Upsets – Why Do They Happen
By: Blake Schipper
There are no guarantees in sports. Being the top seed does not promise victory; being ranked higher than your opponent doesn’t guarantee winning. Yet so many top seeds suffer upsets and miss out on goals they want to achieve. But why do they happen?
Why do upsets happen? Well, they happen because the higher seed comes into the game very relaxed and chill and thinks they can walk through the lower-seeded team. And that is what we all witnessed on February 14.
After an exhilarating upset against first-ranked Unity Christian, Hamilton found they could be the highest of high on Friday but the lowest of low on Tuesday in the following game against Spring Lake.
On February 14, 2025, the Hamilton Hawkeyes defeated the number-one-ranked Unity Christian 65 to 63 in overtime in a thriller of a game. However, on February 18, Hamilton lost to Spring Lake 50 to 38, so why did they lose coming into the game after beating the number-one seed?
Looking a little further into this, I asked Will Hickok what his mindset was coming into the game. He responded with,
“It was really good. I don’t think we intended to lose, obviously, we wanted to win. They beat us the first time, so we wanted to at least tie the score.”
This means that both teams would have one win and one loss to each other.
Also, I asked Londin Cooper the same question, and he responded with.
“Weary because we knew it was going to be a trap game. We should’ve won, playing a team that we know is beatable, but their whole gameplan is to just make you mad. It’s tough.”
They were just too overconfident coming into the game. The first half was a low-scoring game, and they just did not come out as intensely as they did at any other game. At the end of the first quarter, Spring Lake was up 9 to 7, which is very low scoring. The score at halftime was 17 to 11 Spring Lake, which was still not a very high scoring game.
Teams could be super high in one game and super low in the other game. And sometimes you can be good but then get in the mindset that it’s a cakewalk for the next game and have a rude awakening.