Andy Wittry | NCAA.com | March 13, 2022

Why losing streaks shouldn't really matter when filling out your NCAA tournament bracket

Best Dunks from the National Championship

Are you sitting down? Because you probably should before reading this: Losing streaks don't really matter when filling out your NCAA tournament bracket.

What!? Blasphemy!

Yes, you read that second sentence correctly. Go back and read it again if you want. There's a variety of strategies basketball fans employ when making their March Madness picks: which school's colors they like better, which team's mascot might win in a theoretical fight, which school's name is more fun to say and yes, how teams have recently performed on the court.

We're here to dispel that final notion. We analyzed the results from the last 23 NCAA tournaments and found 79 teams that entered the tournament on a losing streak of at least two games. Forty-seven of those teams (roughly 60 percent) won their Round of 64 matchup. We did not include wins in the First Four.

Length of Losing Streak	Number of Teams	Combined Wins	Avg. Wins
Five losses	1	0	0.00
Four losses	4	6	1.50
Three losses	15	13	0.87
Two losses	59	70	1.19

In total, those teams combined for 89 wins in the NCAA tournament, including 17 Sweet 16s, three Elite Eights and six Final Four appearances, so roughly a third of those teams made the second weekend of the tournament. The most notable and recent example of a team making a deep NCAA tournament run immediately after a losing streak was No. 11 seed UCLA in the 2021 NCAA Tournament, which had lost its final three regular-season games and its first game in the Pac-12 tournament, before it rattled off five wins in a row to become the second team to ever go from the First Four to the Final Four.

The Bruins repeatedly found themselves in tight games. Their loss to the Oregon State Beavers in the Pac-12 tournament, their fourth straight loss, was in overtime, as was their Final Four loss to No. 1 seed Gonzaga. Two of UCLA's five NCAA tournament wins also went to overtime.

Tournament Finish After Losing Streak	Number of Teams
First Four	3
Round of 64	29
Round of 32	21
Sweet 16	17
Elite Eight	3
Final Four	6

This data doesn't suggest that you should automatically pencil in a team on a three-game losing streak into the Final Four, but don't write off a team in the first round just because it left a sour taste in your mouth when you saw that it lost its regular-season finale and the first game in its conference tournament. In fact, the last seven NCAA tournament teams that entered March Madness on a losing streak won at least one game in the tournament, including a pair of teams that were on a four-game slide entering Selection Sunday.

Of course, it's relatively rare for teams to enter the NCAA tournament on a losing streak, given the single-elimination nature of conference tournaments, so there won't be any teams on a losing streak that also earned an automatic bid. Typically, there might be three or four teams per season that make the tournament following a multiple-game losing streak and given that they're at-large teams, the rest of their resume is strong enough that they were still able to make the tournament despite a small, late-season slide, so their ceiling is probably higher than the losing streak might suggest.

Here's a complete list of teams in the last 23 NCAA tournaments that have entered the tournament on a losing streak of at least two games.

Year	School	Losing Streak	Tournament Finish
2021	UCLA	4 games	Final Four
2021	Villanova	2 games	Sweet 16
2021	Texas Tech	2 games	Round of 32
2021	West Virginia	2 games	Round of 32
2019	UCF	2 games	Round of 32
2019	Baylor	4 games	Round of 32
2019	Oklahoma	2 games	Round of 32
2018	Creighton	2 games	Round of 64
2018	Virginia Tech	2 games	Round of 64
2018	TCU	2 games	Round of 64
2018	Arizona State	2 games	Round of 64
2017	Florida	2 games	Elite Eight
2017	South Carolina	2 games	Final Four
2017	Oklahoma State	3 games	Round of 64
2017	Butler	2 games	Sweet 16
2017	Dayton	2 games	Round of 64
2016	Vanderbilt	2 games	First Four
2016	Wisconsin	2 games	Sweet 16
2016	Iowa State	2 games	Sweet 16
2016	Syracuse	3 games	Final Four
2015	Oklahoma State	2 games	Round of 64
2015	Ole Miss	2 games	Round of 64
2015	St. John's	2 games	Round of 64
2014	North Carolina	2 games	Round of 32
2014	Kansas State	3 games	Round of 64
2014	Arizona State	3 games	Round of 64
2014	Iowa	3 games	First Four
2013	Oklahoma	2 games	Round of 64
2013	Minnesota	3 games	Round of 32
2013	La Salle	2 games	Sweet 16
2013	California	2 games	Round of 32
2011	Villanova	5 games	Round of 64
2011	Wisconsin	2 games	Sweet 16
2011	Purdue	2 games	Round of 32
2011	Georgetown	4 games	Round of 64
2010	Clemson	2 games	Round of 64
2010	Missouri	2 games	Round of 32
2010	Villanova	2 games	Round of 32
2010	Syracuse	2 games	Sweet 16
2009	Connecticut	2 games	Final Four
2009	California	2 games	Round of 64
2009	Clemson	2 games	Round of 64
2008	Louisville	2 games	Elite Eight
2008	Indiana	2 games	Round of 64
2007	Vanderbilt	2 games	Sweet 16
2007	Virginia	2 games	Round of 32
2007	Stanford	2 games	Round of 64
2007	UCLA	2 games	Final Four
2007	Duke	3 games	Round of 64
2006	West Virginia	2 games	Sweet 16
2006	North Carolina State	4 games	Round of 32
2006	Alabama	2 games	Round of 32
2006	Oklahoma	2 games	Round of 64
2006	Wisconsin	3 games	Round of 64
2005	Charlotte	3 games	Round of 64
2004	Wake Forest	3 games	Sweet 16
2004	Memphis	2 games	Round of 32
2004	Providence	3 games	Round of 64
2004	North Carolina	2 games	Round of 32
2003	Florida	3 games	Round of 32
2003	Maryland	2 games	Sweet 16
2003	Alabama	2 games	Round of 64
2003	Cincinnati	2 games	Round of 64
2002	Georgia	2 games	Round of 32
2002	UCLA	2 games	Sweet 16
2001	Georgia	2 games	Round of 64
2001	Virginia	2 games	Round of 64
2001	Notre Dame	3 games	Round of 32
2001	Xavier	2 games	Round of 64
2000	Indiana	2 games	Round of 64
2000	North Carolina	2 games	Final Four
2000	Syracuse	2 games	Sweet 16
2000	Purdue	2 games	Elite Eight
1999	Purdue	3 games	Sweet 16
1999	Iowa	2 games	Sweet 16
1998	Michigan State	2 games	Sweet 16
1998	West Virginia	3 games	Sweet 16
1998	Western Michigan	2 games	Round of 32
1998	Oklahoma State	2 games	Round of 32