The Final Four is set, and it’s not who we thought it would be. It’s not a collection of cinderellas by any stretch—each of the four programs is among the nation’s ten or so most powerful—but the best teams in the country aren’t really here. Gonzaga would be favored over Duke, but Arkansas beat Gonzaga and Duke beat Arkansas. Arizona would be favored over Villanova, but Houston beat Arizona and Villanova beat Houston. Only Kansas was the favorite in its region, and maybe that’s fitting, because Kansas is the only team of the four who, at the beginning of the year, was really expected to be here.
It’s not surprising that Duke or Villanova made it. They were roughly top-ten teams entering the season. Duke had more doubt, coming off a terrible year but holding a touted recruiting class and even more program-centric hype than is customary. Villanova had a lower perceived ceiling, being more of a known quantity. North Carolina is a surprise, but they had high expectations entering the season too, some of those self-generated by Hubert Davis, who has very publicly believed in this team from the beginning, implying Davis might be a prophet and might be astonishingly lucky and is probably actually neither.
Below, we’ve pulled together each team’s KenPom ranking from the morning of each of their gamedays this year. The scale is logarithmic, but remembering that the distance between, say, 1st and 2nd in KenPom right now is comparable to the distance between 31st and 53rd, a non-logarithmic y-axis may have been more misleading. Kansas entered the year expected, by the numbers, to be a good bit better than Duke and Villanova, who were in turn expected to be a good bit better than North Carolina. Each of those three up top spent some time as the best of the three, Villanova peaking in January, Duke peaking in the last week of the regular season (before they played UNC), Kansas peaking early but then again during the conference tournaments. North Carolina surged at points and fell at points, and has now put together its best run of play yet here at the end of the year.
What’s there to learn from this? Not much, to be honest. The thing that matters most is where teams align now, and the place that’s measured best is the Vegas odds, not KenPom. Kansas and Duke are each favored by four or five points, and one would expect Kansas to be favored by one or two over Duke come title time were the favorites to both win on Saturday. That’s what there is to know, heading into the end of this week. But the path each took to get here is interesting, and it’s striking how for three of the four teams, the story of the season was not dominating or riding a roller coaster, but just consistently hanging around. Now, here they are. Very much a last-man-standing tournament so far.
