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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 4628637, member: 289"] People are talking about the ease with which Connecticut went through this year’s tournament but also how the waves seemed to part for them as nobody in the top three seed lines made the Final Four. I thought of a quick way to assess and compare it to other national championship teams: Simply add up the margins of victory and then add up the seeds of the opposition, then divide the first by the second. Here’s Syracuse’s 2003 run as an example: We beat #14 seed Manhattan 78-65. I’ll record that as ‘13/14’ We beat #6 seed Oklahoma State 68-56 = 12/6 We beat #10 seed Auburn 79-78 = 1/10 We beat #1 seed Oklahoma 63-47 = 16/1 We beat #1 seed Texas 95-84 = 11/1 We beat #2 seed Kansas 81-78 = 3/2 TOTAL: 56/34 = 1.65 The tournament was first seeded in 1979. At that time, it had 40 teams and not everyone played in what we would now call the “round of 64”. It expanded to 48 the next year and then to 64 in 1985. One pre 1985 national champion played in the round of 64 and had to win 6 games for the title, (NC State in ’83): the others all won 5. In 2011 four preliminary games were added, the “First Four”. Nobody’s ever come from the First Four to win the title. It doesn’t really matter if the national champion won 5 games or 6: both numbers will tend to be less with 5 games but the ratio should be the same or comparable. My source for the seedings and scores: [URL="http://www.shrpsports.com/cb/brackets.htm"]NCAA Tournament Brackets[/URL] In a couple of spots they forgot to put the score down – just click on the school name and you’ll get all their scores for that year. Here the national championship runs, ranked by this method: 1979 Michigan State 4.54 1981 Indiana 4.52 2016 Villanova 4.00 2009 North Carolina 3.74 1996 Kentucky 3.58 2023 Connecticut 3.47 2018 Villanova 3.42 2006 Florida 2.87 1993 North Carolina 2.85 2001 Duke 2.70 2021 Baylor 2.56 1991 Duke 2.55 2015 Duke 2.38 2007 Florida 2.36 2002 Maryland 2.33 1990 UNLV 2.33 1995 UCLA 2.32 2010 Duke 2.29 2008 Kansas 2.24 2012 Kentucky 2.22 1998 Kentucky 2.15 2000 Michigan State 2.14 2004 Connecticut 2.00 2017 North Carolina 1.97 2013 Louisville 1.90 1984 Georgetown 1.81 1987 Indiana 1.74 2011 Connecticut 1.72 2022 Kansas 1.71 2005 North Carolina 1.69 2003 Syracuse 1.65 1989 Michigan 1.64 1980 Louisville 1.63 1992 Duke 1.62 2014 Connecticut 1.61 1986 Louisville 1.58 1999 Connecticut 1.56 1994 Arkansas 1.52 1985 Villanova 1.50 1988 Kansas 1.36 1983 North Carolina St. 1.07 1982 North Carolina 1.00 2019 Virginia 0.98 1997 Arizona 0.89 You don’t have to have been a steam-roller all year to have a great tournament run: Michigan State ’79 was a 26-6 team, Indiana ’81 a 26-9 team and this year’s UCONN team was 31-8. None of these are bad or mediocre teams: they’re all national champions. In the end, it doesn’t matter how much you win by: it’s ‘survive and advance’. Sometimes it helps to “bottom out” just before the tournament starts so you can get better as your opponents get better and play your greatest game in the national title game. But some teams make it clear that nobody’s going to stop them early on and they manage to maintain their level of play through six games. Those are special teams and this year’s Connecticut team was one of them. [/QUOTE]

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