Winning a bracket pool isn’t an easy thing to do. It requires a massive amount of luck on top of plenty of basketball know-how and an eye for seeing beyond the statistics. After all, they call it March Madness for a reason: Anything can happen.
Considering the odds of picking a perfect bracket are basically impossible (1 in 9.2 quintillion), most bracket groups see a winner who successfully picks the correct winner in about 50 games.
But when two players are tied, pools use a tiebreaker to determine a winner. That tiebreaker is usually the combined score of the national championship game.
So to give you a leg up on the competition, let’s break down the numbers.
Historical Average Points Scored in NCAA Championship Games
Since 2000, the average combined final score of the men’s national championship game is 141. Of course, college basketball is a volatile sport. There have been plenty of instances over the last 25 years when scores fall well short of 141 (Butler and UConn combined to score just 94 in 2011) or clock in well above (Baylor and Gonzaga’s combined score was 156).
It’s important to cater your tiebreaker score to your selected matchup. If you’ve got two teams in the title game with a high pace of play, then you’re going to want to bump up your total. If you’ve got two slower, defensive-oriented teams, bring it down a bit.
Things get a bit more tricky if you have clashing styles meeting in your championship game. Generally, a team’s offense rating (or more specifically, a team’s offensive efficiency) tends to be a better indicator of success than defensive rating. So it might be worth attempting to stick as close to that 141 mark as possible.
However, when looking at most of the favorites to cut down the nets this year, they all lean towards offensive output. Auburn, Florida, Duke, Houston, Tennessee and Alabama all have very efficient offenses. If one of those teams is in your projected title game, you're probably going to want to bump that point total up some.
Recent NCAA Championship Game Scores
More College Basketball on Sports Illustrated
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Average Points Scored in March Madness Finals: How to Figure Out Your Tiebreaker Score.
