Top seed outlook: Could No. 1 Virginia exorcise last year’s allies now that the team is currently at full strength? Our model believes so. The Cavaliers have a 49 percent likelihood of cracking the Final Four and a 31 percent likelihood of accomplishing what is the program’s first national title match.
Together with De’Andre Hunter, who was not on the court this past year during UVA’s historic loss to No. 16 Maryland Baltimore County, the Cavaliers were dominant on both ends — the only team ranking in the top five at Pomeroy’s adjusted offense and protection metrics. Yet again, Tony Bennett’s package line shield is suffocating most every offensive chance and successfully turning games into stone fights. However, this year’s team is better on the offensive end and ought to breeze to the Elite Eight, where it could meet Tennessee. Due to Grant Williams and the superbly appointed Admiral Schofield, the No. 2 Volunteers are playing their very best basketball in program history. We provide them a 22 percent probability of reaching the Final Four.
Sneaky Final Four select: No. 6 Villanova. Is it”sneaky” to select the team that has won just two of the past three national titles? Maybe not. But this has not been the same group that coach Jay Wright advised to those championships. After dropping a ton of its best players from last year’s title-winning team, the Wildcats had an up-and-down year and lost five of their final eight regular-season Big East games. But they also got hot over the past week, capping off a year where they won the Big East regular-season and conference-tournament titles — and had one of the 20 greatest offenses in the country according to KenPom (powered through an absurd number of 3-pointers). Our power ratings think that they’re the fourth-best team in the South despite being the No. 6 seed, and they have a 5 percent chance of earning it back into the Final Four for a third time in four seasons.
Don’t wager on: No. 4 Kansas State. Coach Bruce Weber’s Wildcats nearly made the Final Four last season, but they may find it harder this time around. K-State comes with an elite defense (it ranks fourth in the country based on Pomeroy’s ratings), but its crime is more prone to struggles — and may be down its second-leading scorer, forward Dean Wade, who missed the team’s Big 12 championship loss to Iowa State with a foot injury. A barbarous draw that gives the Wildcats tough No. 13 seed UC Irvine in the first round, then places them opposite the Wisconsin-Oregon winner at Round 2, could limit their capability to advance deep into a second consecutive tournament.
Cinderella watch: No. 12 Oregon. According to our model, the Ducks have the best Sweet 16 chances (24 percent) of almost any double-digit seed in the tournament, over twice that of any other offender. Oregon struggled to string together wins for the majority of the regular season, and its own odds appeared sunk following 7-foot-2 phenom Bol Bol was lost for the season with a foot injury in January. But the Ducks have rallied to win eight consecutive games heading into the tournament, such as a convincing victory in Saturday’s Pac-12 championship. Oregon fits a similar mold as K-State — great defense using a suspect offense — but that is telling, since the Ducks are a 12-seed and the Wildcats are a No. 4. If they meet in the Round of 32, we provide Oregon a 47 percent chance at the upset.
Player to watch: Grant Williams, Tennessee
The junior has come a very long way from being”just a fat boy with some skill.” Williams, the de facto leader of Rick Barnes’s Volunteers, has bullied the SEC over the previous two seasons, collecting two consecutive conference player of the year honors.
The Vols might just feature the best offense of Barnes’s coaching career — and we are talking about a man who coached Kevin Durant! Much of the offensive potency could be tracked to Williams, the team’s top scorer and rebounder, who ranks in the 97th percentile in scoring efficiency, based on information courtesy of Synergy Sports.
Williams owns an old-man game you may find at a local YMCA, a back-to-the-basket, footwork-proficient offensive attack that manifests primarily in post-ups, where he positions in the 98th percentile in scoring efficacy and shoots a adjusted field-goal proportion of 56.1. He can get the Volunteers buckets in the waning minutes of matches, also, as he positions from the 96th percentile in isolation scoring efficacy.
Likeliest first-round upsets: No. 9 Oklahoma over No. 8 Ole Miss (53 percent); No. 12 Oregon over No. 5 Wisconsin (45 percent); No. 10 Iowa over No. 7 Cincinnati (34 percent)
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