The first two days of March Madness came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. On Thursday, two of the first three games in the men’s tournament featured major upsets, with No. 14 seeds UAB and Georgia State defeating No. 3 seeds Iowa State and Baylor. Those games were enough to ruin more than 99 percent of people’s prefect brackets.

Then No. 6 Southern Methodist lost to No. 11 UCLA on a

This year, underdogs scored 105 upset points in the round of 64:

No. 14 UAB got 37 upset points for beating Iowa StateNo. 14 Georgia State got 37 points for beating BaylorNo. 11 UCLA got 12 points for beating SMUNo. 11 Dayton got 12 points for beating ProvidenceNo. 10 Ohio State got 7 points for beating VCU

This total is below average, especially by the standard of recent tournaments. Last year, there were 130 upset points in the round of 64. In 2012 and 2013, there were 195 and 192, respectively, the highest totals since the tournament expanded to 64 teams. However, this year’s tournament hasn’t been an outlier, by any means. The first round of the 2000 tournament featured just 26 upset points, while 2007 had just 30.

In theory, we might expect to see upsets increase as parity increases in the men’s game and the differences between the teams becomes smaller. And it might not be so surprising that there have been fewer of them in this year’s tournament, which