The men’s NCAA tournament field expanded to 64 teams in 1985 only after years of opposition. Then Villanova upset Georgetown in an iconic final and pretty much everyone loved the new format after all.

We call this the modern tournament era, which is perhaps a bit presumptuous. Even at this late date, there were more tournaments played before 1985 than have been contested since.

Still, “modern” makes descriptive sense. These brackets have shot clocks and three-point lines (starting in 1986 and 1987, respectively).

Expanding the field did away with byes, giving us a trusty measuring stick when teams accumulate tournament victories over the years. Yes, the NCAA muddied that up a bit by expanding past 64 teams starting in 2001, but we can adjust with a well-placed asterisk here and there.

UConn is moving up fast on the leaderboard for modern-era tournament victories. Winning two titles in the span of about 390 days vaulted the Huskies past Michigan State, Arizona, and Syracuse.

Winningest NCAA tournament teams, 1985-2024

                         Wins
1.  Duke                 105    
2.  North Carolina        98 
3.  Kansas                94
4.  Kentucky              84
5.  UConn                 67
6.  Michigan State        63
7.  Arizona               58
8.  Syracuse              57* 2018
9.  UCLA                  55* 2021
10. Michigan              51* 2016
11. Louisville            49
12. Florida               48
13. Villanova             47
14. Gonzaga               46
15. Purdue                40
16. Arkansas              38
17. Oklahoma              37
    Indiana               37* 2022
19. Wisconsin             36
20. Ohio State            35
    Maryland              35

* Round of 68 wins

One measurement of performance in the NCAA tournament is wins above or below what every other team with the same seed has done. The difference between expected wins and your actual victories is performance against seed expectations (PASE).

Back in the day, PASE was shaping up to be a handy item. Then the field expanded to 68 teams, and assigning praise and blame became a bit less tidy with a few extra results knocking around.

The proposal here is to ignore the round of 68 entirely, both its wins and its losses. Take Virginia’s loss to Colorado State in the round of 68 this year. Don’t worry, Cavaliers. Never mind, ACC. For PASE purposes, we’ll simply count as though the Hoos missed the tournament entirely. Which they kind of played like they did. The Rams, conversely, do count as a No. 10 seed that won zero games in the 2024 tournament.

Based on tournament results from 1985 through 2024, here are the values for expected wins by seed starting from the round of 64. If you greet that first Thursday morning with one of the following numbers still listed as a live fact next to your name, this is what we expect of you….

seed    expected Ws       seed    expected Ws
  1.       3.30            9.        0.62
  2.       2.33            10.       0.60           
  3.       1.84            11.       0.67          
  4.       1.56            12.       0.51       
  5.       1.15            13.       0.26
  6.       1.04            14.       0.15
  7.       0.90            15.       0.10
  8.       0.71            16.       0.01

Wins in and subsequent to round of 64 only

This past weekend in the round of 32, teams kept putting up ridiculously good numbers for offense. I would say as much in real time, and after two or three instances of this I was asked: Well, just how good are these performances, historically speaking?

Good question.

Here’s what I have for the top 25 games of NCAA tournament offense ever. As usual, “ever” is understood to encompass just the most recent 29 percent of tournaments as archived faithfully by my friend Ken.

Tough luck, old times! You should have tracked offensive boards and turnovers sooner and more frequently.

But before anyone asks: Villanova’s “Perfect Game” against Georgetown in 1985 comes in at 1.16 points per possession. Perfect shooting, yes, but turnovers were committed.

This is a very unofficial curation. Corrections and additions are welcome.

Still, it is likely that four of the best six tournament games on offense ever came from just two individual tournament runs. And one of those teams didn’t even reach the national title game. March Madness is beautiful, truly.

Every March we’re awash in college basketball terms where bottom-up usage has filled a vacuum or triumphed over official top-down naming. “NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship” is a mouthful. “March Madness” is perfect.

The NCAA trademark March Madness has a byzantine origin story. Even the lightest 2020s search shows this catchy bit of alliteration to be older than basketball itself. The term begins to produce more search hits in the 1920s and 1930s, when March madness could refer to gardening, the weather, or anything else happening that month. Actually, for a heartbeat it looked like March Madness might become the exclusive possession of English football.

Then Indiana newspapers covering high school hoops in the 1930s got busy. A poem celebrating the state high school tournament next door in Illinois limned “the March madness” and was published in 1939 by the Illinois High School Association.

Four decades later the IHSA commissioned March Madness, a history of the Illinois state tournament. From his chair at CBS Chicago in the 1970s, a young Brent Musburger picked up the term. Musburger took it with him to the mother ship when CBS began carrying the tournament in 1982. March Madness stuck. NCAA lawyers have been shooing away unauthorized users and uses ever since.