I went ahead and actually crunched the numbers. The following stats are for the NCAA tournaments from 2004 - 2014.
Over the course of those ten years there have been 74 different teams in the Sweet 16. Of those 74, only 18 have an appearance % of 40% or above.
Sweet 16 appearance % (2004-2014)
40%
Syracuse
Washington
Villanova
Memphis
UCLA
Tennessee
50%
Xavier
UCONN
Arizona
Louisville
West Virginia
North Carolina
Kentucky
Florida
Ohio State
60%
Oddly no one made it exactly 6 out of 10 times.
70%
KU
Duke
Michigan State
So perhaps my idealism of 75% was a little too high. But a 50-60% appearance rate doesn't seem all that unreasonable as a goal for an elite program.
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Interesting - this sort of validates my theory that the Big 12 and the SEC have always been more focused on football. Thus it allows a school like KU to dominate their league basketball. Notice that the Big 12 each only have 1 team in that list. You cannot count W. Virginia as they have only been in the Big 12 two of those 10 years.
I was explaining this to a friend. I said have you noticed that Nebraska has never went after a big time coach in BB. They have the money to match any school in the country. Same with Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas A&M. You know KU, N. Carolina, Duke, UCLA ...... etc would not have put up with Rick Barnes record considering the talent he has had.
Also why do many of the good coaches leave the Big 12 when they were up-n-comers. Why not stay in the conference. The only two that have stayed are Bill Self. Fred Hoiberg might stay.
Mark Turgeon,
Kelvin Sampson
Billy Gillespie
Lon Kruger
Roy Williams
Mike Anderson
Tim Floyd
Lately, the Big 12 gets most of its coaches who have been fired from better programs and are on the decline in their career. All had great success at one time but not at their last stop. The exception may be Eddie Sutton.
Lon Krueger (current)
Tubby Smith (current)
Billy Gillespie
Bobby Knight
Bob Huggins (current)
Eddie Sutton
Trent Johnson (Current)
Tubby Smith (current)
Also has anyone noticed that if you are a perennial powerhouse in Basketball then your football team usually is not very good and usually has been bad. (KU, Kentucky, Duke, N. Carolina) I think those 4 teams are probably in the Top 5 all time NCAA basketball appearances. On 2 teams on that list (Florida, Ohio State) are blue blood football programs. It must be hard to have a great team in both Football and Basketball. I don't know why.