Here we go again.
It’s mid-March, and if you’re someone like me, you’re in heaven. This week marks the beginning of my favourite stretch of the year. Living in Edmonton, this is the time of year when the thermometer eclipses the fabled zero degree plateau on the Celsius scale. The snow is rapidly melting, meaning the city is as ugly and dirty as can be, but this truth goes mostly unnoticed as I know that I will be bringing the golf clubs out of storage any day now.
If that isn’t enough, this time of year also signals the dawn of the pinnacle period for sports fans. Augusta National is being prepped for golf’s most prestigious event, baseball’s regular season premiers in Japan today, and the NHL and NBA playoffs are right around the corner.
But before it’s time to fully invest your thoughts in whichever of these tickle your sports fancy… we all get to enjoy the single greatest tournament in the world of sports…
March Madness.
What this means is that for the next three weeks there will be countless friend groups and office co-workers across North America pooling their hard earned cash for a chance to be the one that has the most accurate bracket. With just one minor issue surrounding the water cooler banter that will revolve around this tournament for the weeks to come…
No one knows what the hell they are talking about.
Now, before you get your knickers tied in a knot, please know that this is not an attack. There are 351 schools in 32 college basketball conferences that vie for a spot in this beautiful tournament… overwhelming to say the least. Additionally, the NCAA basketball regular season receives next to nothing in terms of coverage north of the border. Indeed, if you love college basketball in Canada, you have to go out of your way just to get some damn highlights. I love that even the most clueless college basketball fans get invested in the tournament. What I don’t love, is when those people spew about how they love one of the 12-seeds that they have never heard of before, just because they heard Jay Bilas say something about them the night prior. The lesson I’ve learned over time is not to ask any follow-ups… it just ends up being an embarrassing ordeal for the both of us…
Even for myself, a man that devotes a staggering amount of time trying to learn about all of the top programs, as well as the significant mid-majors, I find it next to impossible to keep everything straight. There are just too many teams, and too much turnover every year, to be really educated about all the participants in March Madness unless you are a full-fledged NCAA basketball analyst.
Therefore, the purpose of this article is to supply readers with the basics. I’m not going to give you the blueprint to the perfect bracket, because no one can. Nor will I be providing an analysis of every team in the field, as that just wouldn’t be fun for anyone. Instead, I’m here to provide an understanding of how the teams in this field got to where they are, which teams have a legitimate shot to win, and, hopefully, make those water cooler conversations just a little less ill-informed.
So, without further ado, let’s get going.
Question - How do teams get selected into the field?
An excellent question! I’m so glad you asked. As I mentioned earlier, there are 32 conferences in college basketball. Each and every one of those conferences has an individual playoffs at the end of the regular season. This is important to understand because people frequently consider March Madness, and its single elimination format to find one national champion, to be the NCAA playoffs. This is true, but teams must compete in their own conference playoffs first, and therefore every team that competes in March Madness has already played playoff basketball.
The conference playoffs are particularly important for the lesser-known conferences. All conferences in the NCAA are not created equally. While there are 32 conferences… the household names, the big powerhouse schools, all reside in a small handful of them. In today’s college basketball landscape, there are only 4 conferences that should be considered elite: The ACC, SEC, Big Ten, and Big 12. With the Big East, Pac 12, and American Athletic Conference a step below. The remaining 25 conferences are known as “mid-majors” (though some of these, including the Mountain West, Atlantic 10, and West Coast due to the presence of Gonzaga, garner more attention than others).
To put things in perspective, 28 teams in the 68-team field this year come from the four elite conferences. When adding in the second tier, 39 teams come from seven.
The only way for a team to guarantee themselves a spot in the field is to win their conference tournament. Therefore, 32 spots are secured for said champions. This has proven time after time to be a catastrophic truth to some of the best teams in the mid-majors. Out of the 32 conferences in college basketball, 21 of them are sending only one team to the big dance (one-bid conferences). This means that even if a team performs better than the rest of their conference throughout the regular season, they must win their conference playoffs to gain entry to March Madness. This is why you will see teams with very mediocre records sneaking in with one of the lower seeds, it’s because they outperformed the top teams in their conference when it mattered most, the playoffs (last season, Texas Southern was the 5-seed in the SWAC tournament and won it, gaining a spot into March Madness with a disgusting 15-19 overall record… they were 21-13 this year and missed).
On the flip side. In the more major conferences, it is much less important for many teams to perform well in their conference tournament. While it’s great to win major conference tournaments for better seeding as well as momentum heading into March Madness, it frequently isn’t necessary to do so. Indeed, several teams from the major conferences are guaranteed their spots regardless of how they play in their conference tournament, as their regular season resumes are sufficient for inclusion. In weaker conferences, all the regular season does is determine teams’ conference tournament seeding (or, to put it bluntly, the regular season means nothing). For those 21 conferences with only one participant in March Madness, their best team often isn’t the one that goes.
I’ll give you an example from this season. In the Colonial Athletic Conference, Hofstra University was the second most efficient offense in the country behind Gonzaga, had an overall record of 27-7, and was first place in their conference during the regular season. However, Northeastern won the conference playoffs, taking a spot in the March Madness field away from Hofstra. Meanwhile, Oklahoma and its 19-13 record (including a pathetic 7-11 record against teams in their own conference the Big 12), received a 9-seed in March Madness, despite losing their opening game in their conference tournament to West Virginia, the last place team in the Big 12.
If you are a small school in one of the lesser conferences, a terrific season means nothing without a conference playoff championship. If you are a big school in one of the elite conferences, you can be slightly above average relative to the rest of your conference, get eliminated in the first game of your conference playoffs, and still find yourself saddled with a pretty decent seeding in the dance.
It’s an imperfect system, to say the least…
Question - Why though? How does a team like Oklahoma that performed relatively poorly in the win-loss column, and got eliminated in the first round of their conference playoffs, end up seeded higher than teams that won their conference tournament and had better records?
Another fantastic question! Boy, you are on fire today!
The remaining 36 teams in the March Madness field, the ones that didn’t win their conference playoffs, are termed as “at-large” bids. They are the teams that did enough in the regular season to still be considered among the best in the sport, despite not winning their respective conferences. This is where the controversy surrounding the tournament entrants emerges from. As we see with Oklahoma, their resume is iffy at best, so in order to give them a spot ahead of another at-large team the committee compares quality wins, strength-of-schedule, efficiency both on offense and defense, and the all-important eye-test. Deserving teams will always be snubbed, teams like this year’s Oklahoma, Ohio State, and Florida, will always catch breaks, and then we move on with our lives…
The committee mentioned above is a group of ten people (eight athletic directors, two conference commissioners) that decides both on who the at-large bids will be, as well as the formation of the brackets and the seeding within them. Once the 68-team field has been determined, they are ranked from 1-68. The brackets are then created with an attempt to keep all four as equal as possible, with several other factors that really aren’t worth getting into here. Teams 1-4 get 1-seeds, teams 5-8 get 2-seeds, and so on.
The one-bid conference champions I discussed earlier are always the low seeds in the brackets, despite winning their respective playoffs. Out of the 21 champions from the conferences sending one team only, just two of them are seeded higher than 12 (Buffalo, Wofford). Simply put, even though these teams are the cream of the crop in their own leagues, for the most part they are considered the “worst” teams in March Madness. Notwithstanding their experiencing a greater level of failure during the season, the committee believes that Oklahoma is still better than each and every one of these programs.
This is how 28 teams in this year’s NCAA Tournament come from four conferences (ACC, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12). They are considered to be far and away the strongest conferences, and therefore deserve to have more participants in the field. This is the only way to do it, and I fully support this way of thinking. However, the committee always finds a way to take it a step too far, sneaking in a couple of undeserving teams when there are, in my opinion, more qualified programs with less prestige that miss out. And just in case you missed it, Oklahoma, Ohio State, and Florida, stick out for me this season…
The point I really want to be taken from this is that early round upsets, the aspect of the tournament that both vigilant followers and average fans alike enjoy the most, aren’t necessarily as big an upset as you might think by looking at the seed numbers alone. All but three teams ranked 12 and lower won their respective conferences. They’re battle tested, they know what winning big games feels like, and their higher-seeded opponents have regularly experienced more disappointment throughout the season than they have (granted, while playing a more difficult schedule).
So, when you are at the water cooler, and somebody says “I can’t believe Northeastern beat Kansas, my bracket is ruined!” You can calmly respond with, “I can, Northeastern had to battle to beat the top team in their conference, an offensive juggernaut, just to get selected, it’s not their fault the Colonial Athletic Conference gets no love from the committee.”
Furthermore, if Oklahoma gets pummeled by the much more deserving at-large Mississippi (who beat SEC conference tournament champion Auburn twice this year) in the first-round, you can say “Hey, they probably shouldn’t have been invited in the first place.”
Even though teams like Oklahoma and Ohio State (teams that barely eclipsed the .500 mark, and had losing records within their respective conferences) are seeded higher than all but two one-bid conference champions, they are arguably less well equipped to make noise in the tournament than several teams seeded below them.
Maddening, isn’t it?
Question - Which teams have the best chance to win this year?
The top seeds are there for a reason. If there is one piece of bracket advice I will bestow upon you it’s this… don’t try to be a hero. While I think it’s pretty evident at this point that I have a soft spot for the weaker conferences, when it comes down to crunch time, the elite teams will typically prevail. Yes we saw seven-seeded Connecticut take down eight-seeded Kentucky in the finals a few years ago. But it’s extremely rare, and those aren’t exactly small programs.
This is exactly why you shouldn’t get yourself too wrapped up in the trendy double-digit seeds. I’ve made my case as to why they should not be undervalued, as well as the fact that there are programs seeded ahead of them that made the tournament by virtue of being at-large bids from elite conferences, but the fact remains, they’re still small programs. Several of these teams will win a game to be sure, maybe even two, but if you are going to invest time into this tournament and then completely forget about college basketball until next March… keep it simple, and keep your eyes on the high seeds.
This year in particular feels like one where the top-tier teams have separated themselves from the rest of the pack even more than usual. It would shock me if this tournament’s champion is seeded any lower than the two-line. Let’s take a brief look at the contenders…
Duke is the favourite to win it all, and with good reason. I’ll be honest with you, I’m a born and raised Blue Devils fan. My grandfather was an alumnus, and I got my first Duke hoodie at a very young age, so they will always be my one true love in college basketball. Just so happens that they have arguably the two most talented players in the tournament, and unarguably the best in Zion Williamson. There is nothing I can say about Zion that hasn’t been said already. He’s one of a kind, the most elegant combination of size, speed, footwork, and touch that the NCAA (and soon, the NBA) has ever seen. Sitting right behind him is R.J. Barrett, the star Canadian who was the #1 prospect out of high school before Zion eclipsed his status in the first game of the college season. Duke also has the nation’s best third option in Cam Reddish. Reddish has had an inconsistent season at best, living in the shadows of his fellow freshmen phenoms, but he is capable of getting hot at any given moment. Finally, they say great guard play is essential to win in the tournament, and Duke has a great one is Tre Jones, who’s older brother Tyus was named tournament MVP when the Devils won their last title in 2015. Duke only lost one game this year when all four guys were healthy, an early season matchup against Gonzaga in Hawaii. If all four can stay on the floor, Duke will be a nearly impossible out.
Three teams on the top seed line play in one conference, the ACC. This is a true testament to the strength of the conference. They have a total of seven teams in the tournament, none seeded lower that eight. Duke’s arch-rival, North Carolina, is one of them. The Tar Heels have a pair of wins against Duke (both sans Zion), as well as a one-point loss to Duke at full-strength in the ACC playoffs last week. If you are a believer that experience will prevail over freshman star-power in the NCAA tournament, North Carolina might just be your best bet. While Duke is loaded, all four guys I discussed are freshmen. UNC has three senior starters in Luke Maye, Kenny Williams, and Cam Johnson. Pair that with freshman sensation Coby White and his massive afro and you’ve got yourself a complete squad that plays very fast and can out-score anyone. Maye and Williams were both part of the net-cutting celebration when the Tar Heels won in 2017. No one would be surprised to see coach Roy Williams get his fourth championship this season. And if a Duke fan is saying that, you know it’s real.
Virginia is the third ACC team on the one-line. Tony Bennett’s group is known for their suffocating defense, and rightfully so. They had another stellar regular season, with only a pair of losses to Duke and one to Florida State in the ACC playoffs on their resume. The question that always surrounds the Cavaliers is whether they can score enough to win in March. Virginia became infamous in last year’s tournament by gaining the distinction of being the only one-seed to ever lose in the opening round. This year marks the fourth time in six years that Virginia sits on the one-line, and the fifth time in that stretch they’ve been a one or a two… and they haven’t reached the Final Four in any of them. Virginia is bound to break through eventually, and this year just might be their time. They are the most efficient team in the tournament, they lead in many of the important metrics used to assess programs, and this is Bennett’s best offensive unit yet. They have experience, led by a pair of juniors in Kyle Guy and Ty Jerome, along with redshirt sophomore De’Andre Hunter. Their bench is short, but the guys that play are very, very good. Is this finally your year Cavalier fans?
To close out the top seeds, we have Gonzaga. The Bulldogs are a bit of an anomaly in college basketball. They play in a weaker conference, the WCC, but are a perennial powerhouse. They are the best offensive team in the country, though those numbers are certainly skewed by their weaker schedule relative to the other top programs. They are also limping in to the tournament after a demoralizing defeat at the hands of Saint Mary’s in the WCC playoff finals. Canadian Brandon Clarke is an efficient scorer and a tremendous defender. But this team will really only go as far as junior sensation Rui Hachimura will take them. The Japan native is a Naismith Player of the Year finalist, and is one of the most exciting players to watch in this tournament. The Zags have a tough road ahead of them with a potential matchup with chronic bracket-busting Syracuse in the second round, and by far the tournament’s best 4-seed in Florida State possibly waiting for them should they get through to the second weekend. If Gonzaga plays in Minneapolis this year, no top-seed will have earned it more.
Then you have your two-seeds, and all four are really good. Kentucky and Tennessee both had a shot at the top-line had they won the SEC tournament. Instead, they will be in the back of the minds of North Carolina and Virginia fans, respectively, as they make their way through their regions. Kentucky is possibly the most talented team in the tournament not named Duke. They are led by sophomore power-forward PJ Washington, they have a rare veteran starter for the one-and-done Wildcats in grad-transfer Reid Travis, Keldon Johnson will be a first-rounder in the NBA draft, and the explosive Tyler Herro is one of the most interesting, exciting, and polarizing player in college basketball.
Tennessee has two absolute studs in senior Admiral Schofield and a Naismith Player of the Year finalist of their own in junior Grant Williams. They have two wins against Kentucky, including one in last week’s SEC tournament before falling to Auburn in the final. The Volunteers spent a good portion of the season ranked first in the nation. They aren’t all that deep, but they have five guys that can lead their team in scoring in any game they play. The loss to Auburn heading into the tournament was a bad one. But if Tennessee plays like the team that beat the Wildcats twice instead of the one that got spanked by Auburn last week, it could be a very big year for the Vols.
Coming out of the Big Ten, Michigan and Michigan State round out the top-eight. Michigan lost in last year’s national title game to Villanova, and five players from that team returned this season. They started the year 17-0, and they have themselves a crazy talented freshman in Iggy Brazdeikis. The Wolverines also boast one of the nation’s best defenses. Somehow, despite all of that, they are probably the least discussed two-seed in terms of title chances… with three losses to Michigan State probably having a lot to do with that. A team with these kinds of credentials and defensive prowess flying under the radar is extremely dangerous. If they can click on offense for a couple weeks, this could very well be Michigan’s year.
That leaves the Spartans of Michigan State. The Spartans have arguably the best veteran guard in the entire tournament in junior Cassius Winston, and Tom Izzo’s squad’s chances will depend heavily on his performance. Michigan State is very strong on both ends of the floor, ranking inside the top-20 nationally in efficiency both on offense and defense. They play stout man-to-man defense and an NCAA-best two-thirds of their baskets are scored off assists. Tom Izzo’s group got bounced early last year with a pair of lottery picks on the roster. This time around, there are absent any player that NBA teams are salivating over. Instead, they have a big group of experienced role players that play extremely well as a unit. A team like that, with a coach like Izzo, should certainly not be overlooked by anyone. Remember, they are 3-0 against fellow two-seed Michigan this season.
So, is that enough to get you started? One of those eight teams will cut down the nets in Minneapolis in a couple weeks, I’m just about certain of this. Florida State will be extremely dangerous from the four-line, Texas Tech is elite on defense and ended Kansas’ historic run atop the Big 12, and Houston is downright scary… but the eight teams discussed above are a clear step ahead all of them in this writer’s opinion. Wofford and Buffalo, two of the best stories all season, could potentially make some noise, but that’s all it would be. If you want a candidate to be this year’s Loyola-Chicago, I’d take a shot with Belmont, those guys can flat out score the basketball. It’s nice to see the little guys put together a bit of magic in March, but if you really want to familiarize yourself with title contenders, the eight teams I provided will suffice.
Enjoy the madness everybody. Best believe that I will.