Numbers tell their stories about the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments. Here are some of the more striking:
17 — National championships for the UConn men and women since 1999. In those 27 years, the school has accounted for one of every three titles.
31-3 — Record of the No. 1 seeds for both the men and women against all tournament opponents this year who were not also seeded No. 1. All three losses were courtesy of the UConn women.
24.7 — Average winning margin of the three games at the women’s Final Four.
3.7 — Average winning margin of the three games at the men’s Final Four. That’s tied for the second-closest in 50 years.
9, 14, 12 — Leads lost in the second halves of the three men’s Final Four games,
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45 — Men’s and women’s champions out of the past 54 tournaments to come from the Eastern time zone. Only one of the 54 came from the West, which was Stanford for the women in 2021.
16 — Combined margin of defeat for the Houston men in their five losses this season.
7 — With seven appearances, Houston has been in more Final Fours than any other program — men or women — without winning at least one title. All seven teams to beat the Cougars won the national championship: UCLA twice, North Carolina, NC State, Georgetown, Baylor and Florida.
13 — Players for Florida and Houston who had scored by halftime on Monday. Florida guar Walter Clayton Jr., who was the first player to break 30 points in the Elite Eight and Final Four since Larry Bird, wasn’t one of them.
23.7 — UConn’s average winning margin against the three No. 1 seeds it defeated: Southern California, UCLA and South Carolina.
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31 — Combined deficits the Florida men made up to win their last three games in the tournament.
61.5 to 56 — The average score each tournament game of UConn’s big three — guards Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd and forward Sarah Strong — against the opponent’s entire roster.
63 — Seconds that Florida led Monday night against Houston. The Cougars were ahead for 30 minutes and 44 seconds.
32, 34, 29, 19, 72, 41 — The biggest lead for the UConn women in their six tournament games.
2, 5, 6, 2 — Florida’s margin of victory in four of its last five tournament games.
7 — Points scored by Houston in 14 seconds to stun Duke in the men’s national semifinals. Until then, the Cougars had put up 61 points in 39 minutes and 27 seconds.
16 — SEC programs that had either their men or women’s teams (or both) in this year’s NCAA tournament. In other words, all of them.
23 — Total victories by SEC teams in the men’s tournament, an all-time record. Better than one of every three NCAA tournament games was won by an SEC team.
2010 — The last men’s championship game to be won by two points or fewer was Duke over Butler 61-59 in 2010.
21— Men’s and women’s tournament games that ended with a four-point margin or under, out of 134. Two of the 21 were Duke losses, the women by four to South Carolina, the men by three to Houston.
12-11 — The UConn women have now edged ahead of the UCLA men for most national championships. Together, they have won 17.8 percent of all the Division I basketball trophies ever presented. Twenty-two of the 23 were by two coaches, Geno Auriemma and John Wooden.
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3 — Florida’s three championships in the 21st Century are as many as Duke and North Carolina and behind only UConn. The Gators also have now won as many titles in the past 47 years as Kentucky.
82 — Tournament games for the men and women out of 134 that were decided by double digits.
1985 — That’s the year women’s champion Gene Auriemma coached his first game at UConn. It’s also the year men’s champion Todd Golden was born.
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