NEW YORK – College basketball fans with fond memories of the wild 2011 NCAA tournament may have forgotten this fact: A mostly tranquil regular season led up to it, with the four top seeds combining for only 13 losses.

In 2007, by contrast, the No. 1 seeds had 18 defeats among them. Then the tournament started, and the familiar upsets of March were almost nowhere to be found.

College basketball analyst Clark Kellogg would love to be calling three weeks full of stunners this year. But he knows it’s hardly inevitable – despite a season when the top-ranked team never seemed safe.