What good is an NCAA tournament bracket entry if you can’t pick the winner? Here’s a method for finding a men’s team that might realistically cut down the nets — a method that has correctly identified many recent champions, including Connecticut last season. (If numbers aren’t your thing, just scroll to the bottom.)
Celebrated basketball stats guru Ken Pomeroy ranks teams by net rating, which he lists in the “NetRTG” column on his website. Each team’s NetRTG “represents the number of points the team would be expected to outscore the average D-I team [by] over 100 possessions,” Pomeroy wrote in 2016. Calculating it involves merely subtracting a team’s defensive rating number, adjusted for strength of schedule, from its adjusted offensive rating number.
Pomeroy has been publishing his ratings since the 2001-02 season, so we can go back and look at each national champion’s profile entering the NCAA tournament. This makes it easier to see how teams in this year’s field compare with past champions and to identify which teams have the best chance of winning it all.
We can break down the past national champions into tiers:
The low bar: 19.1. This is the lowest adjusted pretournament net rating for any NCAA men’s tournament champion since 2002, when Pomeroy’s data begins. The honor is held by the 2014 Connecticut Huskies, a No. 7 seed that was pretty mediocre statistically — entering that year’s tournament, the Huskies ranked 57th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency — but still had enough firepower to win it all. If your title pick clears 19.1, it’s not completely insane, but most rational picks look a little more like …
The average champs: 28.1. If a team enters the tournament with a NetRTG number above this, it’s a sound choice to be your champ. The North Carolina team that won the 2017 national title came closest to this average, with a 28 NetRTG number entering the NCAA tournament.
This season, seven teams surpass the winners’ NetRTG average of 28.1: Duke, Florida, Houston, Auburn, Tennessee, Alabama and Texas Tech (we will round up its NetRTG of 28.05).
The best of the best: 35.7. Virginia raised the bar with its 2019 title run, becoming the most efficient winner in the Pomeroy era. Considering the team the Cavaliers overtook for the honor was the 2008 Kansas Jayhawks, who prevailed in a Final Four of all No. 1 seeds, that’s a notable achievement.
Last year’s champion, Connecticut, had the third-best pretournament NetRTG number in the KenPom era at 32.2.
There’s one notable caveat for KenPom No. 1 Duke, however, in addition to the health of star Cooper Flagg: Only four teams that entered the NCAA tournament ranked first in Pomeroy’s ratings — 2008 Kansas, 2012 Kentucky, 2019 Virginia and U-Conn. last year — have won it all.
Here’s a breakdown of how Pomeroy’s pretournament No. 1 teams have fared over the last two-plus decades. As you can seen, nearly two-thirds of them (14 of 22) failed to reach the Final Four.
The average pretournament KenPom ranking of the past 22 national champions is 5.5, a number that is skewed a bit by three lower-ranked KenPom teams that won it all (No. 20 Syracuse in 2003, No. 15 Connecticut in 2011 and No. 25 U-Conn. in 2014). Take away those three comparative long shots, and the average KenPom ranking rises to 3.2. Those three outliers were the only teams ranked worse than KenPom No. 6 to win the national championship.
There are a whopping 35 teams that clear our low-bar NetRTG number of 19.1 (last year there were only 22).
To narrow that list, we can point to the fact that all but two national champions since 2002 — U-Conn. in 2011 and 2014 — have ranked in the top 20 of Pomeroy’s offensive efficiency metric entering the tournament. That means we are crossing the following teams off our list: Michigan State, St. John’s, Maryland, Texas A&M, Clemson, Kansas, St. Mary’s, Louisville, Mississippi, Michigan, UCLA, Marquette, VCU, Oregon, Mississippi State, North Carolina and Georgia.
Let’s further narrow it down to teams that rank in the top 20 in offensive efficiency and in the top 40 in defensive efficiency, a feature of all but three of the past 22 national champions. That leaves us with Duke, Florida, Houston, Auburn, Tennessee, Alabama, Texas Tech, Gonzaga, Iowa State, Wisconsin and Arizona.
Odds taken Monday morning from DraftKings.
Should the Blue Devils win it all, they would become — by a fairly significant margin — the most efficient national champion in the Pomeroy era, with a NetRTG of 38.15. Duke ranks third in offensive efficiency and fourth in defensive efficiency and simply dominated its competition: Only five of its 31 wins have come by fewer than 10 points. The Blue Devils both take and make a lot of three-pointers, with 45.4 percent of their field goal attempts coming from beyond the arc (No. 51 out of 364 teams nationally) and a 37.7 percent success rate on such shots (No. 20). This also is a good sign, as 17 of the past 21 national champions ranked at least in the top 100 nationally in three-point percentage. The status of Flagg — the ACC player and rookie of the year and the likely No. 1 pick in this year’s NBA draft — bears watching, but the Blue Devils were able to claim the ACC tournament title even though Flagg missed most of it with an ankle injury suffered Thursday.
The only thing holding back the SEC champion Gators — who have the nation’s most efficient offense, per Pomeroy — might be the March experience of Coach Todd Golden, who has yet to win an NCAA tournament game in six seasons at Florida and San Francisco. Of the past 34 national champions, 32 were coached by men who had been to at least the Sweet 16. But point guard Walter Clayton Jr. has NCAA tournament experience from his time playing for Rick Pitino at Iona, and fellow guard Alijah Martin was a part of Florida Atlantic’s Cinderella run to the Final Four in 2023. Australian 6-foot-11 big man Alex Condon makes Florida one of the better rebounding teams in the tournament, particularly on its own missed shots (the Gators rank eighth nationally in offensive rebounding percentage).
The Cougars were a one-point overtime loss to Texas Tech away from running the table in the Big 12 during the regular season, then stormed to the conference tournament title. But they have disappointed in March of late. Houston was a No. 1 seed in each of the past two NCAA tournaments but lost in the Sweet 16 both times. The Cougars will not win any track meets; they operate at one of the slowest paces in the country, but they make 39.8 percent of their three-point attempts (No. 4 nationally) and stifle opponents on the inside, ranking fifth in opponents’ two-point field goal percentage.
The Tigers have the nation’s second-most efficient offense and were tested mightily by a difficult nonconference schedule (Auburn defeated Houston, Iowa State, Memphis and Purdue, among others, and lost only to Duke) to go along with the thunderdome that was the SEC this season. Coach Bruce Pearl perhaps was looking to toughen up his team for March, when his Auburn squads have disappointed: The Tigers have advanced to the Sweet 16 only once in five NCAA tournament trips under Pearl (their 2019 Final Four run) and have lost to a double-digit seed in two of their past three appearances.
The Vols operate at a snail’s pace on offense but have an elite defense. Opponents have an effective field goal rate — which incorporates the fact that three-pointers are worth more than two-pointers — of just 44.2 percent, which ranks second nationally. Tennessee is willing to let its opponents hoist it up from deep; 45.1 percent of its foes’ field goal attempts are from three-point range (No. 340 in the country). But the Vols have held their opponents to 27.8 percent shooting from behind the arc, the best mark in the nation.
The Crimson Tide stumbled a bit to end the regular season, losing four of six at one point and bowing out meekly to Florida in the SEC tournament semifinals. It could be that Alabama simply wore down after leading the nation in offensive tempo. Still, the Crimson Tide is an exceptionally deep team, with nine players averaging at least 15 minutes. Alabama scored at least 90 points in 18 games during the regular season, tops in Division I, and on defense it allowed opponents to shoot just 30.8 percent from three-point range, No. 30 nationally.
While Red Raiders Coach Grant McCasland has never been past the NCAA tournament’s second round as a Division I coach, he does have an NIT title (at North Texas in 2023), two trips to the Division II Elite Eight (at Midwestern State in 2010 and 2011) and a junior college national championship (at Midland College in 2007) on his résumé. Sophomore JT Toppin, one of the nation’s best players, also has NCAA tournament experience from last season, when he played for a New Mexico team that won the Mountain West title. The Red Raiders also have one of the tournament’s better point guards (Elijah Hawkins) and a pair of sharpshooters (Chance McMillian and Christian Anderson both make better than 40 percent of their three-point attempts).
The Bulldogs began the season ranked sixth in the AP top 25 and rose to No. 3 by the end of November but were out of the rankings entirely by mid-January, though they again won the West Coast Conference tournament title. Now they’re back in the NCAA tournament for the 26th straight season (the pandemic-canceled 2020 tournament excepted), an active streak that ranks second only to Michigan State’s 27. Gonzaga has a peculiar stat profile for a successful modern-era team in that it neither takes many three-pointers (only 33.5 percent of its field goal attempts are from behind the arc, which ranks 313th nationally) nor makes many three-pointers (its 34.4 percent success rate on three-pointers ranks 146th). But the Bulldogs shoot 57.8 percent from two-point range (No. 10 nationally) and rarely turn over the ball, and opponents have made only 30.2 percent of their three-point attempts (No. 15 in the country). A potential second-round matchup with top-seeded Houston is an obstacle, however.
The defensive-minded Cyclones lost to BYU in the Big 12 tournament quarterfinals and would be bucking a major trend should they win it all: Since the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, every national champion has advanced to at least the semifinals of its conference tournament. Of the 406 at-large bids handed out to teams that did not get past the quarterfinals of their conference tournament over that span, only 15 advanced to the Final Four (the latest being Alabama, which lost in the quarterfinals of last year’s SEC tournament but still made it to the national semifinals). Iowa State barely made this list, ranking 20th in offensive efficiency, and is further weakened by the absence of Keshon Gilbert, the team’s second-leading scorer and leader in assists.
Coach Greg Gard hasn’t gotten the Badgers into the tournament’s second weekend since 2017, his first season in Madison, and Wisconsin has lost to a double-digit seed in three of its past four NCAA tournament appearances. With Big Ten first-teamer John Tonje leading the way, the Badgers take a lot of three-pointers (their 48.1 percent three-point rate ranks 18th in the country), make a lot of free throws (82.8 percent, tops in the nation) and don’t commit many turnovers (only 14.1 percent of their possessions end in a giveaway, No. 17 in the country). Tonje has come up big in big games, with 41 points against Arizona in November, 32 against Purdue in February and 31 against Illinois three days later, and 32 in a Big Ten semifinal upset of Michigan State on Saturday.
The Wildcats may match the statistical prerequisites to be on this list — they’re 12th in offensive efficiency and 33rd in defensive efficiency — but they certainly didn’t look the part of a champion down the stretch. Arizona went 3-5 over its final eight regular season games, though it did surge to the Big 12 tournament final, in which it lost to Houston. It could be that the Wildcats — who rely predominantly on their starting five and rank 229th nationally in percentage of minutes logged by their bench players — simply wore down. Still, guard Caleb Love is one of the nation’s best players and is battle-tested in March: Before transferring to Arizona, he was a key cog in North Carolina’s run to the national title game in 2022.
