A tip of the cap to No. 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson for upsetting No. 1 seed Purdue in the first round and No. 15 seed Princeton for reaching the Sweet 16 by beating No. 2 seed Arizona and No. 7 seed Missouri.
However, there is little question the biggest Cinderella story of the 2023 NCAA tournament was the No. 9 seed Florida Atlantic Owls.
Their tournament run almost never made it off the ground as they squeezed out a 66-65 victory over No. 8 seed Memphis in the first round, but that was followed by victories over Fairleigh Dickinson, No. 4 seed Tennessee and No. 3 seed Kansas State to claim the East Region title.
In the process, they became the fifth team in NCAA tournament history to reach the Final Four in the same year they recorded their first-ever tournament win.
With a nine-man rotation that lacked a true go-to scorer, they seemingly had a different player step up every game, with Johnell Davis' 29-point, 12-rebound, five-assist, five-steal box score stuffer against Fairleigh Dickinson and Vladislav Goldin's 14-point, 13-rebound effort against Kansas State among the more memorable performances.
They led by as many as 14 points in the second half against San Diego State in the Final Four, looking every bit the part of a team that belonged on that big stage.
That lead eventually evaporated, and they were sent home with a buzzer-beater from Lamont Butler, but it was an impressive run nonetheless and a Cinderella story that will be remembered for years to come.
