Sports Reference Blog

About a year ago we unveiled our NCAA Tournament Player Game finder tool in the Play Index on our College Basketball site. At the time we mentioned that we had starters/reserves designated in all NCAA Tournament box scores back to 1998. Today, we're happy to announce that we now have starters/reserves for all of these games back through 1994. Additionally, we have this data for all Final Four games back through 1955, when Bill Russell won the first of his two NCAA titles.

A few examples of searches that can now be run with this improvement...

• Four players have scored 30+ points off the bench in NCAA Tournament games since 1994.
• Darnell Burton & Donte DiVincenzo scored 126 points off the bench in their NCAA Tournament careers, which is tied for the most by any player since 1994.
• DiVincenzo scored 90 points off the bench in the 2018 tournament, which is the most in a single tournament since 1994.
• Additionally, DiVincenzo's 31 points in the 2018 National Championship Game are the most scored by a reserve in a Final Four game since 1955, surpassing the 26 scored by UCLA's Kenny Washington in a 1964 National Championship game win over Duke.
• Another record DiVincenzo broke en route to being named Most Outstanding Player at the 2018 Final Four is for most points scored off the bench in a single Final Four since 1955. His two-game total of 46 points bested the 42 posted by Louisville's Luke Hancock in 2013.
• However, Kenny Washington remains the career leader in bench points at the Final Four since 1955, with 66 over four games in 1964 and 1965.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 8th, 2019 at 2:33 pm and is filed under Announcement, CBB at Sports Reference, Data, Play Index. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.