Will the 2025 NCAA title matchup score buck trends or fall within the parameters of all of the previous games?
March Madness Title Game: Inside the Numbers
For 86 years, the NCAA Tournament has been the main event of the spring. The culmination of the long basketball season sees the tournaments whittle down to just down. As the tournament progresses, points become at a premium, and everything, from layups to threes, becomes a point of emphasis.
As the game’s rules favor offenses, you’d think that the numbers would skew completely toward offense. However, according to FanDuel, that does not seem to be the case. Their research breaks the title game down into three specific categories.
“Dating back to 1939, the average score of the college basketball national championship game is 72.8-63.4, equaling 136.2 total points,” Aidan Cotter at FanDuel wrote.
The days of Chuck Taylors with no ankle support and brutally unforgiving hardwood did not really see an upsurge of points. While the three-point-line and shot clock still stood decades away, teams loved to fill up the scoresheet.
“But the game of basketball has changed a lot over the years, especially at the collegiate level. If we just look at the average score of the college basketball national championship game since the introduction of the 3-point line in 1986-87, the average score jumps to 76.9-67.9, or 144.8 total points,” Cotter said.
The infancy of the arc introduced different styles of play. In 1990, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas broke the 100-point threshold for the first and only time. In a 103-73 beatdown of Duke in the title game, the NCAA saw a glimpse into an up-and-down style of play that highlighted athleticism.
Since then, no team eclipsed the 90-point barrier. In 2009, North Carolina scored 89 points in an 89-72 victory against Michigan State.
“Finally, beginning with the 2019-2020 season, college basketball’s 3-point line was moved back by one foot, and the shot clock was altered to only reset to 20 seconds after an offensive rebound instead of the full 30,” Cotter said.
“It’s a small sample, but the average score of four college basketball national championship games in that stretch is 77.3-64.5, good for 141.8 total points. Notably, that’s 3 points fewer than the average of all Division-I games over that span (144.8 points),” Cotter said.
Normally, the NCAA would embrace change and the desire to bring the game more offensive attention. However, the organization decided the exact opposite; this looked like a way to give defensive teams a better shot at keeping scores closer and hopefully more exciting.
With one team scoring in the 80s (2021, Baylor with 86) and no runner-up scoring over 79 points, the NCAA actually effected quality changes.
In the last four NCAA championship battles, the margin of victory stood at 12.7 points. Basically, if one team pulled away, the opponent could not mount meaningful offense when it matters.
KEEP READING: March Madness Final Four Preview: Are the Florida Gators and Duke Blue Devils on a Crash Course?
If you examine that number and compare it to the previous four games (2016-2019) experienced a margin of just points. In all fairness, one of those games, the Villanova-North Carolina game, ended with a buzzer-beater.
While the total of points never truly run too far away from the mean. Instead, you can bank on the winning team, scoring at least 70 points. No winning team cut down the net without that much since Duke defeated Wisconsin in 2015. Moreover, with average score of the last four NCAA title games of the winning team hovers at 77 points.
More importantly, if you look at the teams in this year’s Final Four, three of the four scores over 80 points per contest, and only Houston (74ppg) sits lower than that magic mark. Basically, if Houston doesn’t win, expect a shootout next Monday night.
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