MINNEAPOLIS — Braxton Key was in Pittsburgh readying for Alabama’s second-round game against Villanova on the evening of last March 16, when he got an “upset alert” on his phone. Virginia was trailing the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

“I was like: There’s no way. They’re playing a 16 seed,” Key recalled Monday night. “I turned the game on, and, sure enough, they did.”

Virginia — for the seven of you who still don’t know — lost, 74-54, in the first round of last year’s N.C.A.A. tournament, becoming the first top seed to lose to a bottom seed in 33 years of the full-size men’s bracket.