College Basketball Upset Was Reportedly Biggest In 30 Years

Iowa's college basketball coach

Getty Image / Keith Gillett


The possibility of any team winning on any given day attracts millions of sports fans to drop everything to watch March Madness year after year.

What many of those fans haven’t seemed to realize yet is that the opening months of the season may just be even crazier than the month of March.

During the NCAA Tournament, most of the matchups come between teams that have earned a place based on regular success throughout the year.

Early in the season, just about anybody can take part in a buy game.

Many of these buy games are viewed as easy wins for bigger programs to pad their records during the non-conference schedule and to fill out their schedules without having to take on the toughest opponents in the country every single game.

Most years, there are plenty of shocking upsets that occur in these games. This season has been no different.

Early in the season, college basketball fans watched Louisville lose to any team they could convince to play them. Villanova lost by 12 at home against Portland. Oregon lost at home to Utah Valley last night. Utah shockingly lost their first game of the season at home against Weber State last night.

None of those come close to as shocking as the upset that happened today.

The Iowa Hawkeyes are only a couple of weeks removed from being ranked in the Top 25 in the country. They have already picked up a few Power 5 wins and have been tested by opponents like Duke, TCU, and Wisconsin.

With their resume, they were expected to beat Eastern Illinois pretty easily. Oddsmakers had them as a 32-point favorite heading into the game.

They ended up losing by 9 points in what may statistically be the biggest upside in 30 years.

There are big upsets every year around this time, but an upset like this is truly shocking. Iowa is a Power 5 team that is expected to earn a berth in the NCAA Tournament. Eastern Illinois had 3 wins before today and 2 of them came agaisnt a Division 3 opponent and one school who didn’t have a college basketball program until last year.

It’s going to take a lot for Iowa’s resume to recover from this one.