March Madness record by conference: Big Ten, SEC dominate while ACC holds on with Duke in the Elite Eight

Dan Treacy

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March Madness record by conference: Big Ten, SEC dominate while ACC holds on with Duke in the Elite Eight image

The SEC was king on Selection Sunday with a record-shattering 14 NCAA Tournament bids.

One of those teams didn't make it to the first round, as Texas went down against Xavier in the First Four. But the conference's top title contenders all advanced to the round of 32. Still, that wasn't the most dominant performance among the conferences with multiple bids.

The Big Ten won all eight of its first-round NCAA Tournament games, sending Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Oregon, Purdue, UCLA and Wisconsin to the second round; seven of the eight won by double-digit margins. Now 25 years removed from the conference's last national championship, the Big Ten is set up better than any recent season to see multiple teams go on a deep run.

Here's the complete record breakdown of any conference in the NCAA Tournament. 

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March Madness record by conference

Multi-bid conferences

ConferenceRecordTeams still alive
SEC21-132
Big 1214-61
Big Ten13-80
Big East4-50
WCC2-20
Mountain West2-20
ACC5-31

Big Ten teams went a perfect 8-0 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, with No. 2 Michigan State, No. 3 Wisconsin, No. 4 Purdue, No. 4 Maryland, No. 5 Michigan, No. 5 Oregon, No. 6 Illinois and No. 7 UCLA all winning as higher seeds. Purdue also secured a trip to the Sweet 16 with a dominating 76-62 win over McNeese State. The second round was a different story. While Purdue and Michigan won, Wisconsin was the first team in the conference to lose, and UCLA lost to Tennessee. 

The SEC picked up a huge win in the second round as John Calipari's Arkansas upset Rick Pitino's St. John's. No. 2 Tennessee held strong against UCLA to move onto the Sweet 16. 

Kansas was the only one of the seven Big 12 teams in the field to fall in the first round, a fascinating turn of events after the Jayhawks went 17 consecutive tournaments without losing in the opening round. The start of the second round was strong for the Big 12 as Houston, Texas Tech and BYU all clinched spots in the Sweet 16. 

The lone ACC team left is Duke, which advanced to the Sweet 16 with a win over Baylor in the second round.

Other conferences

Only two single-bid conferences have picked up a win in the NCAA Tournament: the Missouri Valley Conference (Drake) and Southland Conference (McNeese). All others bowed out of the NCAA Tournament with a first round defeat. Unfortunately, the Cinderella stories for Drake and McNeese both ended in the second round. 

March Madness teams by conference 2025

ConferenceTeams
SEC14
Big Ten8
Big 127
Big East5
ACC4
Mountain West4
WCC2
All others24

The SEC led the way with 14 teams in the NCAA Tournament, followed by the Big Ten's eight and the Big 12's seven. 

The Big East sent five representatives to the tournament after UConn won the last two national titles, getting Xavier into the field with a First Four bid, while the ACC sent just four of 18 teams and saw three of them go down in the first round.

The Mountain West and West Coast Conference both saw more teams advance to the second round than the ACC. 

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Dan Treacy

Dan Treacy is a content producer for Sporting News, joining in 2022 after graduating from Boston University. He founded @allsportsnews on Instagram in 2012 and has written for Lineups and Yardbarker.