Randy Smith
With the NCAA Tournament for 2017 beginning today, ( I know we've had the "First Four" play in games the last two nights, but I decided that Criminal Minds and Designated Survivor were more interesting) I did some research and found some little known facts about the tournament.
Did you know...
A total of 96 NCAA victories have been vacated by the NCAA for rules violations since the inception of the tournament. No Kentucky..... you can't have them.
Kansas City Missouri has hosted the most Final Fours with ten.
The most recent being 1988.
The most watched NCAA Tournament game ever was the 1979 Championship game between Michigan State and Indiana State. ("Magic" Johnson versus Larry Bird.) The 24.1 rating is still the highest in NCAA Tournament history.
Kentucky and Marquette is the most frequent tournament match up, with the two schools meeting a grand total of ten times.
Texas has had more NCAA Tournament entries than any other state with 23. Only one Texas team has ever won a national title, that being UTEP, (then Texas Western) in 1966. The Miners, with an all-African American lineup, scored a famous victory over all-white Kentucky in the finals.
The lowest seeded team to ever win a national title was #8 seed Villanova in 1985.
A lot of teams cry foul when they are not chosen to the NCAA field but perhaps the biggest injustice was in 2004 when Utah State was denied a bid even though the Aggies were an amazing 25-3 on the year.
Kentucky has had great NCAA Tournament success but their eight national titles have been won by five different coaches. Adolph Rupp, Joe B. Hall, Rick Pitino, Tubby Smith and John Calipari.
The UCLA Bruins of 1967 are the most dominant team in tournament history, winning four games in the "Big Dance" by an average of better than 23 points per game. The 1967 season started the Bruins on their way to a record seven straight NCAA crowns.
In 1975 Syracuse played a total of three overtime games, the most ever by one team in one tournament. The Orange lost in the Final Four.
The winningest program in NCAA Tournament history is Duke. The Blue Devils are 99-34 in 133 tournament games. That's a winning percentage of 74.4%. Duke has won four national titles.
North Carolina, Duke's biggest rival has more top seeds than any other school. The Tar Heels have entered the tournament as a top seed a total of 15 times, including this year.
Get the pizza and wings ready. It starts today!
* * *
Randy Smith has been covering sports on radio, television and print for the past 45 years. After leaving WRCB-TV in 2009, he has written two books, and has continued to free-lance as a play-by-play announcer. His career has included a 17-year stretch as host of the Kickoff Call In Show on the University of Tennessee’s prestigious Vol Network. He has been a member of the Vol Network staff for 30 years. He has done play-by-play on ESPN, ESPN II, CSS, and Fox SportSouth, totaling more than 500 games, and served as a well-known sports anchor on Chattanooga television for more than a quarter-century. In 2003, he became the first television broadcaster to be inducted into the Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame. Randy and his wife Shelia reside in Hixson. They have two married children, Christi and Chris Perry; Davey and Alison Smith. They have five grandchildren, Coleman, Boone, Mattingly, DellaMae, and CoraLee.