Seed Distributions for March Madness 2026: A Tool for Bracketologists

Seed Match-up Records

How do seeds perform against each other, round by round? The following table provides such information over the past 40 tournaments (1985 through 2025, with no tournament in 2020). All seeds match-ups are included in both the Rounds of 64 and 32. Only those seed match-ups that occurred four or more times are included in the remaining rounds. For the Final Four and National Championship games, if the same seeds played each other, only the number of times this occurred is reported. We also include the Round of 64 records from 1985 through 2010 and from 2011 to 2025, to provide a comparison of how seed records have changed over time. We also conduct a statistical analysis using a p-value (less than 0.01) to assess whether the recent games are yielding different result than the previous games. A "Better" indicates that the most recent years are performing statistically better than the previous years, a "Worse" indicates that the most recent years are performing statistically worse than the previous years, and "Same" indicates that the most recent years are performing statistically the same compared to the previous years .

Round Seed Match Up Record (1985 to 2025) Record (1985 to 2010) Record (2011 to 2025) Statistically Different?
Round of 64 1-16 158-2 104-0 54-2 Worse
Round of 64 2-15 149-11 100-4 49-7 Worse
Round of 64 3-14 137-23 88-16 49-7 Same
Round of 64 4-13 127-33 82-22 45-11 Same
Round of 64 5-12 103-57 69-35 34-22 Same
Round of 64 6-11 98-62 71-33 27-29 Worse
Round of 64 7-10 98-62 62-42 36-20 Same
Round of 64 8-9 77-83 48-56 29-27 Same
Round of 32 1-8 61-16
Round of 32 1-9 75-6
Round of 32 2-7 65-27
Round of 32 2-10 38-19
Round of 32 3-6 49-33
Round of 32 3-11 35-20
Round of 32 4-5 45-37
Round of 32 4-12 32-13
Round of 32 5-13 18-3
Round of 32 6-14 14-2
Round of 32 7-15 2-4
Round of 32 10-15 5-0
Round of 32 11-14 7-0
Round of 32 12-13 9-3
Sweet Sixteen 1-4 44-18
Sweet Sixteen 1-5 39-11
Sweet Sixteen 1-12 20-0
Sweet Sixteen 1-13 4-0
Sweet Sixteen 2-3 32-19
Sweet Sixteen 2-6 25-7
Sweet Sixteen 2-11 15-4
Sweet Sixteen 3-7 10-6
Sweet Sixteen 3-10 10-4
Sweet Sixteen 4-8 5-6
Sweet Sixteen 6-7 5-3
Elite Eight 1-2 27-24
Elite Eight 1-3 18-10
Elite Eight 1-6 8-2
Elite Eight 1-7 4-0
Elite Eight 1-10 5-1
Elite Eight 1-11 4-4
Elite Eight 2-4 3-4
Elite Eight 2-8 2-3
Elite Eight 3-4 2-4
Elite Eight 4-7 2-3
Final Four 1-1 15
Final Four 1-2 8-4
Final Four 1-3 3-4
Final Four 1-4 6-1
Final Four 2-2 3
Final Four 2-3 3-3
National Championship 1-1 10
National Championship 1-2 6-2
National Championship 2-3 3-2

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