There are few certainties in March Madness, but one storyline that plays out almost every year is a No. 12 seeded team upsetting a No. 5 in the Round of 64. In fact, last year was the first since 2007 that a 12th seed didn’t pull off the upset.

“There is tremendous parity in college basketball,” said Tom O’Connor, a five-year member of the NCAA selection committee. “A lot of basketball players on each team play each other in the summer and there’s some familiarity. It makes for some great games. Anything can happen in the NCAA tournament.”

Parity aside, there’s something weird happening in that particular 5-12 bracket. Dating to 1985, No. 5 seeds have been upset 44 times in 124 games but based on a line that best fits the data, they should be winning closer to 72.5 percent of these matchups, not at a rate lower than what we see from No. 6 seeds. In fact, the rate is so low we can estimate it has just a 1.1 percent chance of occurring.

“The five seed is where you lose natural geographic-area protection because only the top-four line receives that protection,” said Greg Shaheen, former senior vice president of the NCAA and organizer of the Division I men’s basketball championship. “Once you go to the five-(seed), you could be playing those games anywhere.”

When No. 5 Oklahoma State lost to No. 12 Oregon in 2013, the game was played in San Jose, California. No. 12 Harvard upset No. 5 Cincinnati in 2014, in Spokane, Washington. Perhaps going west was a factor, but the selection process also plays a role.

“That’s also where you start to see some of the second and perhaps third teams from the bigger conferences as well as the emergence of some of the so-called mid-majors that can make their way north in the field,” Shaheen said. “That could make (the No. 5 seed) vulnerable because they’re good but don’t have the same protections that a three- or a four-seed has. It’s the true middle of the field.”

No. 5 Temple, which finished first in the Atlantic-10, found this out the hard way in 2012, when it was upset by the fourth-best team in the Big East, No. 12 South Florida.

Despite the frequency at which a No. 12 seed has beaten a No. 5 seed, there’s no orchestration behind the scenes to encourage or discourage these type of matchups. In fact, the selection committee doesn’t even know what the bracket will look like until it’s completed.

“Wherever the five-seeds fall, wherever the 12-seeds fall, they fall,” said Shaheen. “The committee doesn’t build a 5-12 matchup, the process does. When the committee builds the bracket, they don’t know who is playing who. They are assigning the (Nos.) 1s, then the 2s, then the 3s, in sequence. They don’t get to who they are playing until much later in the process, and that is geographically and policy predisposed. They are more mindful of protecting the top-four lines. Once they get to the five through 12, they basically know anything could happen.”

There also aren’t any conspiracies to seed the mid-majors in these slots. In fact, according to O’Connor, the term mid-major doesn’t come up.

“You’re just looking at them on what they accomplished during the regular season,” O’Connor said. “You’re just looking at their complete resume during the season and how they should or should not be in the tournament. They’ve earned the right to be in the tournament because they are a good basketball team.”

No matter how they got there, the 5-12 bracket has featured so many upsets that some coaches don’t mind being the underdog.

“It’s a great draw,” said Brad Underwood, coach of Stephen F. Austin, which beat No. 5 Virginia Commonwealth as a No. 12 seed in 2014. “There become some beliefs from the 12 that they can win because it has happened so often. So I think there is some media that helps the 12 and maybe puts more pressure on a five.

“What traditionally happens is when you get a five, you get a younger power conference team or a third-place team in their conference. In our case we were a veteran team – tremendous character, tremendous toughness – and we’ve been through all the battles and it all just played into it.”

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