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It’s bracket season! The entire 68-team field has been released for the NCAA Tournament. I-81 Sports is commemorating one of the best events in sports with our Bracket Challenge. (More on that later …)
Filling out a bracket has become one of those near universal things in our society. Basketball fans fill them out, sure, but so do lots of people who hardly or never watch the game. And seemingly everyone has a system. A friend of mine recently shared that his significant other evaluates every matchup on two factors: which mascot they find preferable; and whether the best player for each team has kinder eyes than the opposing star.
After all four No. 1 seeds reached the Final Four last year, there’s a strong school of opinion that thinks this year’s bracket will go mostly chalk as well, with the favorites riding high and Cinderellas hard to find.
I say, the more chaos, the better. That’s why, rather than tell you which teams I think will make runs or who will win it all, I’ve dug deep to find a reason why every team in the NCAA field will fail to cut down the nets in the national championship game
Here we go.
First Four, First Out: We begin with the teams that will begin their NCAA Tournament journey in the middle of the week in Dayton – those No. 16 and No. 11 seeds relegated to the don’t-call-it-the-play-in round. At least we stopped calling this the first round… as someone who works in an editorial role for a major college basketball preview publication, that made for plenty of confusion. It should come as no surprise that no team has come out of the First Four to win it all, although UCLA came close, reaching the Final Four in 2021. Still, we can safely scrap each of these First Four participants.
ELIMINATED: Lehigh, Prairie View, SMU, Miami Ohio, NC State, Texas, Howard, UMBC
Piti-Nope: Rick Pitino holds a place in the record book as one of only two coaches to win Division I national titles at different two schools. Pitino did it with Kentucky in 1996 and Louisville in 2013, although the latter championship later was vacated. The other coach to win titles with two schools? Frank McGuire, at St. John’s in 1952 and North Carolina in 1957. No coach has ever led three different programs to a national championship. Bad news for Pitino and Saint John’s, which entered the tournament as the No. 5 seed in the East Regional.
ELIMINATED: Saint John’s
We Were the Champions – Emphasis on Were: Only two men have won Division I titles as both a player and a coach – Dean Smith, who played at Kansas and 152 and coached North Carolina to championships in 1982 and 1993; and Bobby Knight, who won as a player at Ohio State in 1960 and led Indiana to titles in 1967, 1979, and 1981. Two coaches in the current field won titles as players: Jon Scheyer at Duke and Mark Pope at Kentucky. Sorry, guys, you had your turn already. So endeth the title hopes for Duke, the top overall seed; and Kentucky, which didn’t have a shot at the title this year anyway.
ELIMINATED: Duke and Kentucky
Is This a Bad Time (Zone)?: I dropped this nugget way back in December: no team located on the West Coast has won the national title since Arizona in 1997. We can take it one step further… that ’97 Arizona squad also was the last team located west of the Central time zone to win it all. This gets rid of several teams in the field, including Arizona, the top seed in the West Regional, and longtime bracket buster turned favorite Gonzaga.
ELIMINATED: Arizona, Utah State, Gonzaga, Hawaii, BYU, Santa Clara, Idaho, Saint Mary’s, UCLA, Cal Baptist
One Bid? No Chance: I love a good underdog story. But, even the most beloved Cinderella sees the fairy tale end. One minute, you’re riding high after winning a first-round game, and maybe the fairy tale continues all the way to the Sweet 16, the Elite Eight, or, in the rarest of cases, the Final Four. But at some point, that carriage turns into a pumpkin and suddenly that pumpkin is getting driven by mice and you end up sprawled on the road covered in orange goo. A mid-major team from a one-bid conference isn’t going to win it all and, with NIL money now prevalent, probably never will. This clears out a significant percentage of the field. Greg Sankey will be thrilled!
ELIMINATED: Siena, North Dakota State, Furman, McNeese, Troy, Penn, Tennessee State, Queens, South Florida, High Point, LIU, Hofstra, Wright State, Kennesaw State, UNI
Seed Ya Later: The 1985 Villanova team made arguably the most unlikely run to a national title in the history of the tournament. Not only did the Wildcats upset powerhouse Georgetown in the championship game, but they won it all as a No. 8 seed – the lowest seeding ever for a team that cut down the nets. That means we can cut loose any team still standing that is seeded ninth or worse.
ELIMINATED: TCU, UCF, Iowa, VCU, Texas A&M, Saint Louis, Akron
Act Like You’ve Been There: It’s been 20 years since a team making its first-ever trip to the Final Four successfully closed the deal and captured a national title. That program? Florida, in 2006, which also happens to enter this tournament as the defending champion. A few teams left standing on our list have never made the Final Four, and we don’t see any of them as championship material. Sorry Tennessee fans, this includes the Vols.
ELIMINATED: Clemson, Vanderbilt, Nebraska, Tennessee, Missouri
Five Is Right Out: Any excuse to make a “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” reference is a good excuse. No fifth-seeded team has ever won the NCAA Tournament. That’s bad news for the No. 5 seeds still standing: Wisconsin and Texas Tech, see ya later.
ELIMINATED: Wisconsin and Texas Tech
No Beginner’s Luck: Only once has a first-year head coach led his team to the NCAA Championship. That was Steve Fisher, at Michigan back in 1989. We’ve got two coaches at new places who we’ve yet to toss: (as much as it pains me) Ryan Odom at Virginia and Jai Lucas at Miami. Chin up, guys, there’s always next year.
ELIMINATED: Virginia and Miami
Nine or Bust: Did you know that only two NCAA Champions have lost 10 or more games and still claimed the title? That 1985 Villanova team, which finished 25-10, and Kansas in 1988, which still holds the record for most losses by a national champ with a 27-11 record. We can safely excise all remaining teams that have double-digit losses going into the Tournament. Ohio State (23-12), Kansas (23-10), Louisville (23-10), and Georgia (22-10), you may now proceed to the nearest exit.
ELIMINATED: Ohio State, Kansas, Louisville, Georgia
Less Is More?: The SEC put the most teams in last year’s tournament – 14, an all-time record – and produced the national champion, Florida. As an ESPN article noted, that marked just the second time in the past 11 years that the champ came out of the league with the most total bids in the field. And, since they started seeding the bracket in 1979, the conference with the most total bids has never produced the national title in consecutive years. That’s bad news for the SEC, which led the way again this year with 10 teams chosen.
ELIMINATED: Florida, Alabama, Arkansas
One and Done: Another chestnut from ESPN … No team has lost its opening game in its conference tournament and gone on to win the national title in the same season. That clears off a few more teams: Michigan State and Illinois, both losers in the Big Ten quarterfinals; North Carolina, which fell to Clemson in the ACC quarterfinals; and Villanova, which stumbled against 11th-seed Georgetown in the Big East quarters.
ELIMINATED: Illinois, Michigan State, North Carolina, Villanova
We’re down to our Final Five … Connecticut, Houston, Iowa State, Michigan, and Purdue. Now, let’s crush their dreams, too.
Not So Big Ten: The Big Ten might rule the roost in college football nowadays (sorry, SEC fans, it’s true) but it’s been a different story in hoops, as the conference has not produced a national champion since the heyday of Mateen Cleaves at Michigan State and the Spartans’ run to the title in 2000. That’s bad news for the last teams remaining from that league: Michigan, arguably the best team in the country over the course of the entire season; Purdue, which has never won a title – but made it all the way to the championship game in 2024.
ELIMINATED: Purdue and Michigan
Long Time Coming: At times, Iowa State looked like maybe the most dominant team in the country. Can the Cyclones keep that rolling in the Big Dance? History is not on their side. Iowa State exited in the opening weekend in two of the past three NCAA Tournaments, and while the program has made a Final Four, that was way back in 1944. That’s good enough for me.
ELIMINATED: Iowa State
It’s the Math: We’re going the advanced statistics route to foil Houston, which is trying to reach the national title game for the second straight season and follow through where the 2025 Cougars fell short last year against Florida. Here’s why it won’t happen for Houston in this Tournament. No team in the country attempts a lower percentage of shots at the rim. At some point, the 3-pointers are going to stop falling for the Cougars, and that’s when they stumble.
ELIMINATED: Houston
That just leaves UConn, which by the process of elimination, means that must be my pick to win it all, right?
Not in this process of elimination, where the process means eliminating everyone.
UConn’t Be Serious: The Huskies and coach Dan Hurley, who continues to win friends and influence people, are considered legitimate title contenders. That would give UConn three titles in four years, something that no program has accomplished since John Wooden walked the sideline at Pauley Pavilion for UCLA. Wooden won his titles in 1964 and ’65, then reeled off seven straight between 1967 and ’73, and captured one final crown in 1975. UConn scuffled down the stretch, though, losing four times in its final 11 games prior to the Tournament with defeats against bad Marquette and Creighton teams. That’s not championship ball.
ELIMINATED: UConn
There you have it … we’ve analyzed and then eliminated every team in the field for this year’s NCAA Tournament.
Now … time to prove me wrong. I-81 Sports is running a Bracket Challenge in conjunction with the NCAA Tournament.
First prize? Two tickets to the Tennessee football season opener on Sept. 5 against Furman. The lucky winner will get seats 17-18 in Section C, Row 64.
Second prize is a $20 gift card to Uptown Cheesesteak Company, which also sponsors my column every week, including the many, many words in this article.
Prognosticators whose brackets finish third through fifth get an I-81 Sports T-shirt.
Sign up for the challenge here; and type I-81 as the password to access your bracket.
You’ve got until the first round – the real first round, not the First Four – tips on Thursday.
Good luck.