What is the highest seed to win the NCAA Tournament? Exploring the trends and patterns of past winners and their seeds

Just like in any other team sport, the best teams always have the best chance of capturing a championship, including the NCAA Tournament. They're the best for a reason, and their regular season and postseason performances always reflect that.

As such, don't be surprised to know about how many 1-seeds have won the NCAA tournament, because there are a lot of them. Some of them could arguably have had more dominant runs compared to others, but it all just proves one thing.

If a team is the consensus best in the nation, they're most likely going to win it all when it's all said and done.

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What is the highest seed to win the NCAA Tournament?

Top seeds have won the most NCAA championships in men's basketball, as expected: 24 national titles.

Moreover, 12 of the last 16 national champions have also been top seeds (via NCAA.com). So as much as fans would love an underdog story, it pays in the postseason to have a dominant regular season backing it up.

When one goes further down the ladder, though (from 2-seed onwards), things begin to drop off pretty heavily. Only five 2-seeded teams have won a national title, for one, a massive difference from top seeds.

Furthermore, this difference in championships won also has a bit of an effect in how all the top seeded teams in each bracket perform in the Final Four.

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How top seeds perform in the Final Four

Historically, the Final Four has almost always seen the better teams move on to the championship game, but here's an interesting tidbit:

Only once in NCAA history did the Final Four feature all four 1-seeds from their respective brackets. That was in 2008, when Kansas, Memphis, North Carolina and UCLA made it there.

The Jayhawks and the Tigers would eventually match up in the title game, featuring a young Derrick Rose for Memphis and future Miami Heat starter Mario Chalmers for Kansas. The Jayhawks won the championship against a Tigers team that had a dominant season, losing only twice all year.

It was one of the 28 times a 1 seed at least featured in the national championship game. As previously mentioned, 24 of them won the title, which means there have been massive upsets.

March Madness never makes teams play multiple-game series, unlike the NBA Playoffs, so it's safe to assume that every NCAA tournament is ripe for a potential upset.