Wisconsin won the 1941 national title and then faded into basketball obscurity for a long time. The Badgers didn’t return to the Final Four until 59 years later, in 2000. Then came a 14-year wait for the third Final Four in 2014. The fourth Final Four was stacked on the next season in 2015.
Four Final Fours. That is Wisconsin’s tally. Where does that stack up against the rest of college basketball?
Keep in mind that the 2019 Final Four was the 81st Final Four. That means 324 Final Four berths have been allotted in college basketball history. Wisconsin has four of them, or 1.2 percent of all Final Four berths.
Hmmm. That seems really small.
Wisconsin must be like 60th in the country (in a massive tie with 15-20 other schools) in terms of Final Four berths. Right?
Wrong. The number of schools with more Final Four berths than Wisconsin is a LOT smaller.
40? Smaller. 30? Smaller. 25? Nope. Smaller.
The number of schools with more Final Four berths than Wisconsin — a school which made one Final Four in a span of 72 seasons from 1942 through 2013 — is only 21.
Are you surprised? I know I was when I looked this up. I didn’t sit down and go through a mental list, but I assumed a lot more schools had more than four Final Fours.
Let’s see how many schools you can come up with of those 21, off the top of your head, without looking it up. (This includes vacated Final Fours, because the teams and coaches still had their actual moment on court at a Final Four — I find vacated/stripped achievements to be stupid and pointless.)
North Carolina. Kentucky. UCLA. Duke. Michigan State. Indiana. Kansas. That’s seven.
Louisville. Connecticut. Arkansas. Michigan. Florida. Oklahoma State (formerly called Oklahoma A&M). That’s 13.
Oklahoma. Ohio State. That’s 15… and it’s getting pretty difficult here.
Villanova. Houston. That’s 17.
Syracuse. 18.
Georgetown. 19… and that’s all I could come up with WITHOUT looking it up. There are a few schools which, in my mind, MIGHT have more than five Final Fours, but I don’t know for sure.
Those two schools: Cincinnati and Illinois, rounding out the 21 schools with more Final Fours than Wisconsin.
The Badgers are therefore tied for 22nd among all Division I men’s basketball schools in Final Four appearances. If that doesn’t blow your mind, maybe this next fact will: The number of schools which have made the Final Four but have made fewer appearances than Wisconsin is…
… wait for it…
okay, here we go: 68.
Only 21 Final Four schools have more appearances than UW, but 68 have fewer appearances… and of course, this doesn’t count the schools without a single Final Four to their credit.
Maybe you already knew this — some of you probably did — but I’d bet you wouldn’t have guessed that Wisconsin is a top-25 all-time college basketball program when it comes to the sport’s central achievement: making the Final Four.
On, Wisconsin.