CHICAGO — The lifespan of a top seed tends to follow the same basic pathway: everyone’s a heavy favorite until somebody goes down. When that first domino falls, suddenly, nobody’s safe. And in a single elimination tournament like this, each shaky moment from one top dog reinforces that someone else might be next. All of a sudden, everyone’s vulnerable, and Baylor, Gonzaga and Arizona all hit that wall this March.
The Kansas Jayhawks, the last No. 1 standing, went into Sunday’s halftime searching, trailing No. 10 seed Miami by six in the Elite Eight. You couldn’t help but wonder. “I’ve thought all along that [the Final Four] was a possibility,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. “But I’ve also thought all along that the margin for error wasn’t such where we could get [too] loose and have it be a probability.”
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
