March Mundaneness - NCAA Tournament Sum Of Seeds Stats Proves 2025 Is The Chalkiest Year In History
Turns out - you never really needed to put your hands in the chalk bag to climb to the top of your March Madness bracket. It already had plenty. Four #1 seeds will meet in the Final Four for the first time since 2008, and just second time ever.
Obviously, the conversation about how the transfer portal is ruining the madness has already started. This is sure to keep that flame ablaze. Especially since we were told the pay off for the lack of upsets in the early rounds was getting better games played by better teams. What a crock. I mean - in fairness, it was a good theory. I was absolutely psyched for Duke/Alabama. What a let down. After going 10/16 from three-point land the game before, Alabama's star guard Mark S must have let his innie play vs Duke who shot 1/5 and just 2/12 from the field in totality. And that performance severed the Tide like Moses.
Still. You would have thought at least one of the three #1 vs #2 seed Elite-8 games would be somewhat interesting. At least we had Florida's comeback to take down the Elite-8 Cinderella, Texas Tech (#3 seed). So the question is - is March Madness in trouble? Have WE been forced into the portal into an upside down March Mundaneness reality? You could say this is one year and we need a larger sample size to be sure, which is fair. But if bigger, richer schools are able to be the Yankees and Dodgers of collegiate sports, isn't the lack of upsets the obvious result?
OK - so maybe there's more than just one question.
Let's look at some numbers here. You see from my graph above every year's sum of seeds going to the Final Four represented by cleverly devised basketballs made from a patchwork of boring scatter plot symbol options in my computer. Again, 2008 was the only other year with a sum of 4 - while 1993 was close with 5. But what's most interesting to me is the trajectory this tournament has been on lately. Ever since 2010 we've been gluttonous for Madness. We couldn't get enough of it. Gotta think that's played a role in why this year has been so disappointingly chalky. And quite frankly, lacking suspense. I mean, the only good buzzer beater shouldn't have even counted.
Last year at least had some spiciness in the Elite-8. We had #11 seed NC-State and even a #4 vs #6 match-up. This year's lowest seed was a #3. That's insane. The lowest sum of seeds possible in all Elite-8 games is 12. Guys, we were at 13 this year. 13. The only 2 seed left out was St. Johns who's since been running lemonade stands to pay their fine to Amica Mutual Pavilion to replace the rims.
Let's run another graph. Same idea as before except with Elite-8 sum of seeds instead of Final Four.
The only other year to match this was 2007 - the year prior to all four seeds making the Final Four. That means 2025 is officially the chalkiest year in history. No matter what happens from here. And the worst part is we didn't even get better games in exchange. The total difference in scores from all Elite-8 games this year was 50. Last year's difference? 50.
What a scam.
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This will be interesting to circle back to next year. I'm not here saying I haven't enjoyed watching much of the action - but the fact of the matter is we aren't just lacking in upsets - we're lacking in suspense. Way too many games we didn't need to watch the final five minutes of (but probably did anyway). And I'll go on a limb and say we probably won't end the tournament with three double overtime thrillers to make up for all this.
Have to think next year will regress back towards the madness at least a little bit. We need another NC-State. Another FAU. Saint Peters. UMBC (first round). Maybe that'll make it all the more special to do it in this new age.