Chartsandgraphs: The Sweet 16

I thought it would be interesting to see how many times one city has placed two teams in the Sweet 16. Apparently, I have ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD because I pulled all teams who’ve ever made it to the Sweet 16 since 1985 — when the tournament expanded to 64 teams. All 432 teams. This took a while, but now you can deeply reap the benefit of my labors.

March 23, 2011; 6:00 AM • by Ross Catrow

By now everyone knows: Richmond has two teams in the NCAA tournament. This was big news eons ago. But now! Richmond has two teams in the Sweet 16. This is big news currently — nationwide-news even.

Behold! Interesting facts and figure regarding the NCAA Sweet 16!

—

Since 1985 there have been exactly five times a city has sent two teams dancing all the way into the Sweet 16:

1988 • Philadelphia: Temple / Villanova
1990 • Los Angeles: Loyola Marymount / UCLA
2001 • Los Angeles: UCLA / USC
2007 • Los Angeles: UCLA / USC
2011 • Richmond: Richmond / VCU

So, five times over the last 27 years a city has sent two teams, that’s 18%. Not the rarest thing ever, but not something you see everyday. Like I talked about earlier, Richmond is easily the smallest city in this list. SO GOOD WORK RICHMOND.

With my primary question answered and a giant spreadsheet full of numbers before me, I thought I would suss out truths — both fathomable and unfathomable — for your consumption.

Top state appearances (and Virginia)

Virginia has had 7 appearances

1988 • Richmond
1989 • Virginia
1993 • Virginia
1995 • Virginia
2006 • George Mason
2011 • Richmond & VCU

Since the tournament expanded there has never been a Sweet 16 without a team from:

North Carolina

Average seed

4.41

Average seed if all the top seeded teams made it to the Sweet 16: 2.5

Median seed

Average seed by year

I thought for sure I’d find an increase in the average seed over time, which I would blame on parity. But look! Nothing super obvious, let’s check back in twenty years.

Year with largest average seed

1986

(5.56)

Alabama (5), Auburn (8), Cleveland State (14), DePaul (12), Duke (1), Georgia Tech (2), Iowa State (7), LSU (11), Kansas (1), Kentucky (1), Louisville (2), Michigan State (5), Navy (7), North Carolina (3), North Carolina State (6), UNLV (4)

Year with smallest average seed

2009

(3.06)

Arizona (12), Connecticut (1), Duke (1), Gonzaga (4), Kansas (3), Louisville (1), Memphis (2), Michigan State (2), Missouri (2), North Carolina (1), Pittsburgh (1), Purdue (5), Oklahoma (2), Syracuse (3), Villanova (3), Xavier (4)

Number of appearances by seed

Man, you do NOT want to be an 8 or 9 seed. Yikes.

If you’d like to see any other sort of chartandgraph wizardy, let me know in the comments.

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Ross Catrow

Founder and publisher of RVANews.

March 23, 2011 6:00 AM 15

Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.

Blake on March 23, 2011 8:35 AM said:

fantastic.
Kendra on March 23, 2011 8:52 AM said:

This is so awesome! All these stats!
Daniel on March 23, 2011 8:59 AM said:

Supreme.
Jay on March 23, 2011 9:24 AM said:

NICE!
Weather Dan on March 23, 2011 9:25 AM said:

Very awesome, Ross. I think you’ve transposed the meaning of “highest seed” and “lowest seed” though. I’d expect the teams with the highest seeds to have the lowest value (one and two seeds), rather than the highest.
Holly on March 23, 2011 9:48 AM said:

I love charts
Maggi on March 23, 2011 9:50 AM said:

Ross, you rock.
Ross Catrow on March 23, 2011 9:52 AM said:

@wxdan Good call. I’ve gone for the simpler, but more clear, “smallest” and “largest.”
Carrie on March 23, 2011 10:13 AM said:

Whoa. Nice.
Tony on March 23, 2011 10:24 AM said:

More, please.
Bryan Kelley on March 23, 2011 12:32 PM said:

Can you take it to the next step? Has there ever been a city with two teams in the Elite Eight? If so, have they ever played each other? Are we on the brink of history!?
delasteve1 on March 23, 2011 1:01 PM said:

Can we safetly say we”re the first city to 100% of our DIV1 teams make it into the sweet 16?
John on March 24, 2011 8:50 AM said:

I wish RVA News was ONLY ChartsandGraphs – easily my favorite aspect of the site, and I love most of it to death already!
RMB on March 24, 2011 12:36 PM said:

Eeeep, numbers….I LOVE those!
Jerry Dilworth on March 20, 2012 11:13 PM said:

You will need to add Cincinnati and Xavier to your same city sweet 16 list.