Category: mapping

April showers bring May flowers, but what the heck happens in March? We suppose it brings…sports fans.

While the occasional Major League Baseball Opening Day takes place during the month, March is best known for college basketball. There’s the men’s tournament, aptly named March Madness, along with the NCAA Division I women’s basketball tournament.

As of 2022, 40 single-elimination tournaments have been played since 1982. So let’s jump into winners, appearances, and winning percentages on the map below.

View Women’s NCAA March Madness in a full screen map

NCAA Women’s Basketball Winners

There are 348 teams that participate in NCAA women’s basketball. Of these, just over 60 get to compete in the championship tournament each year. Less have won—even fewer still more than once, as you’ll see on the list below.

• UConn (11)
• Tennessee (8)
• Stanford (3)
• Baylor (3)
• Louisiana Tech (2)
• Notre Dame (2)
• South Carolina (2)
• USC (2)

Just eight teams can say they’ve earned championship rings more than once—though exactly how many times they’ve won varies. Just like the men’s team, UConn has the most wins as of 2022.

The Huskies’ 11 championship wins are three ahead of even the second-best Tennessee team—more than most teams have ever won in total. Even more than all those wins, UConn is also notable for its four-time winning streak from 2013-2016 and for appearing in the semi-finals in 14 consecutive tournaments, as we’ll see next.

Women’s Final Four Appearances

Wins aside, with 348 teams vying for just over 60 tournament spots, making the semi-finals is notable in its own right, especially if done multiple times. The following table contains women’s NCAA teams with five or more final four appearances.

School	Final Four Appearances
UConn	22
Tennessee	18
Stanford	15
Louisiana Tech	10
Notre Dame	9
Maryland	5
LSU	5
Georgia	5

UConn has the most women’s final four appearances, including 14 in a row between 2008-2022, which should come as no surprise, considering their wins. Similarly, Tennessee and Standford’s 18 and 15 semi-final participation is just as unsurprising. Tennessee, while notably absent from the final four since their 2008 win, previously saw multiple streaks in which they made the semi-finals four times in a row: 1986-1989, 1995-1998, and 2000-2008.

Stanford, though with fewer appearances than Tennessee, has appeared more recently in the final four. A semi-finalist in 2022, they also won in 2021. However, Stanford and the tournament do have a decently long history, as their first final four appearance was a win in 1990.

This is where the similarity between the winners discussed in the previous section and appearances ends. Baylor followed Stanford in wins, yet in appearances, Louisiana Tech rankers higher, even with only two wins. This makes us wonder about the winning percentage of the Lady Techsters and others from the map.

NCAA Women’s Division I Basketball Champions’ Winning Percentage

With winners and Final Four appearances completed, we can now look to Finals vs. Champions to determine each team’s winning percentage. The table below shows this calculation for the 15 teams with at least one win under their belt:

Team	Wins	Finals Appearances	Winning %
Baylor	3	3	100.00%
Maryland	1	1	100.00%
North Carolina	1	1	100.00%
South Carolina	2	2	100.00%
Texas	1	1	100.00%
Texas A&M	1	1	100.00%
Texas Tech	1	1	100.00%
UConn	11	12	91.67%
USC	2	3	66.67%
Tennessee	8	13	61.54%
Stanford	3	5	60.00%
Old Dominion	1	2	50.00%
Purdue	1	2	50.00%
Louisiana Tech	2	6	33.33%
Notre Dame	2	7	28.57%

Seven teams hold perfect records… Of course, that’s a bit easier for the five with just one winning appearance. However, Baylor and South Carolina have perfect winning percentages with multiple Finals appearances.

However, the most notable may once again be UConn. With a winning percentage of 91.67% across 12 appearances, it just goes to show how seriously the franchise takes basketball—both women’s and men’s.

Speaking of, be sure to check out the Men’s NCAA Tournament Map: Who Has the Most Wins?

Parades, festivals, and pub crawls may be the norm each year on Saint Patrick’s Day. But the March 17th holiday is also a religious one, originally intended to honor the c. 461 death of a patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick.

Regardless of how you celebrate, the cities that turn up the most on Saint Patrick’s Day may be those with related names—and they’re not only in Ireland.

While there are no cities named “Leprechaun” (unfortunately), there are 101 cities with names like Shamrock, Clover, Luck, and Ireland located across countries from America to Zimbabwe, as you’ll see on the map below.

View St. Patrick’s Day Cities in a full screen map

Dublin, Shamrock, & Other Popular City Names

There are 101 cities on the map, yet we included just 10 unique Saint Patrick’s Day-related names. That means that while these cities are located in different countries, continents, and even hemispheres… the one thing they have in common is their name:

• Dublin – 24 cities
• Shamrock – 13
• Limerick – 11
• Clover – 10
• Rainbow – 9
• Patrick – 8
• Ireland – 8
• Lucky – 7
• Luck – 6
• Saint Patrick – 5

Dublin is by far the most popular Saint Patrick’s Day-themed city name, with 24 cities around the world sharing the name of Ireland’s capital and largest city.

The majority (18) of the other Dublins are located throughout the U.S., especially in the East. You’ll find many of them in the Southeast: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia. Meanwhile, there are also Dublins in Northeastern states like Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Many of these U.S. Dublins were established by Irish settlers, hence the name. They may be more concentrated in the East as at the time of Irish migration to the U.S., port cities like Pennsylvania and New York were quite popular.

There is also a Dublin in Australia, Sierra Leone, and two in Belarus.

On the same continent as the U.S. is Limerick, Saskatchewan in Canada.

You can see the rest of the cities named Limerick, Shamrock, and the others when you sort the map above by City.

Countries with the Most St. Patty’s Day Cities

While the U.S. is home to 18 Dublins, it’s also home to 61 more cities with Saint Patrick’s Day-related names, for a little over 78% of the total. This includes all of the cities on the map named Shamrock and Clover.

The most (six) are concentrated in Ohio: Clover, Dublin, Ireland, Limerick, Rainbow, and Saint Patrick. This is followed by Texas (Dublin, Ireland, Patrick, Rainbow, and Shamrock) and Pennsylvania (Dublin, Clover, Limerick, Lucky, and Shamrock) with five each.

Meanwhile, more countries than the U.S. have multiple Saint Patrick’s Day-themed cities. Not surprisingly, Ireland has four: two large cities named Dublin and Limericks, along with two smaller towns with the two same names.

Another European country, Slovakia, has three cities also of the same name: Lucky in Banska Bystrica, Lucky in Kosice, and Lucky in Zilina.

That leaves Lesotho, Isle of Man, Belarus, and Australia all with two. Additionally, Albania, Canada, Czech Republic, Poland, Sierra Leone, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe are home to one.

You can be festive regardless of whether you live near a holiday-themed city. One way to get into the spirit is through color—and then why not put it on a map?

Change Your Map Marker Colors

Maps can certainly help you gain geographic insights into your data. But that’s not the only pro of mapping. Most data has a topic or theme, like our Saint Patrick’s Day-themed cities or the Olympics. You can maintain your map’s cohesive narrative by customizing your map marker color.

If you’re mapping St. Patty’s Day data, it would be fitting to change the marker colors to various shades of green, gold, and all the colors of the rainbow. There are many similar cases in which your marker color can help in conveying your data.

See how BatchGeo gives you control over the story you tell with your location data, right down to how they’re styled.

College basketball fans are expanding their cable packages. Many who follow March Madness closely will want to watch as many of the 67 games in the tournament as possible. As the teams move further in the tournament, you’ll want to check out the map below of every team to ever make the Final Four at least once. Explore the groups to see teams with appearances in the Finals and who has won the tournament the most times.

View NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four Appearances in a full screen map

Note: asterisks (*) indicate that teams that have had at least one of the marked appearances vacated due to NCAA sanctions.

Teams with 10 or More Final Four Appearances

There are 95 teams represented on this map. All have made it through the early rounds of the tournament to be part of the Final Four. More than half of those teams (59) have done so at least twice—and the following eight teams have made it to the Final Four 10 or more times:

• North Carolina (21 Final Four appearances)
• UCLA (19)
• Duke (17)
• Kentucky (17)
• Kansas (16)
• Ohio State (11)
• Louisville (10)
• Michigan State (10)

While an older version of this post noted just seven teams with 10+ appearances, Michigan State’s 2015 and 2019 Final Four appearances allowed for their addition. Who knows, maybe we’ll soon be adding Indiana to this list.

Of course, some of these teams have made it past the Final Four and into the Finals many times. Yet only UCLA (13), Kentucky (12), North Carolina (12), Duke (11), and Kansas (10) have moved forward 10 or more times. Additionally, many of these same teams have gone on to win more than any others.

NCAA Men’s Basketball Winners

Most of the teams with 10 or more Final Four appearances are amongst the most winning teams, as well. Yet wins, as opposed to Finals and even Final Four appearances, are harder to get. Just one team has earned over 10 of these:

• UCLA (11 wins)
• Kentucky (8)
• North Carolina (6)
• Duke (5)
• Indiana (5)
• Kansas (4)
• UConn (4)
• Villanova (3)
• Louisville (3)

UCLA has won 11 times, including 10 out of 12 years between 1964 and 1975 under legendary coach John Wooden. However, the team has faced somewhat of a dry spell, at least where wins are concerned: their last W was in 1995.

Meanwhile, Kentucky has won eight times, most recently in 2012. Unlike UCLA though, their only winning streak was long ago when they won three out of four years between 1948 and 1951. North Carolina has six wins out of their 21 Final Four appearances (and 12 championship game chances) for a winning percentage of X.

14 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Champions’ Perfect Winning Percentages

Then there are 14 teams with the most championship wins without a loss.

School	Finals	Champions	Winning Percentage (Wins / Finals)
UConn	4	4	100.00%
Louisville	3*	3*	100.00%
NC State	2	2	100.00%
San Francisco	2	2	100.00%
CCNY	1	1	100.00%
Holy Cross	1	1	100.00%
Loyola–Chicago	1	1	100.00%
Maryland	1	1	100.00%
Oregon	1	1	100.00%
Stanford	1	1	100.00%
UNLV	1	1	100.00%
UTEP	1	1	100.00%
Virginia	1	1	100.00%
Wyoming	1	1	100.00%

UCONN has the most championship wins without a loss. The Huskies of the Northeast have made the Final Four on five occasions and won all four of their championship appearances. By comparison, Kansas took 16 trips to the Final Four and 10 championship game appearances to have the same number of tournament wins.

The only other teams with perfect records throughout multiple Finals include Louisville (3), NC State (2), and San Francisco (2).

Similarly, 10 other teams have won their only championship appearance (CCNY, Holy Cross, Loyola–Chicago, Maryland, Oregon, Stanford, UNLV, UTEP, Virginia, and Wyoming). Meanwhile, 16 teams have lost in their only trip to the Finals—and 35 haven’t ever made it that far.

Improve the Accuracy of Your Bracket

If you think it’s hard to win a championship, try to correctly guess the winner. Every year millions attempt to fill out an accurate bracket beforehand and nobody has ever been perfect.

In the video above, Professor Jeff Bergen from DePaul University (two Final Four appearances, both resulting in losses) outlines the many different possible brackets. If filled out completely at random, there’s a one in nine quintillion chance of choosing every winner correctly. It’s a big number, which Bergen writes out on the board. He also goes on to estimate that knowledgeable basketball fans can get the likelihood down to one in 128 million.

Go ahead and fill out your bracket for fun. But expect to achieve the same result as 66 of the 67 teams in the tournament: another year without a victory.

For those tracking other NCAA championships, be sure to check out our map of the NCAA Football Champions.