It’s hard to win the NCAA tournament. Even the best teams struggle to win six games in a row against increasingly strong competition.
What might help a team win March Madness? Getting hot from three seems like an obvious candidate.
Three pointers are also crucial in college basketball upsets. Over the past four seasons, underdogs of six or more points who won outright got hot from three. In these upsets, the underdog made threes at a 5.3% better rate than their season average. What works for underdogs should also work for favorites in contention to win the tournament.
To answer this question, let’s dig into the data from the 23 tournaments from 2002 through 2025. The champion shot better than their season average in 16 of these 23 tournaments. I thought the rate would be higher than 70%.
There are champions who got hot from three. In 2016, Villanova made 34.4% of their threes in the regular season but 50.0% in the tournament. A buzzer beating three by Kris Jenkins won the Wildcats their first of two tournaments under Jay Wright.
In 2003, Syracuse made 33.5% of their threes in the regular season before making 42.5% in the tournament. Getting hot from three and having a superstar in Carmelo Anthony won Syracuse their only title under Jim Boeheim.
However, there are other champions such as Connecticut in 2024 that didn’t get hot from three. UConn stormed to its second straight championship under Dan Hurley and won every game by at least 14 points. However, they only made 30.1% of their threes in the tournament compared to 36.7% in the regular season.
In 2019, Virginia made 33.3% of their threes in the tournament compared to 40.9% in the regular season. Virginia was one of the best teams in the country but seemed inferior to the Duke team with Zion Williamson. Not getting hot from three meant that Virginia had to squeak out close wins, as they won their last four games of the tournament by an average of 4.5 points.
Over these 23 tournaments, the champion made 1.3% more of their three pointers during the tournament than the regular season. It does not seem like getting hot from three is a requirement to win the NCAA tournament.
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
This was sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter. This is a free service that strives to be:
- Valuable
- Concise
- Entertaining
Other correspondences include 5-Nugget Saturday, my curated list of bets and analytics, and my March Madness cheat sheet that makes it drop dead easy to fill out your bracket.
To get this free service delivered straight into your inbox, enter your best email address and click on “Sign up now!”
Leave a Reply