It’s the beginning of March and the madness is about to be upon us. Let’s start by identifying some National Championship contenders.
Conference tournaments in the mid-major ranks are underway and high major conferences are wrapping up their regular seasons as teams position themselves for Selection Sunday and of course the NCAA Tournament.
For those that haven’t been locked in, that’s alright, we are here to help you. This season has had plenty of teams cycle through the top of the AP Top 25 and plenty of teams look like worthy Final Four teams, but nothing will prepare you for the three weekends this coming month as this is truly a wide open field.
But what if there was a scientific way for you to contextualize the field of 68 and who the likely teams are to cut down the nets in early April?
KenPom has become synonymous in college hoops, it’s tab sits open on my laptop from the first day of the season until the Tuesday after the National Championship game. Ken Pomeroy’s statistical analysis of every college hoops teams and its projections are invaluable when betting the sport (and most sportsbooks use his projections as a guide to open lines).
There are numerous inputs into the formula, but two key metrics are the adjusted offensive efficiency metric (AOE) and the adjusted defensive efficiency metric (ADE) for each team, a number that sorts the best teams on each side of the ball.
Since 2002, if you added up the AOE and ADE of each team that won the National Championship prior to the start of the NCAA Tournament, every single team except for one would have had a sum of less than 50.
The outlier is 2014 UConn, who went on a torrid run to the title with Shabazz Napier.
This is as good of a way to capture teams that are well balanced and elite on both sides of the ball.
First, here are the updated National Championship odds and all the teams that qualify as contenders on March 1.
2023 National Championship Odds
2023 National Championship Contenders
It makes sense that several teams at the top of the odds board fit the description of a National Championship contender, each of the top nine teams fit the bill of what a title team looks like statistically.
What’s fascinating is that teams like UConn, Creighton and Saint Mary’s grade out well analytically, but don’t have the best profile to someone assessing their seeding position come Selection Sunday. All figure to be around the three through five seed line in a few weeks.
However, there are a handful of games left in the regular season and conference tournaments to improve their seeding.
There are numbers on all 363 teams, though, and some are just outside the magical number of 50. Here are some teams that can easily slide inside the parameters in the next two weeks or so.
2023 National Championship Dark Horses
This group consists of teams that are greater than 50 but less than 70, meaning that with a good run in their respective conference tournaments they can enter the group above them.
This is another diverse group that may be trending in different directions.
For reference, Arkansas has been trending upwards over the last few weeks with Nick Smith Jr. back in the lineup. The Hogs rate as a top five offense when the likely lottery pick is on the floor this season, but he has missed time with an injury up until two weeks ago, holding down their rating. Yes, they are off losses to Alabama and Tennessee on the road, but this team is gaining ground quickly in KenPom’s rating.
Speaking of Tennessee, the team won by double digits against the Razorbacks, but is playing its worst basketball of the season down the stretch of the regular season, going 4-5 in the month of February. However, the team’s rating is buoyed by the best ADE in the country. It’s worth noting the Volunteers lost starting guard Zakai Zeigler for the rest of the season with a torn ACL, per Jon Rothstein.
Lopsided Teams, first round upsets galore
The last group worth mentioning are teams that could be ripe for an upset, and some of these names may surprise you given their projected seed come Selection Sunday.
These are teams that are top 20 in the country on one side of the ball, but outside the top 50 on the other, indicating that they are an uneven group. As we mentioned above, the key to tourney success over the years has been balance, and these teams haven’t shown that all season.
Baylor and Gonzaga each figure to be on the two line in brackets, but if their high powered offense runs cold, they can be in for an early exit. While these two teams grade as top 15 groups in the country and very well can buck the historical trend due to overwhelming talent, we could look back and see that the upset was hiding in plain sight.
However, on the other side of the coin, there are several teams that may enter the NCAA Tournament as double digit seeds, or miss it all together. These teams may be good in a one game setting due to being able to hold their hat on being elite on one side of the ball, whether it’s a high powered offense or a stifling defense. VCU and its lockdown D could cause havoc as a 12 seed against a vulnerable 5 in the right setting, for example.
Lastly, West Virginia is one of the most fascinating teams in recent memory, a bubble team that is a top 25 group and is elite on offense. The team will likely be favored in any First Four matchup if it plays in Dayton and be at worst a one possession underdog (or favored) against any six seed.
I’ll update this a few more times ahead of Selection Sunday and after the bracket is revealed, but this should help get your mind in the right place when attacking the future market.
Track all of Reed’s bets at Betstamp HERE!
Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.
*Stats are updated prior to March 1 games
