BOTH the #1 seeds in the men's and women's baseball/softball NCAA tournaments lost in the first round - the regionals?
Question was posed by the hosts on the SeriusXM college sports satellite radio channel. They didn't think so but hadn't done the research to be sure.
Results this year (imo) just illustrate that the post season tournaments do not identify the best overall team or the best this entire season, start to finish, but rather the team that is playing the best at the end of the season (during the tournament). A pitcher like UCLA's Garcia in '19 or Canady now tilts the odds greatly in her team's favor especially over a limited time span.
But even so, this season's results are really unusual. The baseball reporters - who generally favored Arkansas in the men's tournament this season (usual great defense plus actual offense this year) - kept saying there was really no utter standout team and that any of eight or so could win this year. The women's tournament seemed more predictable but still, the top seeds in each tournament failed to advance from the very first round.
Yes, could be that the seeding committees were just wrong but the top seeded teams seemed to be at least in the top four or so. Just wondering if this has ever happened before