Before we were given the great privilege of experiencing the two opening days of tournament play we had a little insight on which stats can get you into the tournament. If you read the first post, you know we looked at each stat from NCAA.com and took the top 15 in the country and looked at how many of those teams had made the tournament.

As you could imagine, some stats were more common than others. Scoring defense, not as common as you would think. Only 5 teams in the top 15 found themselves in the NCAA Tournament. Scoring offense , 11 teams from the top 15 went dancing. Certain stats were surprising and some of them were pretty obvious. Each team in the top 15 in scoring margin made the tournament…..shocker. What other stat mattered the most? Assists per game. All 15 saw their name called on Selection Sunday. Selfishly I’d love for this trend to continue. Some of the least frequent stats seen the in the tournament…

BENCH POINTS- Great teams have a great players. Great players need to play a ton.

FREE THROW ATTEMPTS PER- This is surprising . LSU is at 1 and has taking 118 more than Jackson St who is 2(both tournament teams)

FREE THROWS MADE PER, FREE THROW PERCENTAGE, STEALS AND 3FG DEF %

Excited to see what happens when some great statistical teams, but not big power house teams get knocked out.

Here is what the stats say for round 2 team. Assists, FG% and Rebounding seem to remain relevant. Free Throws, Points Allowed and Steals are fading as teams move on in the tournament.