Will the Most Overpowered Final Four Save the Most Boring NCAA Tournament?
An all-No. 1-seeded Final Four is just one of the ways this men's tourney has disappointed.
And then there were four… The four pre-tournament favorites, to be precise: For just the second time in history, the NCAA men’s Final Four yielded all four No. 1 seeds advancing to the final weekend of the tourney, as Auburn and Houston advanced Sunday to join Duke and Florida in San Antonio with the 2024-25 college basketball championship on the line:
This year’s men’s tournament was already looking extremely chalky by historical standards through the first two rounds, and I wrote last week that 2025 had yielded fewer first-weekend upsets and more top teams in the Sweet 16 than usual. The silver lining to this, though, was supposed to be the potential for more upsets of the “really good team beats great team” variety, or at least more close finishes. (After all, those easy-to-cheer-for Cinderellas sometimes have trouble holding their own in the Sweet 16.)
And to a certain extent, that was partially true. The average winner’s margin of victory in the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 was 10.9 points per game, down from 14.3 in the first two rounds. However, the average for those rounds in previous tournaments of the 64-team era (since 1985) was 9.9, so the games were still lopsided in a historical sense, despite the teams being more closely matched in theory. And the upset rate for this year’s tournament, 18.3 percent (in terms of lower seeds beating higher seeds), is the lowest in any tournament since 1985 heading into the Final Four:
The reasons for this trend have been much-discussed over the past week or so, usually landing on the idea of NIL and the transfer portal causing an unprecedented ability for the top programs to raid everyone else — thus destroying the perception of parity that the NCAA tournament has carefully cultivated over the decades. And that may well be true. I tend to take an attitude of “wait and see” on these things, though, just because one tournament can’t tell you very much — or it might just tell you whatever you want to hear.
(Those inclined to see everything framed in rich versus poor teams in MLB, for instance, read a lot into last year’s Dodgers-Yankees World Series despite payroll being less correlated with wins in 2024 than the average season. So if you don’t like NIL and the portal, chances are you will be inclined to blame them when one NCAA tourney is a dud.)
In either case, the last hope for some kind of interesting drama in this college hoops season comes down to a Final Four that is ridiculously, absurdly overpowered. According to Sports-Reference’s Simple Rating System (SRS), the average for this year’s quartet of Elite 8 winners is, by far, the highest of any Final Four since the tourney expanded in 1985:
Additionally, the gap between the best (Duke) and worst (Florida) Final Four teams, 3.3 points of SRS, is the narrowest in any Final Four since 1985 — beating out the 3.5-point gap between best and worst in 2014.
Once again, in theory, this fact should mean we are due for three thrilling contests that deliver arguably the most deserving champion in modern NCAA men’s tournament history.
In theory.
In practice? Who can say. But if the tournament to date is any indication, we may be due for more dominance to conclude a lopsided season that has taken all the Madness out of March.
Filed under: College Basketball
For the record, I both like paying athletes and the ability for athlete's to change university without paying an extraordinary penalty (as coaches have done forever), but still kinda blame them for this season. HOWEVER, I think the mid-majors will adapt as they always do. That 2008 season wasn't far removed from the start of the one-and-done era that initially boosted big schools tremendously... Until the little guys caught up. I'd bet on that happening again.