NEW YORK -- Ratings for the men's NCAA basketball championship game on CBS dipped Monday night, a day after ESPN enjoyed a record audience for the championship game of the women's tournament.

It was the second worst rated men's final since 1975, according to Nielsen.

The men's title game on CBS between Maryland and Indiana produced a national rating of 15.0 with a 24 share, down 4 percent from last year's 15.6 rating and 24 share. For the entire tournament, CBS' rating was 6.5 and a 14 share, even with last year's numbers.

Even though the rating was down, the championship game was watched by 43.5 million people, most for an NCAA title game since 44.9 million watched the game between Duke and Connecticut in 1999. The audience was up 4 percent from the 41.9 million who watched Duke-Arizona last year and up 9 percent from the 40 million for Michigan State-Florida in 2000.

"We're up from prior years, so this year's game is a win," Robin Brendle, director of communication for CBS Sports, told ESPN.com's Darren Rovell.

The reason why the viewership numbers are up while the rating is down is because a ratings point is equivalent to about 10 percent more viewers this year than it was last year.

ESPN reported a national rating of 4.1 for Sunday night's women's title game between Connecticut and Oklahoma. That was a 24 percent increase from last year's 3.3 for the championship game between Notre Dame and Purdue and made it the second-highest rated women's championship game ever, topped only by the 4.3 for Duke-Purdue in 1999.

The UConn-Oklahoma game was seen in 3,487,000 households, a 28 percent increase over the 2,724,000 that watched last year's final game. It was the largest audience ever for any men's or women's basketball game ever shown on the cable network.

Local highs were expectedly in Indianapolis, which drew a 49.2 rating and Baltimore - which garnered a 37.1.

Next year, CBS will continue to broadcast the tournament, as it has paid $6 billion in rights fees for the next 11 years.

The rating is the percentage of all homes with TVs, whether or not they are in use. Each national rating point represents a little more than 1 million households. Share is the percentage of homes with TVs in use.

Information from ESPN.com's Darren Rovell and The Associated Press was used in this report.