Best seed outlook: Could No. 1 Virginia exorcise last year’s allies now that the team is at full strength? Our version believes so. The Cavaliers have a 49 percent likelihood of cracking the Final Four and a 31 percent probability of reaching what would be the program’s first national title game.
Together with De’Andre Hunter, who wasn’t on the court this past year through UVA’s historic loss to No. 16 Maryland Baltimore County, the Cavaliers were dominant on both ends — the only team standing in the top five at Pomeroy’s adjusted offense and protection metrics. Once again, Tony Bennett’s pack line shield is suffocating most every offensive chance and successfully turning games into stone fights. However, this year’s group is better on the offensive end and ought to breeze to the Elite Eight, in which it might meet Tennessee. Thanks to Grant Williams and the superbly appointed Admiral Schofield, the No. 2 Volunteers are playing their best basketball in history. We provide them a 22 percent likelihood of reaching the Final Four.
Sneaky Final Four select: No. 6 Villanova. Is it”sneaky” to pick the team that has won just two of the previous three national titles? Maybe not. But this hasn’t been the exact same team that coach Jay Wright advised to these championships. After dropping a ton of its best players from last year’s title-winning group, the Wildcats had an up-and-down year and dropped five of the final eight regular-season Big East games. However they also got hot over the last week, capping a season where they won the Big East regular-season and conference-tournament titles — and still had one of the 20 best offenses in the nation according to KenPom (powered through an absurd amount of 3-pointers). Our power ratings think that they’re the fourth-best team at 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.
Do not wager : No. 4 Kansas State. Coach Bruce Weber’s Wildcats nearly produced the Final Four final season, however they might find it harder this time around. K-State has an elite defense (it ranks fourth in the country according to Pomeroy’s ratings), but its offense is more prone to struggles — and could 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 puts them contrary to the Wisconsin-Oregon winner at Round 2, could limit their capability to progress deep into another successive tournament.
Cinderella watch: No. 12 Oregon. In accordance with our model, the Ducks have the best Sweet 16 odds (24 percent) of any double-digit seed at the tournament, more than double that of some other offender. Oregon struggled to string together wins for most of the regular season, and its own chances seemed sunk following 7-foot-2 phenom Bol Bol was lost for the year with a foot injury in January. But the Ducks have rallied to win eight straight games going into the championship, such as a convincing victory in Saturday’s Pac-12 championship. Oregon fits a similar mold as K-State — excellent defense using a defendant offense — but that is telling, given that the Ducks are a 12-seed and the Wildcats are a No. 4. If they fulfill in the Round of 32, we give Oregon a 47 percent chance at the upset.
Player to watch: Grant Williams, Tennessee
The junior has come a very long way from being”a fat boy with some ability.” Williams, the de facto leader of Rick Barnes’s Volunteers, has bullied the SEC within the past two seasons, amassing two consecutive conference player of the year honors.
The Vols might only feature the very best offense of Barnes’s coaching career — and we are talking about a guy who coached Kevin Durant! A lot of the offensive potency could be traced to Williams, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, that ranks in the 97th percentile in scoring efficiency, according to data courtesy of Synergy Sports.
Williams possesses an old-man game you might find in a regional YMCA, a back-to-the-basket, footwork-proficient offensive assault that manifests primarily in post-ups, where he ranks in the 98th percentile in scoring efficiency and shoots an adjusted field-goal percentage of 56.1. He can find the Volunteers buckets from the waning moments of games, also, as he ranks from the 96th percentile in isolation scoring efficiency.
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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