2025 Final Four by the Numbers

The 2025 Final Four gets underway on Saturday with the national semifinals. Four teams will be whittled down to two which will play on Monday night for the national championship. Then, there will be just one. With all of these numbers in play, let’s take a look at the 2025 Final Four by the numbers.

1

For just the second time since the NCAA expanded the tournament in 1985, the Final Four features all No. 1 seeds. Duke will take on Houston and Florida will play Auburn for the second time this season. The two SEC teams met on Feb. 8. Florida won 90-81.

The only other time four No. 1 seeds made the Final Four was in 2008. North Carolina, Kansas, Memphis, and UCLA advanced to the Final Four that season. Kansas and Memphis earned semifinal blowout wins before the Jayhawks beat the Tigers in overtime in the championship game.

2

Florida became just the fifth team in college basketball history to beat two AP No. 1-ranked teams in the same season. The Gators beat Tennessee by 30, 73-43, in early January before beating top-ranked Auburn on Feb. 8. Interestingly, the Gators would face Tennessee on the road in early February. Florida lost to the Vols by 20, 64-44. 

Should the Gators defeat Auburn in their semifinal and Duke beats Houston in the other, that would set up another opportunity for the Gators. Duke is currently the AP’s No. 1-ranked team.

3

Auburn has played each of the other three teams in the Final Four this season. We already mentioned the 90-81 loss to Florida. The Tigers also lost to Duke 84-78 back in early December. Even prior to that loss, Auburn faced Houston and recorded one of the four losses for the Cougars. Auburn won by five, 74-69.

Three is also the number of transfers who are playing in their second Final Four with a different team. Prior to this season, only two players in the history of college basketball had ever played in two Final Fours for different teams. This year, there are three.

LJ Cryer played for Baylor in the 2021 Final Four. Mason Gillis is a reserve for Duke who played for Purdue in last year’s Final Four. Florida’s Alijah Martin scored 26 points for FAU in 2023 when the Owls lost to San Diego State in the national semifinals.

5

Saturday is April 5. It will be the second time in the history of Duke basketball that the Blue Devils will play a Final Four game on April 5. The last time the team did so it was in 2010 when Duke played Butler in the national title game. 

Duke would defeat Butler, 61-59, that night. Kyle Singler led the Blue Devils with 19 points. One of his teammates added 15 points, 6 rebounds, 5 assists, and 2 blocked shots. His name was Jon Scheyer, the current Duke head coach.

12

Florida will face Auburn in the first of the two semifinal games on Saturday, April 5. We mentioned this will be the second meeting between the two teams this season. It is also the 12th time in NCAA tournament history that two teams from the same conference will play each other in the Final Four.

The last time this happened was in the 2022 NCAA tournament. Duke and North Carolina of the ACC played each other in a semifinal. The Tar Heels won that game. In 1985, Georgetown actually played two conference games in the Final Four. The Hoyas beat St. John’s in the semifinals and then fell victim to one of the biggest upsets in NCAA tournament history when they lost to fellow Big East member Villanova in the national championship game.

26

We could have added the number 6 to the list. It’s the number of consecutive tournaments in a row that Houston has played in while leading the nation in opponent field goal percentage. That commitment to defense is why the Cougars are allowing less than 26 points – 25.9 to be exact – in the first half of games this season. In the Elite Eight win, Houston held Tennessee to 15 first-half points.

Duke will present a problem for Houston and head coach Kelvin Sampson. The Blue Devils have the most efficient offense in the nation, averaging 1.222 points per possession. Duke averages 41.1 points in the first half this season. In the tournament so far, the Blue Devils have scored 46, 48, 47, and 54 first-half points.

37 & 39 vs. 65 & 69

Auburn’s Bruce Pearl is 65 and Sampson is 69. Both have been to a Final Four but neither have ever played for a national championship. As both coaches near the end of their careers, you can bet both will want to take advantage of this opportunity.

Not to be outdone are the two youngest head coaches in the entire tournament. Florida’s Todd Golden is 39 years old and in his third season at Florida. This is just his second head coaching job. San Francisco was the first. This is Golden’s first trip to the Final Four.

Scheyer is in the same boat. This is his first trip to the Final Four. He took Duke to the Elite Eight last year and is just the second Duke coach to take the Blue Devils to a Final Four in the last 47 seasons. Of course, Coach K (Mike Krzyzewski) was the other.

90

If Duke beats Houston in its semifinal game on Saturday, Scheyer will move into some very elite company. In just his third season as the Blue Devils head coach, Scheyer already has 89 victories. A win on Saturday would give him 90. That would be more than any other college basketball head coach in the history of the game in their first three seasons. 

148

In today’s age of the transfer portal and NIL money, J’Wan Roberts of Houston is a rarity. We probably won’t see the likes of this again for some time. Roberts, a 6-8 senior for the Cougars, averages 10.7 points and 6.3 rebounds a game. He’ll start for Houston on Saturday.

Roberts entered Houston in 2019 and redshirted his first season. The COVID pandemic granted him an extra year of eligibility and now Roberts is playing his fifth and final season for the Cougars. He’s only 23 years old, but he has 148 wins in his college career.

4500

Duke freshman Kon Knueppel has 547 points for the Blue Devils this season. He is not even close to being the leading scorer in his family. His mother is the all-time leading scorer at Green Bay with 1,964 points. Kon Sr., the father, scored 2,064 points at Wisconsin Lutheran and was the school’s all-time leading scorer until 2019.

Combined, the Knueppel family has 4,602 points. That’s pretty impressive. Then, there’s Auburn star Johni Broome. He is the only player in NCAA Division I basketball history to have scored more than 2,500 points, have over 1,500 rebounds, and 400 blocks. For the record, Broome has 2,681 points, 1,586 rebounds, and 417 blocks for a total of 4,684. That’s also pretty impressive.

2025 NCAA Championship Odds

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Duke +100
Florida +285
Houston +400
Auburn +500