The biggest upsets of 2019

South Carolina has been a middle-of-the-road program in the SEC for a long time, and under Will Muschamp it has remained so. This year is no different; the team is 4-6 and 3-4 in conference. One of those conference wins was a stunner, however. The Gamecocks sauntered into Sanford Stadium and shocked the home fans by pulling out a 20-17 victory over Georgia in double overtime. South Carolina’s defense picked off Jake Fromm three times, and Fromm also lost a fumble. Muschamp’s charges came into the game as 24.5-point underdogs against the previously unbeaten, third-ranked Bulldogs.

Pitt football is known for heartbreaking, logic-defying losses to such a degree that when teams melt down in spectacular fashion, they are said to be “Pitting.” The Panthers, a 10-point underdog, raced out to a 21-0 lead on 15^th ranked UCF before the Knights scored the game’s next 31 points. Pitt responded with a touchdown, and after a UCF field goal, drove down the field and ran its variation of “Philly Special” to win the game on fourth down, as quarterback Kenny Pickett caught a 3-yard touchdown from Aaron Mathews for the decisive score. The win snapped UCF’s 27-game regular-season winning streak.

Sharp bettors were all over this game well before tip-off, and in the point spread sense, it wasn’t a big upset, or perhaps an upset at all. Still, it was a 12 seed beating a five seed, and even though that matchup produces at least one upset almost every year, it still catches the attention when it happens. Racers guard Ja Morant was the story, posting a triple-double (17 points, 16 assists, 11 rebounds) while torturing the Golden Eagles almost every trip down the floor. A seven-point halftime lead ballooned in the second half, and Murray State cruised to an 83-64 victory.

The Warriors didn’t have Kevin Durant. The Raptors did have Kawhi Leonard. Even so, most basketball fans assumed that the Golden State Warriors would find a way to get it done against Toronto. They did not. The Raptors took the fight to the Warriors throughout the series, and Klay Thompson’s torn ACL in Game 6 ended Golden State’s hopes of forcing a decisive Game 7. It wasn’t a totally satisfying end to the Warriors’ dynasty, as the Raptors didn’t knock off a full-strength version of the league’s dominant franchise, but Golden State was still formidable enough for the outcome to be a surprise.

North Carolina is a college basketball blue blood. Auburn is, well, Auburn. That didn’t matter when the teams met in the Sweet 16. The Tigers, a five seed, blitzed the top-seeded Tar Heels, 97-80, behind 20 points from Chuma Okeke, who led six Auburn players in double figures. Auburn did its damage from deep, shooting 17-of-37 from three-point range and running away with the game thanks to a 56-point second half. North Carolina tried to make a push, but Auburn couldn’t miss, and the game never got particularly close in the late stages.

Auburn wasn’t done after shredding North Carolina. Despite losing Chuma Okeke to a torn ACL in the final minutes against the Tar Heels, the Tigers stopped second-seeded Kentucky, 77-71, to reach the first Final Four in school history. Jared Harper scored 26 points and Bryce Brown added 24, and Auburn rallied late to force overtime and then completely controlled the extra session. The win was made all the more impressive given that Kentucky had beaten Auburn twice during the regular season, the second time by 27 points.

The U.S. women’s basketball team, comprised of WNBA stars Diana Taurasi, Sylvia Fowles, Sue Bird and Seimone Augustus, among others, took on top-ranked Oregon as part of a tour of the West Coast designed to sharpen it up in advance of the 2020 Olympics. Seems it needed more sharpening, because Oregon stunned the U.S. women, 93-86, behind 30 points from Sabrina Ionescu, the likely top pick in next year’s WNBA Draft, and 25 from Satou Sabally. The game marked just the second time that a college team — the first was Tennessee in 1999 — beat the women’s national team.

When Tampa Bay traveled to Los Angeles to face the defending NFC champion Rams and their star-studded roster in Week 4, it seemed like a mismatch — and it was — except the Rams were the team without an answer. Los Angeles, despite being a 9-point favorite at kickoff, had no answers for the usually turnover-prone Jameis Winston. Tampa jumped out to a 21-0 lead, withstood a charge by the Rams that cut the deficit to 28-20 early in the third quarter and then added 27 more points to roll to a 55-40 win. Winston threw for 385 yards and four touchdowns, and Tampa intercepted Jared Goff three times.

The Patriots were more than just an 8-0 team heading into their Week 9 showdown with the Ravens. They had an aura of invincibility about them, mostly due to a defense that seemed poised to set records. That aura dissipated quickly, as Lamar Jackson and Baltimore jumped out to a 17-0 lead, then pulled away in the fourth quarter to win comfortably, 37-20. Jackson threw for a touchdown and ran for two more, and Mark Ingram piled up 115 yards on the ground. The 37 points New England surrendered was more than it allowed in the previous four weeks combined. The Pats were only a 3-point favorite going into the game, so perhaps, as is so often the case, Vegas knew.

The Nationals were the biggest World Series underdogs since 2007, as they opened as +195 underdogs (a $100 bet would win $195). Houston was a -235 favorite ($235 bet needed to win $100). Washington took down Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander to open the series before losing the next three games, only to rally back in Houston with two more wins to earn its first title. It was the first time in MLB, NHL or NBA history that the road team won every game in a seven-game series.

Sixth-ranked Wisconsin was unbeaten and looked like a College Football Playoff contender when it rolled into Champaign to take on Illinois. The Illini were 2-4 and 30.5-point underdogs, but a 39-yard field goal by James McCourt as time expired gave them a 24-23 victory. Illinois was the first FBS team to win outright as more than a 30-point underdog in over two years. The game also marked the second-largest upset in a Big Ten game in 40 seasons — only Northwestern beating Minnesota as a 32-point underdog in 1982 was bigger.

When a rivalry game is known as “Deeper than Hate,” it’s probably good. Georgia Southern and Appalachian State have a history dating back to 1932, but the most recent edition of the rivalry yielded a big upset. App State went into the game ranked 20^th and favored by 14.5 points, but the Eagles went on the road and scored a 24-21 upset behind 145 yards rushing and two touchdowns from Wesley Kennedy. Georgia Southern is an option team, but it warrants mentioning that it pulled off the win despite completing only one pass.

Oklahoma looked like a serious College Football Playoff contender, and Jalen Hurts looked like a Heisman front-runner — and then Kansas State came along. The Wildcats upset the previously unbeaten Sooners, 48-41, rallying from a 17-7 deficit after one quarter to take a 48-23 lead early in the fourth. They then had to sweat it out, as Oklahoma mounted a furious rally to pull within seven points and appeared to recover an onside kick, before replay showed that it was illegally touched. Kansas State quarterback Skylar Thompson ran for four touchdowns in the win.

The Stanley Cup Playoffs are known for being something of a crapshoot most years, and 2019 was no exception. Therefore, it isn’t so much that the Blues won the Cup, in the process becoming the third straight road team to win Game 7 (Boston – 2011, Pittsburgh – 2009) but what they overcame just to get to the postseason. St. Louis had the NHL’s worst record on the morning of Jan. 3, but its luck turned when it beat the Philadelphia Flyers 3-0 on Jan. 7. That game made Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” the Blues’ team anthem, and they went 28-9-5 the rest of the season. Oh, and their title made one fan, who bet $400 on the Blues to win the Cup when they were last in the league and a 250-1 long shot, a cool $100,000.

Yes, the Stanley Cup Playoffs are predictably unpredictable, but virtually all observers were expecting the Tampa Bay Lightning, whose 62 regular-season wins tied a single-season record, to demolish the Columbus Blue Jackets, who had never won a postseason series. The Bolts jumped out to a 3-0 lead in Game 1, and then the series took a stunning turn. Columbus rallied for four straight goals and a 4-3 win and then proceeded to sweep Tampa Bay right out of the playoffs, winning the next three games by a combined score of 15-5. Columbus’ win is on the short list of candidates for biggest playoff upset in league history.

Double-digit point spreads are a rarity in the parity-driven NFL, so when the reeling Atlanta Falcons traveled to New Orleans to take on the 7-1 Saints, thought by many to be the NFC’s best team, the 13-point spread seemed appropriate. Atlanta shocked just about everyone and pulled the biggest upset of the season, thoroughly dominating the Saints, 26-9. The Falcons’ defense, their weakness all year, sacked Drew Brees six times to key the victory.

Jeff Capel’s Pitt Panthers have been talked about as a potential dark horse in the 2019-20 ACC race, and they started their season by beating conference foe Florida State in a hard-fought game. Next up was Nicholls State of the Southland Conference, and the Panthers were 18.5-point favorites. That mattered little when the Colonels made 11 three-pointers and won, 75-70. D’Angelo Hunter and Andre Jones led Nicholls with 17 points apiece.

The Vegas Golden Knights were in total control of their Game 7 tilt with the San Jose Sharks in the Western Conference First Round. Vegas was up 3-0 midway through the third period when San Jose’s Joe Pavelski was knocked out cold on what appeared to be an accidental hit from the Golden Knights’ Cody Eakin. Eakin was called for a controversial major penalty, and on the ensuing five-minute power play, the Sharks went crazy, scoring four goals to take the lead — the first lead change to that point in the series. Vegas somehow managed to recover and tie the game with less than a minute to play, but Barclay Goodrow won it for San Jose with less than two minutes to go in overtime. That the Sharks won the series wasn’t necessarily an upset, but the fashion in which they accomplished it was borderline miraculous.

In 2001, Missouri State’s Jackie Stiles carried the team all the way to a women’s Final Four appearance. Stiles was an assistant coach for the team from 2013-2019, and the Lady Bears did her proud with their run in the 2019 NCAA Tournament. The 11^th-seeded Missouri State beat DePaul in the first round and then shocked third-seeded Iowa State in the Round of 32 to reach the Sweet 16. Alexa Willard led the team with 17 points in the upset of the Cyclones, and Missouri State became the only double-digit seed to make it to the tournament’s second weekend.

Merrimack College was a Division II school until this year. It is at the beginning of a four-year transition to Division I, and in its first-ever D-I game, against Maine, the Warriors lost 84-64. Their next matchup was against Northwestern, and they were a 19-point underdog. That didn’t matter, though, as they flipped a 55-50 deficit into a 71-61 win thanks to a late 17-4 run and a near triple-double from Juvaris Hayes, who finished with 19 points, nine rebounds and seven assists.

This was supposed to be a turnaround year for Tennessee football and second-year head coach Jeremy Pruitt, but things got off to a nightmare start against Georgia State. The Panthers, at best the third-best team in the Sun Belt Conference, and a 25-point underdog, went into Neyland Stadium and shocked the Vols, 38-30. After Tennessee took a 23-21 lead early in the fourth quarter, Georgia State scored the next 17 points until a meaningless Vols touchdown with two seconds left provided the final margin.

UCLA entered its Sept. 22 game with Washington State 0-3 and 18.5-point underdogs. The Bruins started out strong, trailing just 21-17 midway through the second quarter, then started to live down to their billing. The Cougars scored 28 straight points to take a 49-17 lead with 6:52 left in the third quarter. UCLA then went completely insane and ripped off four touchdowns in 4:20 of actual game time to pull within 49-46. Washington State widened the lead to 56-46, before UCLA scored two more touchdowns to go ahead 60-56. The Cougars scored again to go up 63-60 before UCLA finally finished an unthinkable comeback with Demetric Felton’s 15-yard touchdown reception with 1:07 to play. The Bruins scored 50 points in the second half and 29 in the fourth quarter, and quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson threw for 507 yards and five touchdowns.

Anthony Joshua looks the part of a devastating heavyweight. Andy Ruiz Jr., who took a June 1 fight with Joshua at Madison Square Garden, does not. Ruiz took the fight on April 22, serving as a late replacement for Jarrell Miller, and went off as a 25-1 underdog. He looked like little more than filler when Joshua dropped him in the third round, but Ruiz came off the mat and took the fight to Joshua, who entered with a 22-0 record and 21 knockouts. He knocked Joshua down twice in the third, then twice more in the seventh and appeared unwilling to continue. The referee waved off the fight, and Ruiz had scored a TKO that was celebrated as one of the biggest upsets in heavyweight boxing history.

A random August game between the Detroit Tigers and the eventual American League champion Houston Astros wouldn’t seem a fertile breeding ground for a seismic upset, but that’s exactly what transpired. Most baseball games have money lines that don’t go above -250 or so for the favorite, even if the pitching matchup is lopsided and one of the teams is terrible. The Detroit and Houston game was something else altogether. Daniel Norris lugged a 4.82 ERA to the mound for Detroit, while Houston countered with ace Justin Verlander. Las Vegas was buzzing about the game, as the line kept growing and the average closing price was Tigers +430 and Astros -550. Of course, Houston lost. Detroit managed just two hits but won the game, 2-1, in what was called the biggest MLB upset in the legal sports betting era.

Evansville went into Rupp Arena as 25-point underdogs. The Purple Aces were picked to finish eighth in the Missouri Valley Conference. Kentucky was the No. 1 team in the country. None of that mattered, as Evansville kept its cool and went basket for basket with the Wildcats, trailing for only 5:50 of game time and never by more than three points. K.J. Riley had 18 for Evansville, and Sam Cunliffe chipped in with 17, including two crucial free throws to provide the final margin. The win was especially sweet because the Purple Aces are coached by former Kentucky star Walter McCarty and were 11-21 overall and 5-13 in conference last year. Kentucky became the first AP No. 1 to lose at home to an unranked, nonconference opponent.