The Year in Brutality: Recapping the best upsets in college basketball

Losing a buy game. The epitome of brutality.

It’s one of the best parts of the college basketball season. A bigger program (usually from high-major conferences) pays a certain amount of money to a mid-major program to come play a “buy game” before subsequently getting pants’d by said mid-major team.

It’s almost a daily occurrence in the early months of the season, and it leads to one of these tweets from Jon Rothstein:

Due to the frequency of Brutality (yes, we’re treating it as a proper noun), it’s become an annual tradition to track Brutalities across the country in the Brutality Leaderboard.

Now that conference play is in full effect, it’s time to look back and reflect on the year in Brutality.

For reference, here is the full leaderboard. There were 51 Brutalities in total for the 2019-20 seaon.

Inside the numbers

Here are some numbers based on the entire year in Brutality:

• The biggest margin of victory was 23 points, when Lafayette beat Saint Joseph’s 94-71 on December 3.
• There were five games that were decided by just one point: Penn over Alabama (81-80), Southern Utah over Nebraska (79-78), Colgate over Cincinnati (67-66), North Dakota over Nebraska (75-74), Hartford over Northwestern (67-66)
• The highest win expectancy based on KenPom’s FanMatch was Liberty’s win over East Carolina. The Flames were ranked 160 spots higher than ECU on KenPom and were given a 68 percent chance of winning.
• The lowest win expectancy came in what will be the most memorable upset of the year and one of the biggest in recent memory. Stephen F. Austin was given a 0.2 percent chance of beating No. 1 Duke before the Lumberjacks stunned them at the buzzer in OT.
• The average KenPom win expectancy was 22.3 percent.
• The average KenPom rank of the team giving the Brutality was 207.8. The average rank of the team suffering Brutality was 122.2.
• Brutality givers won by an average margin of 7.22 points. Fourteen teams won by double-digits (27.4 percent of Brutalities).

The one percent

In society, the term “1 percent” often refers to the richest members of society. In Brutality, it brings a slightly different connotation. There were three games in which KenPom gave the winning team a one percent chance of winning or less.

As mentioned above, Stephen F. Austin’s historic upset of Duke was the least likely Brutality of the season at 0.2 percent. In case you forgot how that one ended—and shame on you if that’s the case—here’s a reminder.

That wasn’t the only upset of a No. 1 team that was considered to be nearly improbable. Evansville’s three-point win over Kentucky in the second week of the season was given only a one percent chance of likelihood on KenPom.

The third and final Brutality with a one percent likelihood was Florida A&M’s upset of Iowa State just before the calendar flipped to the new decade. The Rattlers were ranked 323rd in KenPom at the time, making the upset of then No. 43 Iowa State the biggest difference (280 spots) in KenPom ranks in any Brutality this season.

The more the merrier

Every year, there are just some teams that have a penchant for knocking off the big boys. Here’s every team that dished out multiple Brutalities.

• UC Riverside (3): Nebraska, Fresno State, San Jose State
• Penn (2): Providence, Alabama
• Morgan State (2): Loyola Marymount, George Washington
• Liberty (2): Vanderbilt, East Carolina
• Coppin State (2): Loyola Chicago, East Carolina
• Arkansas State (2): Tulsa, Colorado State

Repeat offenders weren’t limited to those giving out Brutalities. There were a handful of teams that paid money to lose multiple times.

• East Carolina (2): Coppin State, Liberty
• Fordham (3): Bryant, James Madison, Tennessee State
• George Washington (2): American, Morgan State
• Nebraska (3): North Dakota, Southern Utah, UC Riverside
• Northwestern (3): Hartford, Merrimack, Radford
• Saint Joseph’s (2): Lafayette, St. Francis PA
• South Carolina (2): Stetson, Boston University
• UCLA (2): Cal State Fullerton, Hofstra

The following conferences did not tally a single Brutality given: MAAC, Mountain West, WCC, and WAC.

The MEAC (!) led all conferences in Brutalities given with five. Not bad for the lowest ranked conference in KenPom.

The Atlantic 10 and SEC tied for the most Brutalities suffered with eight. Saint Joseph’s, Fordham, and George Washington are the three lowest ranked teams in the A-10 and combined for seven of the eight Brutalities.

So there you have it folks. Another year of buy games and Brutalities in the books. Thanks for following along all season and for making this so much fun to track.