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It’s been years since every Triangle basketball team missed the Sweet 16. We do the math

If you’re having a hard time remembering when the last time the Triangle was shut out of the Sweet 16 across the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments, no one would blame you.

It has been, after all, some 27 years.

It’s only happened one other time — in 1996.

But you know what’s never happened?

Never, since the advent of the NCAA women’s tournament in 1982, has the Triangle been completely shut out of the NCAA tournaments. Not once.

Oh, there were a few close calls, for sure. Twice — in 1988 and again in 2016 — the women’s teams from Duke, UNC and N.C. State failed to qualify for the women’s tournament. In both of those instances, at least two of the men’s teams made it into the bracket.

But you have to go back to 1973 — before the men’s tournament expanded to 32 teams — to find a year in which the Triangle didn’t have at least one entry into the men’s tournament. In an incredible streak that is second-best in NCAA history, UNC made the tournament every year from 1975 to 2001. Only Kansas’ current streak of 33 is better.

And when UNC stumbled in the early 2000s, Duke was there with a streak of its own. The Blue Devils rattled off 24 consecutive appearances from 1996 to 2019.

N.C. State’s Terquavion Smith (0) stands in front of his locker after Creighton’s 72-63 victory over N.C. State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at Ball Arena in Denver, Colo., Friday, March 17, 2023. Ethan Hyman/ehyman@newsobserver.com
N.C. State’s Terquavion Smith (0) stands in front of his locker after Creighton’s 72-63 victory over N.C. State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at Ball Arena in Denver, Colo., Friday, March 17, 2023. Ethan Hyman/ehyman@newsobserver.com

Duke, UNC and N.C. State in NCAA basketball tournament, by the numbers

We crunched the numbers as we prepare for a Triangle-less Sweet 16:

5: Number of times Duke, UNC and N.C. State men were shut out of the NCAA Tournament prior to expansion to 32 teams, after the formation of the ACC (1958, 1961, 1962, 1971, 1973).

0: Number of times Duke, UNC and N.C. State men have been shut out of the NCAA Tournament after expansion to 32 teams.

2: Number of times Duke, UNC and N.C. State women have been shut out of the NCAA Tournament since it began in 1982 (1988, 2016).

5: Number of times Duke, UNC and N.C. State men have been shut out of the Sweet 16 (1976, 1979, 1996, 2014, 2021, 2023).

7: Number of times Duke, UNC and N.C. State women have been shut out of the Sweet 16 (1988, 1992, 1996, 2009, 2016, 1017, 2023)

2: Number of times Duke, UNC and N.C. State men and women were shut out of the Sweet 16 in the same year (1996, 2023). (UNC was not in this year’s men’s tournament.)

1: Number of ACC teams remaining in the 2023 men’s basketball tournament: Miami

4: Number of ACC teams remaining in the women’s basketball tournament: Virginia Tech, Notre Dame, Louisville, Miami

Down by nine points with just seconds to play, North Carolina’s Caleb Love (2) glances at the scoreboard during the third round of the ACC Tournament on Thursday, March 9, 2023 at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, N.C. Love scored 11 points in the 68-59 loss. Robert Willett/rwillett@newsobserver.com
Down by nine points with just seconds to play, North Carolina’s Caleb Love (2) glances at the scoreboard during the third round of the ACC Tournament on Thursday, March 9, 2023 at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, N.C. Love scored 11 points in the 68-59 loss. Robert Willett/rwillett@newsobserver.com