The most talented teams were often the youngest.
Teams with dominant big men had limitations at guard positions that created matchup issues.
Many of the mid-major teams were older than they've ever been.

It's also always a hindsight-is-20-20 kinda deal whenever anyone examines the results of the tournament. Like, *maybe* the stuff I mentioned above influenced the outcomes... or maybe it's just garden variety good and bad luck. Houston has its two best players get injured, and Brandon Miller for Alabama fucks up his groin. How many times does that happen in the tournament to *both* title favorites?

Then, for the deep runs, Miami only had an 8% chance to win in the first round with 5 minutes left, then they go to the Final Four. Florida Atlantic was losing in the first round with under a minute left, then they go to the Final Four. San Diego State was tied with Charleston under 3 minutes left in the first round, now they're in the title game. It's very easy to imagine a world in which a couple balls bounce differently, a couple injuries don't happen, and the outcomes are far more aligned with what people expected.

And for what it's worth, the old system, the RPI? It would've been soooo much worse. UConn was something like 26th pre-tournament in RPI, they could've ended up a 6 or 7 seed. Zags would've been a 1 seed, Duke would've been a 2 seed (which I wouldn't have minded but wasn't deserved, lol), etc. You can find online what the RPI rankings were before the tournament started, but they are *always* a mess.

I'm all for figuring out how to continue to tinker with the quad system most effectively, but it's easily a better system than the RPI, which is what they used to use. RPI is dreadful, lol.