March Madness: Syracuse's Melo out and other fast NCAA tournament facts

9. Sportscaster Brent Musburger is credited with popularizing the use of “March Madness” in referring to the tournament in the 1980s.

10. This year the tournament concludes in New Orleans at the Superdome, where four previous championship games have been decided by an average of 2.7 points.

11. Baylor could produce the best overall postseason showing of any school. The men are 27-7 and the Lady Bears 34-0.

12. The highest scoring player in this year’s tournament is Creighton’s Doug McDermott (23.1 points per game), who leads the nation’s most accurate shooting team (50.9 percent).

13. The stingiest defensive team in the nation: Wisconsin, which gives up only 51.8 points a game.

14. Florida State enters the tournament with a very impressive double: a pair of wins this season over perennial Atlantic Coast Conference powers North Carolina and Duke.

15. Cinderella candidates: Wichita State, South Dakota State, Long Island, Montana, St. Mary’s, Mississippi Valley State, et al.

16. North Carolina leads the nation with five teams in the field: North Carolina, Duke, UNC-Asheville, NC State, and Davidson.

17. The schools in this year’s tournament that that do the best job of graduating their players are Belmont, Creighton, Duke, Harvard, Western Kentucky, Davidson, Notre Dame, and Brigham Young.

18. Indiana University, which finished last in the Big Ten Conference four years ago, has returned from the dead with a 25-8 record. 

19. The minimum seating capacity to host the Final Four is 70,000. In 2013, Atlanta’s Georgia Dome hosts the finals, with Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, to follow in 2014.

20. Harvard is making its first appearance in the tournament since 1946 and is doing so without Harvard grad and current NBA phenom Jeremy Lin.

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