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It’s that time of year again.

Spring time? Planting season? The beginning of allergy season? Well, yes to all of those. But also: March Madness!

For basketball fans, it’s the best time of year. It’s when we get to see a season’s worth of hard work culminate in a tournament to showcase the best of the best. There will be incredible feats of athleticism, stories of triumph and heartbreak, and surely plenty of surprising upsets along the way.

Last year was incredibly fun to watch as an NC State fan. The men’s team went on a crazy five-game winning streak to win the ACC conference tournament as the underdogs, and then won enough games to reach the Final Four. The women’s team was just as successful and fun to watch, also reaching the Final Four of their NCAA tournament. What a cool accomplishment for them both!

This year, however, the fortune of the men’s team was completely different. They didn’t play well enough to reach the conference or national tournament, and the university “parted ways” with Coach Kevin Keatts recently. But the women’s team has continued winning games, and they’re a high-ranking team in the national tournament this year. It’ll be nice to watch them play!

Truthfully, I’m not upset about the men’s team missing the tournament this year. Some years are just like that. And now I’m able to enjoy the tournament without being too invested in any one team. There’s a different kind of fun in just cheering for random teams and not knowing who is expected to come out on top.

I didn’t have a chance to watch many basketball games at all this season. Just a few holiday tournaments back in November, and a couple of NC State’s games. (Despite the odds, they did win the game vs. Wake Forest that I attended back in February!)

So I have no idea who’s favored to win the NCAA tournament this year. Which teams are shouldering the weight of expectations as the games begin? Which teams are ready to prove that you can’t count them out yet? We shall see.

As usual, there are 68 teams selected to participate in the men’s tournament this year. But that doesn’t include West Virginia, since they just barely missed the tournament this year. The governor of the state got so mad about the snub that he even held an angry press conference, called the NCAA the “National Corrupt Athletic Association,” and asked for an investigation into the organization.

This kind of silliness is what March Madness is all about, right?

The tournament will already be underway by the time you read this, but I figured I would still share some interesting stats and facts about the teams who are playing this year and the tournament itself, courtesy of CBS Sports.

The team with the highest number of points per game this season is Alabama, averaging 91.1 points per game. The team with the worst free-throw percentage is Liberty at 65.4 percent this season. Houston is the best team of 3-point shooters at 39.8 percent this season.

Duke is listed as the tallest team in this year’s tournament, with an average height of 79.8 inches. Conversely, Akron is the shortest, with an average of 75.1 inches.

The best scorer in the field is PJ Haggerty from Memphis, who averages 21.8 points per game. The player with the best free-throw percentage is Missouri’s Tamar Bates, at a staggering 94.3 percent. UC San Diego’s Hayden Gray has the highest average for steals at 3.2 per game.

The best 3-point shooter is Kamari McGee from Wisconsin, at 47.6 percent (which is, you may notice, a better percentage than the whole Houston team’s average.)

This is the 86th NCAA tournament, but only 37 different teams have won a national title. (Oregon was the first winner.)

Not counting this year’s games, there have been 3,703 games played over the tournament’s history.

Kentucky has participated in the tournament 63 times, which is the most of any other school. BYU is making their 32nd appearance, which is the most of any team that’s never reached the Final Four.

Apparently, no team has lost its first conference tournament game and then went on to win a national title. But in the past 26 NCAA tournaments, 14 of the winning teams also won their conference tournament.

Among the teams this year, Duke and Drake have the fewest number of losses this year (3) and Saint Francis has the most (17). (But you can add another loss to their total since they also lost their first game of the tournament to Alabama State. Which is kind of sad considering that it’s been 34 years since St. Francis last appeared in the NCAA tournament.)

The 1985 tournament was the only year that a majority of the teams in the Final Four were from the same conference. (Those teams were from the Big East that year.) The last time there was a title game match-up between teams from the same conference was 1988. (Those teams, Kansas and Oklahoma, were from the Big 12.)

2008 was the only year that all four number one seeds reached the Final Four.

Tennessee’s coach Rick Barnes is making his 29th appearance in the tournament this year. That’s two more times than the Tennessee team itself has been in the tournament!

And lastly, four teams are making their tournament debut this year: High Point, SIU Edwardsville, Omaha, and UC San Diego. That makes a total of 336 schools that have participated in the NCAA tournament since its inception.

Let’s see how the 2025 tournament turns out!

 Holly Taylor is a Staff Writer for Roanoke-Chowan Publications. Contact her at holly.taylor@r-cnews.com or 252-332-7206.