Syracuse Men's, Women's Basketball Teams Reach Final Four: How Common is This?

Getting all the way to the Final Four is an improbable accomplishment for collegiate basketball teams, regardless of gender. Hats off to both Syracuse Orange squads for accomplishing it in 2016.

You might expect that it's extremely uncommon for both men's and women's teams to make the Final Four in the same year. Surprisingly, it's not.

This remarkable feat has occurred 12 times since the modern formation of the women's basketball tournament. Most recently, UConn's men's and women's basketball teams both made the Final Four and both won championships in 2014. UConn has accomplished the double the most times out of any school with four. No other school has done it more than once. See the full list below:

1983: Georgia

1999: Duke

2002: Oklahoma

2003: Texas

2004, 2009, 2011, 2014: Connecticut

2005: Michigan State

2006: LSU

2013: Louisville

2014: Connecticut

2016: Syracuse

A school getting both teams into the Final Four has happened on nine-percent of tries. The expected amount of times this will occur for a program that has both schools in the NCAA Tournament already is only 0.3 percent. The chances are even worse when taken into account that most teams do not even make the tournament. Perhaps the sample size may be too small, or UConn's outlier basketball programs have skewed the data (as if we needed more reasons to dislike them).

Why might both of one school's teams making it to the Final Four be more common? It may have to do with the program's training facilities and resources. A more plausible answer is probably that athletic programs that have more money are more likely to succeed in multiple sports, giving richer schools a better shot at competing year in and year out. These programs can also focus more easily on more than one sport.

Regardless of the details and statistics, Syracuse's incredible runs to both Final Fours is still one to remember -- and neither team is done just yet.