SCMatt33
01-15-2012, 01:05 AM
At this point, everyone is well aware of UNC's 33 point shellacking at the hands of unranked Florida State. After the game, Mike DeCourcy of The Sporting News wrote an article questioning whether or not UNC could ultimately recover (http://aol.sportingnews.com/ncaa-basketball/story/2012-01-14/north-carolina-might-not-recover-from-florida-state-beatdown) to be a title contender after such a bad loss. That got me thinking as to what the worst losses for eventual national champions were. I immediate thought of us in 2010 with Georgetown, but forgot that a late run brought the final margin down to only 12. In fact, by margin, the NC State loss was the worst one that year, losing by 14. Using statsheet.com (http://www.statsheet.com) for game info, and collegepollarchive.com (http://www.collegepollarchive.com) for rankings, I looked up the worst losses by eventual national champions since 1981 (as far back as Stat Sheet had info). I found 10 games in which a champion got blown out by 17 points or more. Losses by less than that margin seemed pretty common, especially one you got under 15.
Year
Team
Margin
Opponent
Opp Rank
1993
UNC
26
Wake
NR
1985
Villanova
23
Pittsburgh
NR*
1991
Duke
22
UNC
7
2002
Maryland
21
Duke
1
1988
Kansas
19
Iowa
11
1983
NC State
18
UNC
3
1983
NC State
18
Wake
NR*
2011
UConn
17
St. John's
NR
1999
UConn
17
Syracuse
16
1991
Duke
17
Virginia
19
I found several interesting facts about this list. For UNC to win the title, they would have to break their own record by 7 points. The next week after their current record setting game, that Wake team jumped all the way from unranked to 13, a pretty incredible jump for a single week during conference season. UNC did get their revenge a month later, beating that same Wake team by 18.
Duke seems to be very involved in this list on several level. The 1991 team has the distinction of being only one of two teams (NC State 1983) to appear on the list twice, losing to UVA and later by 22 to UNC in the ACC tourney. Duke would of coarse match that 22 point margin if they were to win a title this year. Duke was involved in a total of 3 of the games, and only Villanova in 1985 and UConn in 2011 did not play Duke at some point during the season.
Not only did NC State make the list twice in 1983, the two games were only 3 days apart, occurring on Wednesday and Saturday of the same week.
If you think this sounds a little ACC heavy, you're right. 6 of the 10 games were ACC games, with all 4 ACC programs to win a title appearing on the list.
I was also surprised to see that 4 of the 10 winning teams were unranked, while only 3 were top 10 teams, although given some information from the surrounding weeks, I feel like Wake in 1983 might have been in the top 25 that week had the polls extended that far.
As a whole over the last 31 seasons, 8 champions (just over 25%) lost a game by at least 17, though it's only happened once in the last 9 years. I was quite surprised to see how common that is, and hopefully we can see Duke 2012 slip right into the middle of that list for next year.
*AP poll only had 20 teams before 1990
Year
Team
Margin
Opponent
Opp Rank
1993
UNC
26
Wake
NR
1985
Villanova
23
Pittsburgh
NR*
1991
Duke
22
UNC
7
2002
Maryland
21
Duke
1
1988
Kansas
19
Iowa
11
1983
NC State
18
UNC
3
1983
NC State
18
Wake
NR*
2011
UConn
17
St. John's
NR
1999
UConn
17
Syracuse
16
1991
Duke
17
Virginia
19
I found several interesting facts about this list. For UNC to win the title, they would have to break their own record by 7 points. The next week after their current record setting game, that Wake team jumped all the way from unranked to 13, a pretty incredible jump for a single week during conference season. UNC did get their revenge a month later, beating that same Wake team by 18.
Duke seems to be very involved in this list on several level. The 1991 team has the distinction of being only one of two teams (NC State 1983) to appear on the list twice, losing to UVA and later by 22 to UNC in the ACC tourney. Duke would of coarse match that 22 point margin if they were to win a title this year. Duke was involved in a total of 3 of the games, and only Villanova in 1985 and UConn in 2011 did not play Duke at some point during the season.
Not only did NC State make the list twice in 1983, the two games were only 3 days apart, occurring on Wednesday and Saturday of the same week.
If you think this sounds a little ACC heavy, you're right. 6 of the 10 games were ACC games, with all 4 ACC programs to win a title appearing on the list.
I was also surprised to see that 4 of the 10 winning teams were unranked, while only 3 were top 10 teams, although given some information from the surrounding weeks, I feel like Wake in 1983 might have been in the top 25 that week had the polls extended that far.
As a whole over the last 31 seasons, 8 champions (just over 25%) lost a game by at least 17, though it's only happened once in the last 9 years. I was quite surprised to see how common that is, and hopefully we can see Duke 2012 slip right into the middle of that list for next year.
*AP poll only had 20 teams before 1990