It seemed a perfect and even relatively safe setup for Arizona. The Wildcats held a No. 2 seed in last year’s NCAA Tournament and headed to Los Angeles within their long-running Pac-12 regional footprint with a chance to reach the Final Four.

Instead, a sixth-seeded Clemson team that had traveled across the country and hadn’t reached a regional final in more than four decades sent the Wildcats home.

“It’s all about matchups at the end of the day,” said Tigers forward Ian Schieffelin, who had 14 points in that upset and is part of Clemson’s fifth-seeded team this year. “Whether you’re a 6 or an 11, it really doesn’t matter.”

That’s always been one of the biggest selling points of March Madness, that anything-can-and-will-happen vibe on everything from buzzer-beaters and memorable upsets to the best teams abruptly stalling at a shocking time. But the road to college basketball’s biggest stage for the top seeds has been even trickier in the four tournaments since the COVID-19 pandemic, with lower-seeded opponents making deeper runs to put more potential chaos into the bracket.

It just so happens that volatility has come amid the growing use of the transfer portal, which has granted freer player movement to distribute talent more widely in the college version of free agency. That’s been particularly true with many players carrying a fifth year of eligibility after competing during the pandemic, though this year largely marks the final crop of those players coming through the tournament.

Tougher ask

“I think winning a championship is harder, the path is harder,” said ACC Network analyst Luke Hancock, who was the Final Four’s most outstanding player during Louisville’s run to a later-vacated national title in 2013. “You don’t have teams that have just five, six, seven upperclassmen who have played together three, four and five years, where they play a certain way and know each other and there’s continuity.

“It’s more about how you build your team, roster management, how you can navigate the portal. ... I think there will be more variance.”

There’s already been an uptick in that starting with the bizarre “bubble” tournament of 2021, both when compared to the four years immediately before the pandemic as well as going back to the expansion of the tournament to 64 teams in 1985. A look at the combined seeds of teams reaching specific points in the tournament offers a glimpse as to just how much, with higher averages indicating the presence of more teams with bigger numbers alongside their names in the bracket.

And trouble has come throughout the bracket for the teams carrying those No. 1, 2 or 3 seeds, most notably Fairleigh Dickinson joining UMBC as the only 16-seeds to take down a No. 1 by beating Purdue in the 2023 first round.

Final Four

The average combined seeds of teams in the Final Four was 17.0 from 2021-24, up from 13.5 from 2016-19 and 11.3 for the 35 tournaments from 1985-2019.

It was only two years ago when 4-seed UConn was the top team in an unusual Final Four in Houston, marking the first time there was no 1 , 2 or 3 =seed in the national semifinals dating to ‘85.

Additionally, there has been at least one team seeded eighth or lower in four consecutive Final Fours for the first time dating to the 1985 expansion, with 11th-seeded N.C. State as last year’s improbable example.

Elite Eight

The average combined seeds for teams in the regional finals has been 38.3 from 2021-24, up from 27.8 from 2016-19 and 25.6 dating to 1985. The biggest outlier came in 2022, when St. Peter’s stunned Kentucky in Round 1 on the way to becoming the only 15-seed ever to reach a regional final.

The Peacocks’ opponent? Another surprise team in eighth-seeded North Carolina, which went all the way to the national title game.

Meanwhile, only six No. 1 seeds have reached the Elite Eight from 2021-24. That’s half the total of the same span immediately before the pandemic.

Sweet 16

Just getting to the tournament’s second week has been tricky, too.

The average combined seeds since the pandemic is 77.5. That’s up from 66.3 immediately before the canceled 2020 tournament and 70.6 from 1985-2019.

The aforementioned 2023 tournament had only two No. 1 seeds — Alabama and Houston — survive the opening weekend. And that had happened only three times previously going back to 1985 (2000, 2004, 2018).