March Madness Daily: How to talk about chalk
This tournament has been boring. Right? Right?!?
Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Here’s some historical context about favorites.
Eben: This year’s tournament has been heavy on the March, light on the Madness. But what makes an NCAA tournament boring—lack of upsets, or lack of close games? And has 2025 been unique? Here are some facts about the first two rounds, and some context about how rare it is.
The Sweet Sixteen features only teams from the power football conferences: As discussed yesterday, this hasn’t happened in the 47 years since the NCAA created its subdivisions.
No game has gone into overtime: It’s impossible to go lower than this number, but it has happened before. There were no overtime games through the first two rounds in four of the previous 20 tournaments (20%), including in 2023. The good news is that in in the past 50 years, we’ve never had a full tournament without an overtime game. Here’s hoping we keep that streak going.
Total sum of the remaining seeds = 55: This is definitely low, but not a superlative. As this Lev chart 👇 shows, there was a lower total (53) in last year’s Sweet Sixteen. There have been five other tournaments in the last 40 years with a lower total.
There’s no seed higher than No. 10 remaining: No. 10 Arkansas 🐗 is the highest seed left, and this is rare. It’s been nearly 20 since this happened in a tournament. In 2007, however, the highest seed to make the Sweet Sixteen was No. 7 UNLV 🎰.
There’s only one double digit seed left: This is less rare. It’s happened in each of the last two years, and in six of the last 20 tournaments. Again, in 2007, there were none.
Every No. 1 seed is still alive: Top seeds Duke 👿, Auburn 🐯, Florida 🐊 and Houston 🐆 are all still alive after the first week. This is surprisingly less common than I expected. It has happened just four times in the previous 15 tournaments.
Seven of the eight top seeds alive: St. John’s 🔴 is the only No. 2 seed that failed to reach the Sweet Sixteen this year. That’s basically average over the past 20 years. In 2024, 2019 and 2009, all four No. 1s and all four No. 2s made the Sweet Sixteen.
Twenty seven games have been decided by double digits: This is also average. The highest number we’ve seen in the past 20 years was 34 last year.1 The lowest we’ve seen is 21 in 2012.
Seven games have been decided by 3 points or less: Yawn. There were three at this point last year, and four in 2022 and 2019. On the other end, in the past 20 years we’ve gone as high as 12 (2011 and 2010).
I don’t have a great conclusion here. Halfway through, this year’s tournament doesn’t appear to be a statistical outlier in any major way. But in lieu of actual upsets, please watch a video UConn doesn’t want you to see of Dan Hurley upset.
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This exercise made me realize that the first week of last year’s tournament was actually boring.