NCAA championships by opponents’ total seeds

[ConnHuskBask]

I just disagree with you. There’s nothing personal about it. If you have seen, there’s actually a lot of charts that show that the data supports that.

Adding up the seeds faced en route to a title from 1st round on is a pretty pointless exercise, that will almost assuredly favor the lower seeds that have won.

A better exercise is to probably add the seeds from the regional final, final 4 and title.

2023 - 3, 5, 5
2014 - 4, 1, 8
2011 - 5, 4, 8
2004 - 8, 1, 3
1999 - 10, 4, 1

 

[HuskyWarrior611]

That 2014 run just continues to look more impressive.

Hardest road to a tourney seed wise AND was the first team to win a title with no McDonald’s All Americans.

 

[AZHuskiePop]

I agree, and I think most "experts" agreed by the end of the tourney that UConn was far and away the best team in the country. The narrative wasn't "how did a 4-seed win it all?", it was "how did a team this good lose 8 games and get a 4-seed?".

Here's another example. A 13-seed. Their path would be 4, 5, 1, 2, 1, 1. Total of 14.

UConn going chalk this year as a 4-seed would have been - 13, 5, 1, 2, 1, 1. Total of 23.

That’s with the guys on the board who understood the potential of this team were frustrated about. Are Big East season was insane .
Finishing as low as we did tied for 4th (only because Cooley pulled the rug out from under his team who pretty much quit ) . Otherwise we had to rally to get into 5th position. That was a head scratcher.
Part of it was the way Big East games are officiated .

I guess the argument is 1 seeds "deserve" an easy path, and higher seeds like us don't.

The argument gets a lot weaker when you consider that we beat everyone by 13 points or more and none of the games were competitive inside the last TV timeout.

"UConn was lucky they didn't have to face Kansas [who lost to a team we beat by 23], UCLA [who lost to a team we beat by 28], Houston [who lost to a team we beat by 13], or Bama [who lost to a team we beat by 17]."

@REB1094 seems very logical. Is this type of behavior appropriate for this board or should he be banned?

The only team with a shot was UCLA. at full strength, however they weren’t do it’s a moot point .
Houston was also banged up and at full strength it could have been another interesting game.
Kansas I wanted revenge for 1995 and 2016. We never forget, I wanted to hear the UConn fans chant overrated as I believe we would have beaten them easily . We already blew out a better Alabama team than the one they had in late March.
Actually the matchup with St Mary’s and San Diego were both tougher in theory than some of those teams BB is a game of matchups or sophisticated rock paper scissors.
I was also worried about Pitino wanting a tock fight . Apparently it wasn’t in their DNA When he decided to play their normal game . I started to breathe easier.

 

[diggerfoot]

The salient point is neither how easy or hard our various paths were. For a team that gets very few chances but succeeds you could look at their paths and maybe conclude whether they caught breaks or not.

For a program that gets many chances you would expect the law of averages to apply. Times when the path was hard, times when we caught a break, times when the breaks went against us. These all have applied to us, as an elite program that accumulated many chances.

The unusual pattern for us is that we caught mainly bad breaks in the nineties, while the past two decades we have have had some good breaks. The bottom line is that we accumulated five championships because we were elite and in the hunt enough for the law of averages to result in achieving that many.

 

[AdamaNation]

Pretty sure that by “worst” Chin meant “most difficult”

But does that also mean arduous?

 

[CL82]

Adding up the seeds faced en route to a title from 1st round on is a pretty pointless exercise, that will almost assuredly favor the lower seeds that have won.

A better exercise is to probably add the seeds from the regional final, final 4 and title.

2023 - 3, 5, 5
2014 - 4, 1, 8
2011 - 5, 4, 8
2004 - 8, 1, 3
1999 - 10, 4, 1

I would say that is more random. If a team got a buy into the regional final, there, chances of winning increase dramatically. But even using that method, you still see us defeating a number one seed in 3 to 5 years. That would seem to be contrary to the notion that we somehow “lucked” our way to the championship.

 

[RedStickHusky]

Pretty sure that by “worst” Chin meant “most difficult”

People often mean most difficult when they say "easiest".

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

Seed total is a very sketchy metric for judging the difficulty of a team's road to the championship. If we're being honest, we have to admit that this year's path was super easy. Sure, the team was a cot damn monster truck and probably could have rolled over 6 1-seeds, but the fact remains the bracket broke quite easy for us this year. Where we could have faced 1, 2, 1, 1 we faced 8, 3, 5, 5.

This is terrible analysis.

We're not talking lab conditions here, where every 1 seed is a 1 seed and every 4 seed is a 4 seed. The level of human error built into the system before the first game tips is already enormous. And that statement is true whether brackets hold to seed or not.

There is no such thing as an easy path or a hard path. Teams 100% control their own destiny. This isn't the sad "Belle of the Ball" "let's all vote on who's most popular" pre-teen drama queen BS that is college football. The moment you start talking luck, you've already left reality and wandered into the fairytale world of what-ifs and who-done-its and gone over to ways no real man should be caught dead arguing.

 

[RedStickHusky]

The proper response to that argument is always "Nannie Nannie booboo"... Losers get to argue about the notional "best"; winners get to bask in the actual "winning".

 

[navery12]

So your argument is the team that LOST is the better team? Ok, makes sense.

In a single game elimination tournament, yes, that is sometimes the case

 

[navery12]

That 2014 run just continues to look more impressive.

Hardest road to a tourney seed wise AND was the first team to win a title with no McDonald’s All Americans.

2002 Maryland was the 1st team, but still impressive. So UConn now has 2 of the 4 seasons (2021 Baylor)

 

[Get a Job]

So your argument is the team that LOST is the better team? Ok, makes sense.

That is not my argument. My position is that it is often the case that the team that loses would have been a tougher matchup for the opponent in the next round than the team that won is. If you disagree with that, I don't know what to tell you.

 

[ConnHuskBask]

I would say that is more random. If a team got a buy into the regional final, there, chances of winning increase dramatically. But even using that method, you still see us defeating a number one seed in 3 to 5 years. That would seem to be contrary to the notion that we somehow “lucked” our way to the championship.

I'm not saying we lucked into anything. We've played lower seeds by and large in regional finals, final 4s, and title games than the average seed expected.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

I will go to my grave believing that three of our teams (1999, 2004, 2023) were taking the tournament in their respective years regardless of how everything else fell.

I'm not sure (considering how they were playing once the BET began forward) that for the 2011 team different results in games that led to who ended up in our path would have changed anything and the only complaints about 2014 would be a) the effort for most of the St Joe's game and b) our prior results that year against Louisville but I will argue that if someone wants to open that can of worms, 2/3 of all titles won since the tournament allowed multiple teams from a conference could be called into question.

 

[BlueMAB]

So your argument is the team that LOST is the better team? Ok, makes sense.

You must believe that UConn, despite steamrolling every tournament team, isn’t better than Xavier, 0-2? Or better than Marquette, 1-2?

Of one game is enough to prove who the better team is, then 2 or 3 must solidify it right?

 

[Tenspro2002]

Seeding is still just other people's subjective opinions, even if those people are given the title of "committee". Every year there are a handful of "top" teams however you define that. All this says is that the chattering class was wrong...again. Running though the bottom halves of 16 team leagues will put up gaudy records. There hasn't been a single NCAA champion that hasn't beat at least one of the "really good teams" to get there. People whine about playing Ga Tech, Butler, #8 Kentucky, and SDSU in the finals but fail to talk about beating Duke, Kentucky, Florida, and Gonzaga to get there.

The 2023 destroyed the early non-conference, including Alabama, Gonzaga was another top team, destroyed them too. Kansas couldn't make the game, why does anyone think they were more likely to beat this team than Purdue. I don't hear anyone whining about us missing Purdue. It's all sour grapes. Every team in the field had it's chance to meet UConn in the final if not before and failed. boo hoo.

Funny thing about us and Purdue.

Through December, we were far and away #1 and #2 and looked to be on a collision course. Then we went on completely different trajectories. They stayed around the top 5 (albeit looking a little vulnerable) and we were in freefall. They got a #1 seed. We were a #4.

Then they lost in the 1st round and we won the championship.

 

[whosurdaddy2720]

UNC last won in 2017 not 2016

This chart seems flawed.

 

[Tenspro2002]

The salient point is neither how easy or hard our various paths were. For a team that gets very few chances but succeeds you could look at their paths and maybe conclude whether they caught breaks or not.

For a program that gets many chances you would expect the law of averages to apply. Times when the path was hard, times when we caught a break, times when the breaks went against us. These all have applied to us, as an elite program that accumulated many chances.

The unusual pattern for us is that we caught mainly bad breaks in the nineties, while the past two decades we have have had some good breaks. The bottom line is that we accumulated five championships because we were elite and in the hunt enough for the law of averages to result in achieving that many.

This is an excellent point. Most of our heartbreak in the 90s to early 00s came in situations where we got no breaks whatsoever.

Lost to #3 seed and the eventual runner-up in 1990.
Lost in a road game in a chalk matchup in 1994.
Lost in a road game to #1 seed and eventual champion in 1995.
Lost in a road game to #1 seed in 1998.
Lost to #1 seed and eventual champion in 2002.
Lost in a road game to #1 seed in 2003.

We got no favors from the Committee or the Tournament outcome itself.

We've had better luck since then and have taken advantage.

 

[my2cents]

That is not my argument. My position is that it is often the case that the team that loses would have been a tougher matchup for the opponent in the next round than the team that won is. If you disagree with that, I don't know what to tell you.

You are off in some philosophical, imaginary realm that doesn't exist in real life. In this tournament, you lose, you go home and can 'talk" all you want about how you would be this match-up or that, but i nreality...you are home waiting for next year.

 

[August_West]

I think this UConn fan was responding to a Villanova fan‘s dopey assertion. UConn twitter is all over stuff like that

UConn twitter is so stupid for even trying. Its a thin skinned retort. Plays right into the trolls.

Anytime seed path or that crap comes up where the haters are trying to devalue our accomplishments only requires one answer:

"We have 5 natties in 24 years, if it was so easy why didn't ::insert the haters team here:: do it? "

Point.Blank.Period.

Addressing this any other way is small dik energy. Unzip the fly and let that meat swing.

 

[Get a Job]

You are off in some philosophical, imaginary realm that doesn't exist in real life. In this tournament, you lose, you go home and can 'talk" all you want about how you would be this match-up or that, but i nreality...you are home waiting for next year.

You haven't responded to the substance of anything I've said, so I will bow out now. Good day, sir!

 

[boba]

You haven't responded to the substance of anything I've said, so I will bow out now. Good day, sir!

FYI you didn't provide any substance either so the game ended nil-nil.

 

[my2cents]

You must believe that UConn, despite steamrolling every tournament team, isn’t better than Xavier, 0-2? Or better than Marquette, 1-2?Discussion

Of one game is enough to prove who the better team is, then 2 or 3 must solidify it right?

I am talking about the NCAA tournament. You can talk about the regular season all you want. In the tournament, when you lose, your season is OVER. You can talk about match-ups with the losing team all you want, but's it pointless and makes no sense. Why? Because, their season has ended.

 

[navery12]

I am talking about the NCAA tournament. You can talk about the regular season all you want. In the tournament, when you lose, your season is OVER. You can talk about match-ups with the losing team all you want, but's it pointless and makes no sense. Why? Because, their season has ended.

You should really quit this conversation and stop digging, you have no ability to grasp the discussion that's happening

 

[Get a Job]

FYI you didn't provide any substance either so the game ended nil-nil.