annihilating the record of 40. I guess it helps when one of those is a 15.

Previous highest sum of seeds in elite 8
2000, 1990 - 40
2018 - 39
2021, 1986 - 37
1981 - 36
1980 - 35

The 80 and 81 tournaments are interesting because there were no 13-16 yet, so less chances of early round upsets since all the 1-4 seeds got byes.

The opposite end of this is 2007's elite 8. Seeds were 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3 = 13