How to pick the tiebreaker for your 2021 March Madness bracket
You’ve spent hours poring over your bracket, making sure everything is in order. You have your national champion. You have your upset picks. You have your Cinderellas penciled into the Sweet 16 (and possibly beyond). Now all that’s left is deciding the total number of points scored in the championship game, the most common tiebreaker when two or more participants in a pool have the same point total at the end of the tournament. The person with the guess closest to the total points scored in the championship game would be the winner.
Don’t just guess blindly. Since 1985, when the tournament expanded to 64 teams, the national title game has averaged 145 total points. That is higher, of course, for the four games that went into overtime (157 total points, on average). The most total points scored in regulation was in 1990, when UNLV beat Duke, 103-73. The fewest total points scored came in 2011, when Connecticut beat Butler, 53-41, the same year the tournament expanded to 68 teams.
The average total points scored in the final since then has been 135, and that includes the only overtime game in that span when Virginia beat Texas Tech, 85-77, in 2019. There was no tournament played last year
How many points you choose should be determined by the teams you have in the final. For example, No. 1 seeds average 75 points per game in the final while No. 3 seeds average 71 points. The three times an No. 8 seed has crashed the party they have only averaged 54 points per game. Keep that in mind when making your educated guess.
Tempo also plays a role in the final outcome of the championship game. A team like No. 1 Gonzaga, which averages 75 possessions per 40 minutes, plays significantly faster than No. 7 Clemson, which averages 65 possessions per 40 minutes. Gonzaga scores 122.4 points per 100 possessions, Clemson just 100.1, which projects to a final score of 81-63 in Gonzaga’s favor if these two were to meet on a neutral court. If Gonzaga were to face Baylor (123.8 offensive rating, 69 possessions per 40 minutes) on a neutral court we would expect a score of 83-79 in Gonzaga’s favor. That’s a difference of 18 points in the total score, depending on Gonzaga’s opponent.
Since 2011, No. 1 seeds have dominated the national title game with nine appearances in nine years. One of the top three seeds in the tournament have occupied 14 of the 18 slots available in the national title game. If we limit our national title finalists to the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 seeds, here are the projected total points scored by those teams on a neutral court.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMCxu9GtqmhqYGd%2BcHySaGhxZ6SesqO%2BxJqinqpdo661tc6nmKVlk52urrzIqKWsoJmleqitzJ5kppmimLVuucCdpZ6ro2Q%3D