I remember hearing that the first seed seldom wins the NCAA tourney.
So when filling out a tournament tree, would it be most probable to pick the top seed as the winner (because they have won the most games and are technically the best) or to pick a lower seed?
BTW, I’m not betting, I don’t even follow college basketball.
…I don’t even follow ANY sport for that matter.
There are actually four #1 seeds- there are four regions, and each region has 16 teams seeded from 1-16. It’s hard to use a strictly mathematical way to figure it because the tournament depends so much on human performance, but assuming that the #1 seeds are the best teams, you’d be better off putting money on them. It’s true that the #1 seeds don’t win it all the time, but they still win more often than the #2’s, or the #3’s, or anyone else down the line. I would guess that a #1 seed wins it at least half the time.
Out of the four #1 seeds, there is an overall #1 seed, sort of. The team which is judged to be the best gets the most favorable matchups- they play the weakest of the four #16 seeds in the first round and are set up to play the weakest #4 seed in the second round, and so on. You may have heard that the #1 #1 seed, so to speak, doesn’t win all that much, and that could be true. Still, they’ve got as good a chance as anyone. The fact is that with 64 teams, there’s just way too much opportunity to screw up, so nobody can predict the winner with any great regularity.
There are two different issues here, and I am not sure to which you are refering. First of all, their is a team that finishes the season number one in the polls. It is true that they rarely win the tourney. Offhand I don’t know the last time it happened. There are also four number one seeds in the four regions. They actually are a pretty good bet to win the tourney and do have a good chance of making the final four. While it has NEVER been the case that all four number one teams in any given year have all made it to the Final Four in the same year, a good majority of the teams that end up in the finals are #1 seeds and a big number of #1 seeds have won the tournament. So don’t pick them all to be in the final four, but usually it is two or three of the final four teams are #1 seeds. I don’t know that there has ever been a year with NO number one seeds in the final four, either, so the safe bet is between 1 and 3 of them to be in the semifinal games.
The eventual champion has been seeded anywhere from one to 8 or nine, I think, except a fifth seed has never won. Indiana made it to the finals a few years back as a five, but none has ever won it.Also, a number one seed has yet to lose a first round game to a #16 team, at least in the Men’s tourney. There have been a couple close calls, but its never happend yet. Coppin State a few years back was a too long three pointer at the buzzer from beating Purdue. I think that the closest. Every other “seeding” upset has happened at least once. I believe there have been two #15 over #2 games, one I think being Santa Clara over Arizona.
One day a #16 over #1 will happen, but I wouldn't bet money on trying to pick when it will happen. It did happen in the women's tourney once.The last team ranked #1 in the last AP poll to win the NCAA title was Duke in 2001. Prior to that, it was UCLA in 1995.
It’s happened 19 times, with UCLA accounting for 8 of the instances. Kentucky has done it three times, Duke twice, UNC twice, Indiana twice, USF and NC State once each.
The only #1 team to lose a first round was West Virginia in 1958 to Manhattan, although the field was much smaller then.
I think many of those 19 instances where the #1 team went on to win occured prior to 1980. I would be surprised if there were many other instances in the last 20 years besides Duke and UCLA where it happened.
I think Chaminade beat Virginia in the early 80s as a very low seed over a a #1 team in the first game of the toruney for Virginia, but the field was 48 then and not 64. Since the expansion to 64/65 teams in the mid 80s, it has not happened.Well THIS year, the tournament committee has begun ranking the teams 1-64, and assigning 1-4 the top seed in each of the 4 brackets…so starting this year, you could ask “how many times has THE #1 seed won the tourney”
for past years, you have to ask “how many times have any of the #1 seeds won the tourney”
Just as a correction, Chaminade of Hawaii’s huge upset win over then #1 ranked Virginia was not part of the NCAA Division 1 championship tournament. It happened in a holiday tournament conducted in Hawaii played during late December. Chaminade was not a Division 1 NCAA school at the time and was eligible for the tournament.
(Must preview and must not post before having coffee) :smack:
Oops. I meant to say that Chaminade was INELIGIBLE for the big NCAA tourney.
Allow myself to correct… myself. The overall #1 plays the weakest #4 in the third round.
15 of the 19 instances were before 1980.
Since 1980, it’s been UNC in 1982, Duke in 1992 and 2001, and UCLA in 1995.
So even UCLA was not always ranked #1 coming into the tournament each time it won. In 1965, Michigan was #1 and UCLA beat them in the final. In 1968, Houston was #1 and UCLA destroyed them in the semis and in 1970 Kentucky was #1 and they were knocked off by Jacksonville (with Artis Gilmore). Jacksonville then went on to lose to UCLA in the championship game.
No, this is not true. In previous years, and this year, there were end of the season polls that gave us a #1 team for the regular season, so you could ask the question still for previous years about whether a #1 team won the tournament based on the pollsIf you’re digging up stats, don’t go back too far. A while back, the NIT was the premier tournament, not the NCAA one.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the NIT fell behind the NCAA in prestige, but by the mid 1950s, the NCAA tournament was the top dog.
My guess is that the game fixing scandals, which affected numerous New York area schools in the 1950s, didn’t help much.
And some of the biggest starts of the 1950s: Chamberlain, Russell, and Robertson never played in the NIT.