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.

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.

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:

  1. 1988 • Philadelphia: Temple / Villanova
  2. 1990 • Los Angeles: Loyola Marymount / UCLA
  3. 2001 • Los Angeles: UCLA / USC
  4. 2007 • Los Angeles: UCLA / USC
  5. 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

  1. 1988 • Richmond
  2. 1989 • Virginia
  3. 1993 • Virginia
  4. 1995 • Virginia
  5. 2006 • George Mason
  6. 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

3

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

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