The March Madness bracket and the 68 teams still alive to compete for a national championship in college basketball now know their fate. North Carolina is in, Auburn is the top seed overall in the bracket and the NCAA Tournament brackets are ready to be filled out so hoops fans can try their best to be perfect. That's unlikely, but hey, at least you can go out and try to win your bracket pool.
Obviously, the biggest part of winning a March Madness bracket pool is getting the picks right from the first round all the way through the Final Four. At the same time, though, there is a tiebreaker on every bracket pool as well — and most of the time, that tiebreaker is to try and predict the total number of points scored in the National Championship Game.
For some, especially if you aren't a college basketball fan until March Madness arrives, that can be a wild thing to even consider. You might not even know where to start in terms of predicting the total points for the championship game, especially with a potential pool win on the line. We've got the help you need, though, looking back at the average championship game scores in the NCAA Tournament to help you land on the right number for the 2025 tourney.
Average March Madness championship game final score
The average final score for March Madness championship games since 2000 comes in at 141 points. The highest total over that span actually came in 2000 when Michigan State won its last national title in an 89-76 barnburner over Florida. Those 165 total points are an outlier as only a handful of games have reached 160 or more total points in the last 20-plus years.
It only makes sense to look at more recent games given how college basketball has changed over the years. For instance, in the first eight years of the NCAA Tournament in the 1930s and '40s, only one national championship cleared 100 total points. Then offense boomed in the '80s but we've settled into something better of late.
Average final score March Madness championship games the last five years
Year | Teams and Final Score | Total Points |
|---|---|---|
2024 | UConn 75, Purdue 60 | 135 |
2023 | UConn 76, San Diego St 59 | 135 |
2022 | Kansas 72, North Carolina 69 | 141 |
2021 | Baylor 86, Gonzaga 70 | 146 |
2019 | Virginia 85, Texas Tech 77 (OT) | 162 |
When we zoom in even closer to the last five men's college basketball national championships, though, the average final score moves up to 143.8. The overtime affair in 2019 (the 2020 NCAA Tournament was canceled due to COVID-19) between Virginia and Texas Tech definitely does some heavy lifting in that, however. So the actual true average is probably still closer to that 141-point mark if you're getting antsy when filling out your tiebreaker.
It's also worth noting that only one of the last five title games has been decided by fewer than five points. If your tiebreaker requires you to predict a final score rather than total points, that should be something to keep in mind.
Highest and lowest-scoring March Madness championship games
The highest-scoring March Madness championship game was the 1978 showdown between two historic blue bloods, Kentucky and Duke (albeit before Coach K ever got there). The Wildcats outlasted the Blue Devils in a shootout, winning 94-88 and totaling an incredible 182 points combined in the game.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, the lowest-scoring title game was all the way back in 1941, just the third year of the NCAA Tournament, when Wisconsin beat Washington State, 39-34, totaling a measly 73 points in the game. In terms of more modern college basketball, though, that title belongs to UConn and Butler in the 2011 title showdown with a final score of 53-41, getting to just 94 total points.