Odds of Butler's back-to-back championship appearances: 7,400 to one

The only way in which I’ll be a bit of a wet blanket is in noting that, by expanding the criteria from any accomplishment over the course of a single tournament to one over multiple tournaments, you vastly increase the search space, so it’s hard to say whether this is the most impressive accomplishment of its kind. Still, Butler’s accomplishment checked out pretty well against a couple of other possibilities that I tested.

For instance, based on the historical success rates of teams with their seedings, the University of Houston was something like a 250-to-1 long shot to play in three consecutive Final Fours from 1982 through 1984, while Florida had about 225-to-1 odds against winning consecutive championships in 2006 and 2007. And Duke was “only” about a 1,600-to-1 long shot to play in five consecutive Final Fours between 1988 and 1992.