So many blowouts this year in the first round for AA. Seemingly there is always at least one blowout, but I don't remember basically every game being one. Am I remembering wrong? Is this normal?
No, not a lot of competitive games... usually there is one maybe two blowouts, but we really only have one competitive game today, and it's the current game.
It's the result of changing to seeding through 5 now.
In the past they used to seed through 4 and the other 4 were luck of the draw creating some interesting matchups. Seeding through 5 prevents the 1 or 2 seed from facing the best of the remaining 4 which almost always seemed to happen in the past, often resulting in first round upsets.
So go figure #4 vs #5 is resulting in the closest game.