That category as a whole is 133-100 (57.1 percent) in the tournament. Miscellaneous teams have a little more parity, with the Ohio State Buckeyes, Stanford Cardinal, Syracuse Orange and Wichita State Shockers all having double-digit NCAA tournament wins. No other Mythical team has even been to a Final Four since 1985, and the next-winningest team in the category would be the DePaul Blue Demons, who are 7-9 in March Madness play. The 14 teams in that category have played 226 games and are 130-96 (57.5 percent) in the tournament since 1985, though that might be (see: definitely is) heavily skewed by Duke's NCAA-leading 102 NCAA tournament wins since 1985. The Mythical category includes the five-time national champion Duke Blue Devils (and the zero-time national champion Central Connecticut Blue Devils). When it comes to winning games, Mythical and Miscellaneous teams come up clutch. Gardner-Webb made its first tournament appearance in 2019, giving the Bulldogs a dozen representatives. Up until 2019, the most common mascot name was a tie between Tigers (Jackson State, Tennessee State, Texas Southern, Towson, Pacific, Princeton, Clemson, Auburn, LSU, Missouri and Memphis) and Bulldogs (Drake, North Carolina-Asheville, Samford, South Carolina State, Fresno State, Yale, Louisiana Tech, Georgia, Mississippi State, Butler and Gonzaga) with 11 each. Of the 304 teams that have played in the NCAA tournament since 1985, 90 have had human mascots, from the North Carolina A&T Aggies to the Hawaii Warriors. So the Tar Heels fall into our People category. For example, while the North Carolina Tar Heels' on-court mascot is a ram, there are two stories for how the Tar Heels got their nickname and both are about humans. While most mascots easily fit into one of these categories, some were more complicated, so we looked up the history of the mascot’s origin in those cases. We looked at all 304 schools that have played an NCAA tournament game since 1985 (the start of the tournament's modern format) and separated their mascots into nine categories:īears, Birds, Cats, Dogs, Miscellaneous, Mythical, Other Animals, People, Weather/Elemental. Or we could take a detailed statistical dive into the NCAA tournament success of each type of mascot and pretend like the fuzzy character cheering teams on from the sideline has a tangible impact on a team's performance in March Madness. Until that becomes acceptable in this universe, though, we’ll just have to imagine. Mascot basketball, as we all know, is the sport at its purest form. In an alternate universe, the NCAA tournament is decided trial-by-combat style, with each school's mascot serving as its champion.
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