The Clemson Tigers entered 2025 March Madness with thoughts of making a deep run in one of the best years in the program's modern history under Brad Brownell. However, to make a run, you always have to win the First Round game in the NCAA Tournament and the No. 5-seeded Tigers had a tough matchup against McNeese State, one of the mid-major powers in the Big Dance.
Brownell and Clemson may have forgotten about the old "survive and advance" mantra as well. While both teams struggled early on to find the bottom of the net, McNeese found their groove while Clemson did not, which allowed the Cowboys to build a big lead over the Tigers. And as the two teams went into halftime, McNeese held an 18-point lead after limiting Clemson to just 13 points scored.
That had college basketball fans watching wondering what's the unfortunate record for the fewest points a team has scored in a March Madness game. Clemson's first half was definitely threatening the record.
Fewest points scored by a team in a March Madness game
The fewest number of points any team has ever scored in a March Madness game was by North Carolina in the 1941 NCAA Tournament when they scored just 20 points in a 26-20 loss to the Pittsburgh Panthers. However, the game of college basketball has changed quite a lot since then, most notably with the start of the shot clock era beginning in 1986 and no longer allowing teams to essentially run out the clock routinely on possessions.
Fewest points scored by a team in a March Madness game in the shot clock era
Since 1986 when college basketball adopted the shot clock, Mississippi Valley State holds that honor as the No. 16 seed in the 2008 NCAA Tournament managed just 29 points in their First Round matchup against Kevin Love and the UCLA Bruins. Love himself nearly outscored the Delta Devils with 20 points to his credit but UCLA ended up with 70 points in that game.
UCLA's dominant performance and Mississippi Valley State's dubious performance to set the record "bested" the previous mark held by a much bigger program, the Wisconsin Badgers. As a No. 5 seed in the 1999 NCAA Tournament, the Badgers were on the wrong end of a staple of March Madness, the dreaded 12-5 upset as Southwest Missouri State limited Wisconsin to a meager 32 points in an overall dismally low-scoring affair (43-32 final score).
Fewest total points scored in a March Madness game
The Southwest Missouri State upset of Wisconsin back in 1999 March Madness is the lowest-scoring total game at 75 points in the shot clock era, which isn't all that surprising. Similarly, if we're going back just in the entire history of the NCAA Tournament, North Carolina's record that they would like to forget is part of that distinction as well with the 26-20 final score and 46 total points are the fewest ever scored in a March Madness game.