Dimensions of the epically biggest ever Sweet 16 beatdown

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UConn has certainly done well enough in Sweet 16 games, going 21-2 at a nice 91% winning rate, but they never quite held a demolition derby before like they did on Saturday with the 51 point 105-54 win over Texas. The Huskies' most massive previous S16 win was back in 2010 with a 74-36 win over Iowa State, a 38 point margin that just eclipsed Stanford's 37 point win in that round, with the two teams headed for an NC meeting. So just how extraordinary was the performance?

Even by UConn's standards the win was a couple of levels beyond the usual. UConn entered the game having posted an average score of 75.1-60.6 and 14.5 winning margin in its previous 22 games, which has now expanded a bit to 76.3-60.3 and 16.0 margin. So they scored 30 more points than usual and won by 3 1/2 times the usual margin. The previous largest offensive total for UConn was in the 102-80 win over Oklahoma in 2000. In the years that UConn has won an NC, it has averaged a 22.8 winning margin, stretching from the 38 points in 2010 to the small 6 point win UC Santa Barbara in 2004. Only in 1995 when they beat Alabama by 87-56, 2009 with a 77-53 win over California, and in 2010 in the Iowa State victory did they have the largest margin among the S16 winners and then go on to win an NC.

But how does the win stack up against all of the 272 Sweet 16 results ever in the NCAA tournament? Couple of factoids:

• The 51 point margin exceeded the biggest previous mark by 7. Louisiana Tech in 1990 and Notre Dame in 2012 both had 44 point S16 wins, and the three other 40+ point margins belong to LSU at 42 points in 2005, Texas A&M at 41 points in 2011, and Texas at 40 in 1987. So UConn just leapfrogged to a whole new level at 51. Texas A&M is the only one of the previous 5 gigantic winners who won an NC while doing so.
• The 105 points reached a new high in S16 games, though just barely. The offensive machine Long Beach State scored 104 back in 1988, and Virginia got 103 in 1992. The only other 100+ mark was of course UConn's 102 in 2000.
• The average score in S16 games is now 75.9-61.8, with a 14.1 margin. So UConn put up more than 29 points above the average points and exceeded the usual margin by 37. Sweet 16 games have tended to be fairly close as teams have gotten down to a more even basis by the third round, and 35% of the games have been decided by double digits and 14% by 3 or less points.
• Of teams winning NCs, 12 of the past 33 winners had the largest margin in the S16, pretty much echoing UConn's 3 of 9 rate with the 1995, 2009, and 2010 seasons. Over the last six years the NC winners have had at least a 15 point margin in the S16, and no team has ever won the NC with the smallest margin in the eight games, but teams that have won with the second smallest margin or one below 10 points include UTenn in 1991 with a 7 point margin, UNC in 1994 with just a 4 point margin, UTenn again in 1997 with an 8 point win, UConn in 2004 with a 6 point win, Baylor in 2005 with a 7 point win, and UTenn with a 10 point margin in 2008 that was the second lowest.