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.

Last night Wake Forest shot 3-of-20 on its threes in a 21-point loss at North Carolina. Both the final score and the opponent’s three-point haplessness are rapidly becoming par for the course with the Tar Heels.

UNC’s conference opponents have connected on just 22.5 percent of their threes. We haven’t even reached February, of course, and these numbers will shift over North Carolina’s remaining 12 conference games. Nevertheless, 570 possessions of basketball constitutes a fair sample size in its own right. At a minimum one might note that over that stretch the Tar Heels’ opponents were historically bad at making threes.

Just how extreme have UNC’s opponents been in their three-point misery, where is this coming from, and what happens now?

One answer to the first question would be “very.” The conference season is equally young for the entire ACC, yet to this point North Carolina’s three-point defense is nearly three standard deviations better than the conference mean.

Bear in mind Division I as a whole’s making a business-as-usual 33.6 percent of its threes this season. Actually the Tar Heels themselves have allowed opponents to shoot a rather more normal 28.5 percent from beyond the arc in all games. Non-conference opponents like Lehigh (13-of-33 on threes) or Kentucky (8-of-23) didn’t faint dead away at the sight of this defense.

We have now seen 37 “modern” NCAA tournaments played to completion. All but the first one in 1985 used a shot clock. All but the first two, in 1985 and 1986, featured a three-point line.

The expansion of the tournament to 64 teams in the 1980s also did away with byes, giving us a true 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.

Here are the teams with the most tournament victories since the field expanded in 1985 right through to Kansas winning the 2022 title.

NCAA tournament wins, 1985-2022

                         Wins
1.  Duke                 101    
2.  North Carolina        96 
3.  Kansas                92 (Congratulations!)
4.  Kentucky              83
5.  Michigan State        60
6.  Syracuse              57* 2018
7.  Arizona               56
8.  UConn                 55
9.  UCLA                  53* 2021
10. Michigan              51* 2016
11. Louisville            49
12. Florida               48
13. Villanova             47
14. Gonzaga               41
15. Oklahoma              37
16. Arkansas              36
    Wisconsin             36
18. Indiana               36* 2022
19. Ohio State            35
    Purdue                35

* Round of 68 wins

Note the gap between Kentucky and Michigan State. That top four’s been in a league of its own historically speaking.