Thursday is the start of the men’s Sweet 16

NCAA tournament brackets: How many underdogs are playing basketball at? How many “blue blood” teams are in the Sweet 16?

These brackets suggest good things for college basketball. parity exists in an age of conference consolidations even if there are lots of upsets. And for fans who love underdogs, their affections are being rewarded at this year’s tourney.

ESPN says that out of 20,056,273 bracket entries on its site, none are perfect. Yahoo says it only took 24 games to ruin all its users’ bracket entries. CBS Sports says predictions on its site were quickly obliterated for both the men’s and the women’s tournament — which has also seen early upsets, such as Ole Miss shocking Stanford.

Fairleigh Dickinson University beat a 1 seed in the first round. And yes, that makes them just the second No. 16 to ever win a single game in the Big Dance. They made it despite being the lowest seed in the field and having to win the first game to get to 64.

Three games follow the NCAA’s formula: Number 2 UCLA and Number 3 Arizona, along with Number 2 Texas and Number 3 Musketeers.

This is the second time in three years that four of the top “blue blood” programs — North Carolina, Kansas, Duke and Kentucky — are not in the Sweet 16. From 1980 to 2019, at least one of those teams got this far in every year’s tournament.

8 Arkansas at 7:15 p.m. A top 10 game will be played at 9 p.m. Two of the best teams in the world square off at 9:45 p.m.

Two teams are getting the Cinderella label, especially the lowest seed still playing: No. 15 Princeton. The Tigers are making the case that their offense and rebounding is good enough to hang with the country’s best teams.

It is the first time in 50 years that it has made it to the Sweet 16. Its coach, Mitch Henderson, played point guard during some of the program’s most storied moments in the 1990s, including the stunning upset of defending champion UCLA in the 1996 NCAA tournament’s first round.

The number of brackets that predicted a victory for the school in 2023 is lower than the number of college applications accepted, according to the NCAA.

The Sweet 16 and the Transfer Portal: What Has Happened in the Last Four Rounds of NCAA Tournaments? The Case for the Women’s Sweet 16

If all the favorites advance to the second round, the sums add up to 9: No. 4 plays No. 5, and so on. Things have gone off-script when you see higher sums.

For the Sweet 16, the ideal sums for the favorites would be 5. But with two No. 1 seeds eliminated, the math is all over the place. There will be a sum of 21 between the two teams.

Some of the thrills are courtesy of the transfer portal, which lets athletes swap schools without having to sit out a waiting period. The relatively new policy has been blamed for destabilizing college sports, but it’s also creating parity.

Here’s a quick look at tip-off times for the Sweet 16 and where the tournament stands, with the men resuming play Thursday. We’ll be previewing the women’s Sweet 16 before it starts.

By this stage of the tournament, an air of destiny often begins to settle on one or two teams that have the right mix of talent and momentum to reach the final. This year is difficult to pin down.

Neither of the two remaining No. 1 seeds, Alabama and Houston, have looked like the hands-down best team. Defending champion Kansas and the No. 1 seed, Boilermakers, are out. Two No. 2 seeds are the same.

Then there’s Florida Atlantic. The No. 9 seed has rejected the Cinderella label, saying its 33-3 record came from hard work and focus, not a fairy godmother.

There are still some questions about how to adjust and how to keep top players. Tom Izzo, Michigan State’s head coach, is a critic of the transfer portal.

“The portal is not all bad. I mean. every place isn’t for everybody,” Izzo said recently. Every kid who has a bad day thinks about leaving, that’s bad. If you’re half in, you’re nowhere.