Top seed outlook: Could No. 1 Virginia exorcise the past year’s allies now that the team is currently at full strength? Our model believes. The Cavaliers have a 49 percent likelihood of cracking the Final Four and a 31 percent likelihood of reaching what would be the program’s first national title game.
Together with De’Andre Hunter, who was not on the court this past year through UVA’s historical loss to No. 16 Maryland Baltimore County, the Cavaliers have been dominant on both ends — the sole team standing in the top five at Pomeroy’s adjusted offense and protection metrics. Once more, Tony Bennett’s package line shield is suffocating most every offensive opportunity and successfully turning games into rock fights. However, this year’s group is better on the offensive end and ought to breeze to the Elite Eight, where it could meet Tennessee. Thanks to Grant Williams along with the superbly appointed Admiral Schofield, the No. 2 Volunteers are enjoying their very best basketball in history. We provide them a 22 percent probability of reaching the Final Four.
Sneaky Final Four pick: No. 6 Villanova. Can it be”sneaky” to pick the team that has won two of the previous three national titles? Not. But this hasn’t been the exact same team that coach Jay Wright advised to those championships. After dropping a ton of its best players from last year’s title-winning group, the Wildcats had an up-and-down season and dropped five of their final eight regular-season Big East games. However they also got hot over the past week, capping off a year in which they still won the Big East regular-season and conference-tournament titles — and still had among the 20 best offenses in the nation based on KenPom (powered through an absurd number of 3-pointers). Our power ratings think they’re the fourth-best team in the South despite being the No. 6 seed, and they have a 5% chance of earning it back to the Final Four for a third time in four seasons.
Do not bet : No. 4 Kansas State. Coach Bruce Weber’s Wildcats nearly made the Final Four final season, however they might find it tougher this time around. K-State has an elite defense (it ranks fourth in the nation according to Pomeroy’s evaluations ), but its crime 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 restrict their capability to advance deep into a second consecutive tournament.
Cinderella watch: No. 12 Oregon. In accordance with our model, the Ducks have the best Sweet 16 chances (24 percent) of any double-digit seed at the tournament, over twice that of some other offender. Oregon struggled to string together wins for the majority of the regular season, and its own chances seemed sunk following 7-foot-2 phenom Bol Bol was missing for the year with a foot injury in January. But the Ducks have rallied to win eight straight games heading into the championship, including a convincing victory in Saturday’s Pac-12 championship. Oregon fits a similar mold as K-State — great defense with a defendant crime — but that’s telling, since the Ducks are a 12-seed and the Wildcats are a No. 4. Should 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”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, amassing two consecutive conference player of the year honors.
The Vols might only feature the best crime of Barnes’s training career — and we are talking about a man who coached Kevin Durant! Much of that offensive potency can be traced to Williams, the team’s top scorer and rebounder, who positions in the 97th percentile in scoring efficacy, according to data courtesy of Synergy Sports.
Williams possesses an old-man match you may find at a regional YMCA, a back-to-the-basket, footwork-proficient offensive attack that manifests mostly in post-ups, where he ranks in the 98th percentile in scoring efficacy and shoots an adjusted field-goal proportion of 56.1. He can get the Volunteers buckets from the waning minutes of games, too, as he ranks 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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