #2 Kansas State in the regional final en route to a 63-56 win, and then held off Michigan State, another #5 seed, 52-50 in the national semis to score a title game meeting with big bad #1 seed Duke. Playing in its home city of Indianapolis, the Bulldogs fought hard but eventually lost 61-59 when Gordon Hayward's half-court heave at the buzzer glanced off the backboard and rim, depriving us all of what would have been probably the greatest moment in NCAA Tournament history.
3. 2006 George Mason Patriots
If Gonzaga started the mid-major party of the last decade-plus, it was George Mason who finally accepted the invitation to crash into the Final Four. The Patriots tied for first during the regular season in the Colonial Athletic Association, but crashed out in the conference tournament semifinals and lost one of their best players to suspension (for punching an opponent in the junk) in the process. Entering the tournament as the East's #11 seed, Mason was an afterthought - at least until they knocked out #6 Michigan State and #3 North Carolina, both Final Four teams from the previous year, in the first two rounds. After taking out #7 Wichita State in an all-mid-major Sweet 16 affair, the Patriots took on top seed Connecticut, a talented team with a tendency to sleepwalk through long periods of big games, which had nearly cost them in an overtime win over #5 Washington in the Sweet 16. The Huskies led by nine at halftime after a 15-5 run over the final three minutes of the first half, but Mason crawled back to take the lead with 11:12 to go and neither team led by more than four afterwards. The Patriots were up 74-70 with 23 seconds to go, but UConn once again managed to force overtime on a Denham Brown layup at the buzzer. Unfazed, Mason went up 85-80 with 41 seconds left in overtime and hung on for the 86-84 win when Brown missed a three at the buzzer, completing a miracle run that saw defeats of three of the previous six national champions. The eventual champion Florida Gators ended Mason's Cinderella dream in the national semis; it would take Butler four years later to make the next step for mid-majors.
2. 2011 VCU Rams
The question is, can VCU (or, for that matter, this year's Butler team) win it all and take that final step? If this were last year, VCU's five wins would already have them in the title game; of course, if this were last year, VCU wouldn't even have made the field. Regardless of what they've achieved, the Rams were a curious at-large selection at best - they finished fourth in the CAA, behind a Hofstra team that ended up in the CBI Tournament, and although they took third place in the NIT Season Tip-Off with a win over UCLA, there wasn't much on their resume to suggest they belonged in the field over, say, a Colorado team that had beaten Kansas State three times. But there VCU was in the opening round game against USC for the right to be the Southwest Region's #11 seed. The Rams won that one, then faced #6 Georgetown... and shot the Hoyas out of the building, burying 12 three-pointers and never trailing after the 7:47 mark of the first half. They then did much the same to #3 Purdue, never trailing after the 5:54 mark of the first half. They had more trouble with #10 Florida State, going to overtime after failing to score in the final 3:14 of regulation, and needed a layup with six seconds left to pull out the 72-71 win. But just when you thought their magic had run out, they jumped out to a first-half lead of as much as 18 points on top seed Kansas and never trailed after the 14:02 mark of the first half en route to a stunning 71-61 win. My future brother-in-law, a Duke fan, commented that Butler would be going back to the title game after hearing that VCU had advanced. Um, haven't we learned better than to write VCU off by now?
1. 1985 Villanova Wildcats
They're not a mid-major, and so they could be passed by VCU should the Rams somehow win it all. But Villanova's run from the #8 seed to the 1985 national championship is surely the most incredible in the 64-team era. The Wildcats squeaked by #9 Dayton by just two points in the first round, then toppled #1 Michigan by four and #5 Maryland by three before shocking #2 North Carolina 56-44 to advance to the Final Four. Playing the only non-Big East Final Four team in Memphis, Villanova won 52-45 to set up a meeting with #1 Georgetown, the defending national champions and a team that had beaten Villanova twice during the regular season. This time, the Wildcats nearly threw a perfect game - they shot 22-of-28 from the floor and were 22-of-27 from the free throw line - and they needed every last one of those shots in a 66-64 win that saw Georgetown make 29-of-53 field goals but get to the line a mere eight times, making just six. Whether Villanova could have made a run like this with a shot clock (this was the last tournament without one) might be questionable, since it was their ability to wait for the perfect shot that enabled them to beat the Hoyas, but hey, they didn't have to. Until another team seeded this low wins it all, Villanova will own the most incredible run in the history of the 64 (or more)-team tournament.
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