With March Madness currently under way it is time to find out who will be cutting down the nets in April.
Expect the Unexpected
The reason that March Madness gets all the hype that it does is because you never know what to expect. Just last year a 16 seed (Fairleigh Dickinson) beat a 1 seed (Purdue) for the second time in tournament history giving 16 seeds a record of 2-150 against the number 1 seed. Unlike professional sports repeat champions are rare, the last being Florida in 2006-2007 making things more entertaining seeing a new team emerge every year. When watching the tournament expect madness hence the name of the tournament, as you will see heavyweight teams fall left and right and mid-major programs make Cinderella runs.
How Hard is it to Make a Perfect Bracket
To this day there has not been a single perfect bracket ever made which is mind-blowing considering that there is an average of 70 million entries per season. Out of 63 total games the farthest a bracket has gone before busting was 49 games in 2019 by a man named Greg Nigl. If you were to flip a coin to predict every game the odds of getting every prediction correctly would be 1 in 9.2 quintillion. It is safe to say that no contestant in the near future will be making a perfect bracket.
Process of Elimination
Even though I don’t have the luck to make a perfect bracket, there is a system that has been very successful over the past 20 years in predicting which teams have a real chance at winning the national championship. For those who compete in bracket tournaments, predicting the winner will give you a severe advantage over other contestants as it is worth may more than other rounds. Having your champion get bounced early all but seals your fate so it is important to have a champion that checks the following.
Every champion since 2004 was top 12 in the week 6 associated press poll. Out of the remaining 16 teams these are the ones that fit the criteria. Arizona, Purdue, Houston, UConn, Marquette, Creighton, North Carolina, Gonzaga, and Tennessee.
All teams but one outlier finished the season top 20 in offensive efficiency and top 23 in defensive efficiency. This metric cut the list to just 4 teams which are Arizona, Houston, UConn, and Purdue. Based on how the past 20 seasons have played out, one of these 4 teams will win the national championship this year.
Prediction
The team that I predict to win it all is the UConn Huskies out of the Big East. UConn has been a force all season putting together a 31-3 record and winning 15 games by at least 20 points. UConn can make a strong argument that they have the best starting 5 in all of college basketball with two projected NBA top 20 picks Stephon Castle and Donovan Clingan. With both a high-powered offensive and suffocating defense UConn has a strong case to cut down the nets for the 2nd straight year being the first team in over 15 years to win back-to-back titles.
