Nearly every March, you sit down to fill out your bracket and your brain tells you there’s just no way the best teams you’ve watched all season are bowing out early. History, however, says chalk is for suckers.
Since 1985, only one tournament has seen all No. 1 seeds make the Final Four (2008). Things get dicey out there, even for the best teams. We know at some point, some of the high seeds will succumb to the madness of March. Here is our best guess at which of those high seeds will fail to live up to their billing.
The No. 1 seed most likely to fall before the Final Four
Houston
Looking at the Cougars’ resume, it seems almost silly to think there’s a flaw in their armor. Houston has lost only four games all season, all by five points or less. It holds the top spot in Bart Torvik’s rankings and is third in Ken Pomeroy’s. Synergy sports database has them holding the top spot in transition scoring efficiency. And yet, here is a recommendation to short their Final Four stock.
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It’s important to note that this process is splitting hairs — all of these No.1 seeds are very, very good. That said, there are some teamwide factors that seem worrisome for the Cougars’ future fate. They are one of the slowest-paced teams in college basketball, clocking in at 360th in KenPom’s tempo ratings. Given the old analytical wisdom has always been for the better teams to force higher possession games and let their talent win out, this seems like a potential pratfall. Houston could lock themselves into a grindfest of a game and rue not trying to blow the doors off an inferior opponent.
As we mentioned in our piece about how to pick the NCAA winner, there’s also the Cougars’ alarming defensive 3-point rate. Now, all 3-point shots aren’t created equally, and Houston tends to force a lot of bad ones that come off the dribble. That’s a good thing for the most part, but 3s tend to introduce a level of variance into games that could get ugly fast for the Cougars if Lady Luck backs their opponent.
There’s also some concern about one player’s odd connection to Houston’s four losses. Beyond banged-up forward J’Wan Roberts’ role holding down the frontcourt and despite L.J. Cryer’s status as the team’s leading scorer, guard Milos Uzan’s balanced game makes this team go. The problem for the Cougars is that in their four losses, Uzan has fouled out in three of them — including managing just 12 minutes due to foul trouble in a loss to Alabama — and played really poorly in the team’s last loss against Texas Tech (4-of-12 from the field with four turnovers).
The foul issues seem fluky, but is some opponent going to uncover them and attempt to target Uzan in a way that eliminates his table-setting, off-the-bounce assets from Houston’s offensive repertoire? If Uzan has a poor game or routinely loses minutes to foul trouble, it will certainly make it hard for the Cougars to meet their seed-line expectations and make the Final Four.
The No. 2 seed most likely to fall before the Elite 8
Tennessee
It seems easy to pick on Rick Barnes, whose line of underachieving Texas teams makes the skepticism of his tournament coaching quite valid. Yet Barnes isn’t the sole reason this team could fail to reach the regional final. The Vols’ gritty and grindy approach can net you quite a few wins over the marathon that is the regular season, but it seems fairly certain to result in some unnecessary close games in the tournament.
Like Michigan State, Tennessee combines a great defense — third best, per KenPom — with an offense that lags behind (18th). Unlike the Spartans, the Vols combine that lopsided combination by playing at a snail’s pace as they barely rank ahead of the aforementioned Houston Cougars as the 346th fastest team in all of college basketball.
Turning every game into a rock fight is not only quite hard on the eyes, but it could be a dangerous formula for a group that doesn’t have Dalton Knecht authoring amazing performances to propel them through the tournament this season. Chaz Lanier has been a stud, but can the 6-foot-4 senior guard create and convert the same high-leverage shots Knecht did last season? The Vols better hope so if they want a return trip to the Elite Eight.
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The No. 3 (or No. 4) seeds most likely fall before the Sweet 16
Wisconsin
When the Wisconsin program was resurrected under Dick Bennett, their insufferable defensive style led the way. Bo Ryan followed a similar formula with a touch of stretch big before handing off to Greg Gard, who built a roster this season where the Gard-ing (it was just right there …) stopped. Wisconsin’s defense ranks 32nd in Kenpom and 33rd in Torvik and, in some games, looked downright flammable (see 86 points allowed to a middling Penn State team).
Wisconsin just doesn’t turn its opponents over, virtually guaranteeing some type of shot attempt every possession. All it takes for a redux of the Penn State game is for some tournament opponent to simply see all their heaves find the bottom of the net. Combine that with an offense powered by John Tonje’s seemingly unsustainable Free Throw Rate of 53.4 percent — 13 percentage points higher than any other year of his career — and the Badgers could bow out before the Sweet 16.
Texas A&M
Despite their place in the bracket, this Aggie team seems to be a little bit of a paper tiger. Texas A&M currently sits 19th in KenPom’s ratings and 23rd in Torvik’s, which isn’t a huge oversight but certainly shows them seeded a little higher than their actual level of performance.
Then there’s the style of play factor. The Aggies have one of the worst effective field goal percentages in college basketball, entering the tournament ranked 316th in the country. They make up for that horrendous shotmaking by being the best team in the sport at pounding the offensive glass. Is that combination of throwing bricks and rebounding them really a recipe for tournament success? Certainly seems like the formula for an ugly, low-scoring loss before the Sweet 16.
(Top photo: Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
