I was reading some old articles ranking the NCAA Tournament Champions and my inner nerd got going. I decided to come up with my own ranking for the best champions from the NCAA Tournament. I wanted to be fair, so I came up with my metrics before applying them to see how every team scored.

First, I threw out Louisville's 2013 team, since the NCAA vacated that title. That leaves us eighty-one tournament champs from 1939 to 2021. I disagree with judging teams by subjective measures, and so I decided on a point system based on the scoring margin and the seed of the opponent. It's generally true to me that beating a 1 seed, for example, is a much bigger deal than beating a 5 seed.

So I decided to value each game as a simple equation of (17 minus seed) times margin of victory. This led to a question of how to total up values, since earlier tournaments did not have 68 or 64 teams, and so there were fewer games. Of course, this also means that earlier champions never played low-seed opponents, so it kind of balances out, but to be fair, I finally decided to use three measures:

Score just for the championship game
Score for just the last two games (Final 4 weekend)
Aggregate score for the tournament

This produced the following results:

Most Dominant Championship Game
1. UNLV over Duke in 1990, 103-73
2. Indiana over Kansas in 1940, 62-40
3. Ohio State over California in 1960, 75-55
4. UCLA over N Carolina in 1968, 78-55
5. UCLA over Memphis in 1973, 87-66
(9) Baylor over Gonzaga in 2021, 86-70

Most Dominating Tournament
1. UCLA 1968 (4,979 points)
2. Ohio St 1960 (4,457 points)
3. UNLV 1990(4,327 points)
4. UCLA 1967 (3,980 points)
5. Indiana 1940 (3,888 points)
(7) Baylor 2021 (3,700 points)

Most Dominant Final Four Weekend
1. UCLA 1968 (beat Houston and UNC by 55 agg)
2. UNLV 1990 (beat Ga Tech and Duke by 39 agg)
3. Ohio St 1960 (beat New York U and Cal by 42 agg)
4. Indiana 1940 (beat Duquesne and Kansas by 31 agg)
5. Baylor 2021 (beat Houston and Gonzaga by 35 agg)


Again, these results are for 81 national champions, so it's fair to say that by the numbers this Baylor team is among the very best.

Oldbear83 said:

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I was reading some old articles ranking the NCAA Tournament Champions and my inner nerd got going. I decided to come up with my own ranking for the best champions from the NCAA Tournament. I wanted to be fair, so I came up with my metrics before applying them to see how every team scored.

First, I threw out Louisville's 2013 team, since the NCAA vacated that title. That leaves us eighty-one tournament champs from 1939 to 2021. I disagree with judging teams by subjective measures, and so I decided on a point system based on the scoring margin and the seed of the opponent. It's generally true to me that beating a 1 seed, for example, is a much bigger deal than beating a 5 seed.

So I decided to value each game as a simple equation of (17 minus seed) times margin of victory. This led to a question of how to total up values, since earlier tournaments did not have 68 or 64 teams, and so there were fewer games. Of course, this also means that earlier champions never played low-seed opponents, so it kind of balances out, but to be fair, I finally decided to use three measures:

Score just for the championship game
Score for just the last two games (Final 4 weekend)
Aggregate score for the tournament

This produced the following results:

Most Dominant Championship Game
1. UNLV over Duke in 1990, 103-73
2. Indiana over Kansas in 1940, 62-40
3. Ohio State over California in 1960, 75-55
4. UCLA over N Carolina in 1968, 78-55
5. UCLA over Memphis in 1973, 87-66
(9) Baylor over Gonzaga in 2021, 86-70

Most Dominating Tournament
1. UCLA 1968 (4,979 points)
2. Ohio St 1960 (4,457 points)
3. UNLV 1990(4,327 points)
4. UCLA 1967 (3,980 points)
5. Indiana 1940 (3,888 points)
(7) Baylor 2021 (3,700 points)

Most Dominant Final Four Weekend
1. UCLA 1968 (beat Houston and UNC by 55 agg)
2. UNLV 1990 (beat Ga Tech and Duke by 39 agg)
3. Ohio St 1960 (beat New York U and Cal by 42 agg)
4. Indiana 1940 (beat Duquesne and Kansas by 31 agg)
5. Baylor 2021 (beat Houston and Gonzaga by 35 agg)


Again, these results are for 81 national champions, so it's fair to say that by the numbers this Baylor team is among the very best.

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Thanks for posting!

Quick question: Shouldn't Baylor be #4 in the final category? 35 > 31

Tough to compare these across 80 years, much less decade to decade. Given the concentration of talent in earlier decades to fewer teams, the gauntlets that teams in the 60's, 70's and 80's isn't the same as now.

I tend to favor the teams that had more future NBA guys, like the Florida teams, Duke, Pitino's UK teams, '90 UNLV.

'82 UNC was ridiculously good.

But Baylor is up there. Way up there. I don't know how Scott was able to see the hidden talent in guys from UNC Asheville, Auburn, UNLV, Presbyterian (are you kidding me??) and someone like Vital who literally cannot shoot a basketball, and turn them into a dominating basketball team that just slaughtered teams in countless ways. We had an answer for anything and everything a team could throw at us.

TeamPlayer said:

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Tough to compare these across 80 years, much less decade to decade. Given the concentration of talent in earlier decades to fewer teams, the gauntlets that teams in the 60's, 70's and 80's isn't the same as now.

I tend to favor the teams that had more future NBA guys, like the Florida teams, Duke, Pitino's UK teams, '90 UNLV.

'82 UNC was ridiculously good.

But Baylor is up there. Way up there. I don't know how Scott was able to see the hidden talent in guys from UNC Asheville, Auburn, UNLV, Presbyterian (are you kidding me??) and someone like Vital who literally cannot shoot a basketball, and turn them into a dominating basketball team that just slaughtered teams in countless ways. We had an answer for anything and everything a team could throw at us.

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It would have been so cool had Mark Vital managed to make at least one 3 pointer in some games, especially high profile games (i.e. Gonzaga). But you're right, he has many talents & brings much to the team, it's just that scoring is not one of them. I cannot imagine us accomplishing what we did in the past couple years, including the National Championship, without him.

Your first criteria of final margin ignores the impact of the knockout punches thrown in the first 10 minutes of the game by BU in 2021 and North Carolina in 2009.

BU was up 29-10 at the 10:09 mark. NC was up 34-11 at the 9:46 mark. Although Gonzaga got closer early 2nd half, BU kicked it back in gear and coasted. NC went into cruise control and MichSt merely made it a more respectable 17 point loss at the end.

In either case, the 1990 UNLV win was a total beatdown, as was the 1973 UCLA win over Memphis (where Bill Walton went 21 for 22 from the field).

historian said:

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Oldbear83 said:

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I was reading some old articles ranking the NCAA Tournament Champions and my inner nerd got going. I decided to come up with my own ranking for the best champions from the NCAA Tournament. I wanted to be fair, so I came up with my metrics before applying them to see how every team scored.

First, I threw out Louisville's 2013 team, since the NCAA vacated that title. That leaves us eighty-one tournament champs from 1939 to 2021. I disagree with judging teams by subjective measures, and so I decided on a point system based on the scoring margin and the seed of the opponent. It's generally true to me that beating a 1 seed, for example, is a much bigger deal than beating a 5 seed.

So I decided to value each game as a simple equation of (17 minus seed) times margin of victory. This led to a question of how to total up values, since earlier tournaments did not have 68 or 64 teams, and so there were fewer games. Of course, this also means that earlier champions never played low-seed opponents, so it kind of balances out, but to be fair, I finally decided to use three measures:

Score just for the championship game
Score for just the last two games (Final 4 weekend)
Aggregate score for the tournament

This produced the following results:

Most Dominant Championship Game
1. UNLV over Duke in 1990, 103-73
2. Indiana over Kansas in 1940, 62-40
3. Ohio State over California in 1960, 75-55
4. UCLA over N Carolina in 1968, 78-55
5. UCLA over Memphis in 1973, 87-66
(9) Baylor over Gonzaga in 2021, 86-70

Most Dominating Tournament
1. UCLA 1968 (4,979 points)
2. Ohio St 1960 (4,457 points)
3. UNLV 1990(4,327 points)
4. UCLA 1967 (3,980 points)
5. Indiana 1940 (3,888 points)
(7) Baylor 2021 (3,700 points)

Most Dominant Final Four Weekend
1. UCLA 1968 (beat Houston and UNC by 55 agg)
2. UNLV 1990 (beat Ga Tech and Duke by 39 agg)
3. Ohio St 1960 (beat New York U and Cal by 42 agg)
4. Indiana 1940 (beat Duquesne and Kansas by 31 agg)
5. Baylor 2021 (beat Houston and Gonzaga by 35 agg)


Again, these results are for 81 national champions, so it's fair to say that by the numbers this Baylor team is among the very best.

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Thanks for posting!

Quick question: Shouldn't Baylor be #4 in the final category? 35 > 31

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It's how the points worked out, listed the aggregate for fun

I don't even think the numbers accurately reflect the severity of the beatdown put on Gonzaga. This was over at 29-10.

If not for Gonzaga going completely scorched earth midway thru the 1st half (switching to zone, putting Suggs back in w/ 2 fouls, forcing whistles/fouls on offense), this would have easily been a 25 point halftime deficit.

Thanks for the explanation. I thought that was what was being ranked.

Hotsauce said:

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I don't even think the numbers accurately reflect the severity of the beatdown put on Gonzaga. This was over at 29-10.

If not for Gonzaga going completely scorched earth midway thru the 1st half (switching to zone, putting Suggs back in w/ 2 fouls, forcing whistles/fouls on offense), this would have easily been a 25 point halftime deficit.

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At that point refs were also inserting themselves and beat down some of the Baylor momentum.

His free throws were much improved. Clearly he put in work

He broke many backboards with layups. Many many backboards

I suspect it was to OAS his OR stats though