Illustration by Sam Manchester/The New York Times
Of all the numbers in college basketball, No. 1 may be the most ubiquitous. You can find it on jerseys and foam hands and after victories when index fingers are shot skyward. You can hear it — "We're No. 1" — chanted on most nights.
This year, though, No. 1 is dangerous. No. 1 is slippery. No. 1 has rarely been more attainable or harder to hold. In a season defined by wild swings and regular upsets, by mind-boggling balance and far-reaching parity and the game of musical chairs that unfolded in the rankings, there is tumult at the top. Below it, too.
One was not the loneliest number. Not this season. Instead, it seemed like the most cursed.
Indiana opened the season ranked first in the Associated Press top 25. Then Duke was No. 1. Then Louisville. Then Duke. Then Michigan. Then Indiana. Then Gonzaga. That's right, Gonzaga, the small Jesuit university from the West Coast Conference, perhaps the most unlikely No. 1 in the recent history of college basketball — except, perhaps, in this season, when it made perfect sense. That the madness came early this year, well before March, should make for an excellent N.C.A.A. tournament, an event already among the most unpredictable in sports.
It's not just the No. 1 ranking that switched teams like a dollar bill changing hands, moving from business to wallet to business, state to state. The top of the rankings proved predictable only in its unpredictability, like a game of Chutes and Ladders for the college hoops set.
Of the teams that started the season in the A.P.'s top five — Indiana, Louisville, Kentucky, Ohio State and Michigan, in that order — only Indiana (3) and Louisville (4) finished the regular season there.
Fourteen teams made at least one appearance in the top five but none for each week of the season. Georgetown, which fell out of the poll at one point, ascended to fifth. Kentucky, the defending national champion, dropped out entirely and did not hear its name called when the N.C.A.A. tournament field of 68 was announced Sunday night.
This trend reverberated across the country, in places like Spokane, Wash. (home of Gonzaga); Albuquerque (home of New Mexico); Memphis (home of the Tigers); St. Louis (home of the Billikens); and elsewhere, too.
After St. Louis seized the Atlantic 10 regular-season title, the Billikens turned their attention to the postseason. They could talk all they wanted about one game at a time, but even then, they could not ignore the larger subtext. Namely, that a university from a nonpower conference that is experienced (like the Billikens), deep (like the Billikens) and tested (like the Billikens) could go all Butler-style and make a deep run in the N.C.A.A. tournament.
Several teams could in a tournament that lacks an obvious favorite. "We talk about it all the time," St. Louis forward Cody Ellis said. "At the end of the year, when it's all said and done, people are going to be scratching their heads, saying, 'Really, they're the national champion?' That's what it feels like."
The way this season unfolded is a natural extension of the way college basketball is trending. At programs like Gonzaga and Butler, with their private planes and million-dollar salaries for head coaches, midmajor is no longer an accurate description. Butler, after all, made consecutive appearances in the N.C.A.A. championship game in 2010 and 2011.
Meanwhile, at programs like Kentucky and Duke, the best players often jump early to the N.B.A. Where traditional powers like U.C.L.A. once stockpiled enough stars to fill two teams worthy of the postseason, the talent is now spread, while not evenly, more evenly and has been for a while now.
Combine those trends — more resources for smaller universities, limited longevity for elite players at larger ones — and parity, what makes the N.C.A.A. tournament electric in the first place, has become even more prevalent. One could argue that no team held on to the top slot this season because no team truly deserved it, because there is not one best team in the land. Or even five.
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