Tyler Schank/NCAA Photos via Getty The field expanded to 64 teams in 1985 only after years of opposition. Then Villanova upset Georgetown in an iconic final and pretty much everyone loved the new format after all. We call this the modern tournament era, which is perhaps a bit presumptuous. Even at this late date, there were more tournaments played before 1985 than have been contested since. Still, “modern” makes descriptive sense. These brackets have shot clocks and three-point lines (starting in 1986 and 1987, respectively). Expanding the field did away with byes, giving us a trusty measuring ..read more

One measurement of performance in the NCAA tournament is wins above or below what every other team with the same seed has done. The difference between expected wins and your actual victories is performance against seed expectations (PASE). Back in the day, PASE was shaping up to be a handy item. Then the field expanded to 68 teams , and assigning praise and blame became a bit less tidy with a few extra results knocking around. The proposal here is to ignore the round of 68 entirely, both its wins and its losses. Take Virginia’s loss to Colorado State in the round of 68 this year. Don’t worry ..read more

(Greg Fiume/Getty) We tell ourselves NCAA tournament stories in order to love. March Madness is a treasure, surprises always occur, and each turn of events demands immediate explanation. We all have our narratives. Here are some of my stories. I carry these with me serene in the knowledge they must be dashed by events someday…. Absolutely any team can lose one game, but only teams above a certain threshold can win six. Not so much the mere presence of threes starting in the 1980s as their increasing prevalence since the teens has introduced new suspense in tournament outcomes. Some seed lines ..read more

Historically great tournament offense has a rich tradition stretching from 2003 to last Sunday. (AP/Mary Altaffer) This past weekend in the round of 32, teams kept putting up ridiculously good numbers for offense. I would say as much in real time, and after two or three instances of this I was asked: Well, just how good are these performances, historically speaking? Good question. Here’s what I have for the top 25 games of NCAA tournament offense ever. As usual, “ever” is understood to encompass just the most recent 29 percent of tournaments as archived faithfully my by friend Ken. Tough luck ..read more

The first selection committee: Ned Irish, pictured in 1943. (Associated Press) I said this: It is extraordinary that in 2024 we still do this with a committee.https://t.co/elOQdVlxO5 — John Gasaway (@JohnGasaway) March 13, 2024 Naturally, this begs the question of what we should do instead. The problem’s in the very term “selection,” isn’t it? True, the NCAA’s decision making body doesn’t really carry that name. It’s not the selection committee, it’s the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee. But we say Selection Sunday and “the selection show,” and we’ve done so for years. No one bats ..read more

In 2021 Georgetown was a bid thief’s bid thief. (Georgetown Athletics) Every March we’re awash in college basketball terms where bottom-up usage has filled a vacuum or triumphed over official top-down naming. “NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship” is a mouthful. “March Madness” is perfect. The NCAA trademark March Madness has a byzantine origin story. Even the lightest 2020s search shows this catchy bit of alliteration to be older than basketball itself. The term begins to produce more search hits in the 1920s and 1930s, when March madness could refer to gardening, the weather, or any ..read more

Scoring efficiency is up significantly in Division I men’s hoops in 2024 even as shooting accuracy remains more or less the same as it was last year. Teams are simply attempting more shots. Giving credit for trends on the largest scale is challenging, but one version of events could venture to say the praise for our current high-scoring game might go to Kelvin Sampson and the NCAA, in that order. Sampson is the guru of shot volume. This season the guru has landed in what is still, even with the presence of his Houston team, the lowest shot volume league of the six major conferences. Broadly s ..read more

Mark Norris/Houston Public Media One of the many joys of the NCAA tournament is that it can be savored as two distinct events. There is of course the desire to see the strongest teams with the best records settle this question head-to-head. This dynamic emerges over the second weekend and can on occasion shine forth to brilliant effect at the Final Four. The first weekend’s radically different. The last five brackets in particular have shown how fully the round of 64 embraces the term March Madness. Over that time we’ve seen two No. 1 seeds fall in the round of 64. We’re on a three-year streak ..read more

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