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Who’s Going to Win the National Championship?
It’s a bit of a funny question in this space, since we should theoretically be talking about it all year, but it’s a big one for those getting their college basketball fandom legs back under them, and we’re asked it now and then by friends. I’d offer eleven teams as possibilities, and based on recent results, we’re going to break them into three categories, not our usual two:
The Favorite: Gonzaga
Gonzaga is not favored over the field. But they’re the favorite. They’re multiple points better, on a neutral court, than anyone else in the country, they have no obvious weakness, they’re just a good, good basketball team. The Saint Mary’s loss doesn’t change that. Saint Mary’s is also a good basketball team! Not as good as Gonzaga, but good.
The Zags are also fairly likely to play all of their pre-Final Four games in Portland and San Francisco, especially with Arizona possibly closer to San Antonio than it is to SF (depends how the NCAA measures it, I haven’t seen official word). It’s easy to make too much of that, but it doesn’t hurt to play in your own time zone and within easy travel distance for your own passionate fanbase.
The Contenders: Baylor, Arizona, Kentucky
Each of these three has proven they can be as good as anyone else in the country, with Baylor coming on strong in recent games despite missing both LJ Cryer and Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua. Cryer may still come back, but even if he doesn’t, this team can compete with anyone, and they’ve done it on one day of rest just fine a couple times now with the thin rotation.
The Possibilities: Duke, Houston, Auburn, UCLA, Kansas, Texas Tech, Tennessee
You could make a case for including Duke as a contender. I wouldn’t argue. They’re playing great ball at present, they’ve shown they have a high ceiling, it’s fair to guess that they’ll catch a few breaks on calls if not also bracketing. They’ve only played one NCAA Tournament team in their last eight games, though, and Wake Forest isn’t exactly a Final Four contender, and they nearly lost to Wake at home in that game. It’s a similar situation to Houston, in which we know they’re good but it’s hard to calibrate exactly how good they are without seeing them play a team that’ll be favored in the first round.
The rest of the teams on this list have all shown flashes of brilliance, including even Tennessee, and have played consistently well enough to be in the picture. They also are underwhelming enough that there’s serious reason to doubt them. I wouldn’t pick a single one of these in a bracket pool. Too high a probability of a first-weekend exit.
One note on this: These, those of you more in the weeds may notice, are very aligned with KenPom and not very aligned with our projected NCAA Tournament seedings. Entering play Tuesday, we had Purdue and Wisconsin as 2-seeds, and Houston a 6-seed. This all goes together. Yes, it’s harder to go on a deep run as a 6-seed than it is as a 2-seed. But if you’re a 6-seed and you catch the right 3-seed (Providence) and 2-seed (Wisconsin), you probably have an easier path than a 2-seed lining up on the same side of a region as, theoretically, UCLA and Texas Tech (if UCLA were to slide, which they could, playing against as many résumé land mines as they do). Seeding matters, but quality matters more, especially this far out.
The Bracketology Model’s Coming Along
Speaking of our bracketology, things are going fine on that front. We got the biggest of the changes in there, now just need to tighten some screws and get our daily cadence down for the week and a half ahead. Not all the way in the clear, but making progress. Enough to take a break and write some notes. Hoping to just get into the middle of Bracket Matrix this year. The bottom was not a fun place to be, even if the focus of our model is more on being correct in February than other brackets care to be.
Iowa State Has It Both Ways
And not in a good way.
On Saturday, Iowa State got out of Manhattan with a solid road win, with Jaden Walker’s steal saving what had been a great performance for about 38 minutes before things got dicey. Last night, Iowa State scored only 36 points at home and lost to an Oklahoma State team that would not be in the NCAA Tournament picture were they eligible.
ISU’s still probably safely in the tournament, but it may have been a two-seed-line loss, which would leave them on the 9-line and a likely underdog if they performed as expected from here, which is to say if they lose their next two but don’t get blown out in either. Maybe a 10-seed, actually. Not terrible downside, though. And their upside remains high.
Tonight’s Noteworthy Games
Arizona (home against Stanford) and Houston (home against Temple) both play tonight, and there are some bubble games with some solid potential to be meaningful (SMU hosts Cincinnati, Memphis goes to South Florida). There are also seven conference tournaments in action among low and mid-majors. The best games, though, are Michigan State @ Ohio State (7:00 PM EST, ESPN), TCU @ Kansas (8:00 PM EST, ESPN+), and Iowa @ Michigan (9:00 PM EST, FS1).
For the Big Ten pair, there’s much to be gained and much that could be lost in the seeding department, with all four teams projecting to land between a 6-seed and a 10-seed in our most recent projection. That’s an area of the s-curve where teams are packed rather tightly, making each game meaningful. Michigan has a special kind of apprehension, sitting just four games above .500 and visiting Ohio State on Sunday, but the Buckeyes and Spartans have both been on the slide, with Ohio State coming off losses to Maryland and Nebraska and Michigan State coming off a 3-6 February.
For TCU and Kansas, it’s a quick rematch of a significant result from Tuesday. With Tuesday’s win, the Horned Frogs should be safely in the NCAA Tournament, but it would sure be something if they could repeat the performance on the road, and it’d heighten questions about Kansas, who’s still in the mix for a 1-seed even after the defeat in Fort Worth.
The Lockout Continues, We Don’t Know Where Aaron Rodgers Is Going
Things have gotten quiet in the last few days on both the MLB lockout front and the Aaron Rodgers front. Based on all the restructuring of contracts going on in Green Bay, you could believe the Packers are bringing him back, but what it really probably means is just that they think they can bring him back, and that his teammates are willing to change their deals if it makes him more likely to be their quarterback. If the restructurings weren’t happening, that would seem more noteworthy than the fact they are happening.
With baseball, I really don’t know what to expect. Now that games are being canceled at all, the leverage of time has changed. There’s a much bigger difference in feeling between a 161-game season and a 162-game season than there is between a 154-game season and a 161-game season, or even probably a 120-game season and a 154-game season. At least for fans, in the short term. Games have been canceled. The second-worst case (broadly speaking) is here. We have Tom Ricketts and his buddies to thank. For the last three months, they locked out the players. Monday, they locked out the fans. We have no great idea for how long. Precedent, to the extent it exists, would suggest possibly a month.
The Bets
We’ve gotten uncomfortably close to the profitability brink on our published bets, failing to click on any of our NASCAR and IndyCar plays so far and in the process losing a lot of units (hard thing about portfolio betting). It’d be nice to eventually get those models done so we have a more consistent approach to track our results on, but at the very least, we’re learning things. Conference tournaments have historically been very kind to us, and we have a lot down on futures right now, so hopefully it’s a good week and a half. South Alabama and Arkansas-Little Rock have already hit the over with three minutes left, so we’re safe for at least one more day from falling into unprofitable turf, and if we can split the other two daily picks, we’ll edge up closer to being able to round to one decimal place rather than zero.
On the futures topic: We have plays down in six tournaments (we had a seventh, but it was just one play in the Horizon League and it already crashed out). The most likely number of wins is two. Unfortunately, one win is more likely than three, because the value so far has been more on longshots than favorites. Little Rock holding on here would help push us a little closer. It would be nice to have South Alabama out of the mix in the Sun Belt.
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Enjoy the night, everybody. You’ll see Stu’s face later on Twitter, I believe, and you’ll see both of our words here on the site again tomorrow. We’re going to try to have a new pair of brackets up in the morning. Thanks for all your reading, and please keep the questions coming. We appreciate you being here.
