Madness in March

By Will Derryberry

Picture this: You wake up on a nice, sunny, 55-degree March morning and the annual March Madness games start in two hours. You have 1 seed Duke winning it all but it’s too obvious so you change it to 4 seed Iowa State. You get home to a beautiful afternoon and watch your favorite team get past the first round. Life is good.

Everyone loves March Madness, it’s arguably the best sports playoff in the country. Whether it’s the bracket-making, the time of year, or the sheer number of teams in this illustrious tournament, March Madness is always a hot commodity among fans. 

But who will win? Out of the 64 potential teams, picking a winner is extremely difficult—but through proven metrics and statistics, these three teams stand the highest chance of cutting down the nets in the NCAA championship: UConn, University of Houston, and University of Kansas.

Don’t let Tuesday night’s upset loss at Creighton sway you here: UConn has still been the best team in college basketball this season and they’re the team most likely to win. There’s an easy case to be made that this year’s UConn squad is stronger than the one that had a historically dominant run to the NCAA tournament title in 2023. Danny Hurley’s team certainly appears to be better on offense. Tristen Newton, who was the team’s biggest question mark this time a year ago, has emerged as a First Team All-American candidate. Freshman Stephon Castle has made a full-fledged star turn and is establishing himself as a top-10 pick in the upcoming NBA Draft. 

These two aren’t the only stars on Uconn, as the Huskies have endless depth that could play a huge factor in March. There are a couple of areas where this team could get better defensively between now and the final weeks of the tournament, but overall, there’s just not a ton to nitpick here.

The next team is the University of Houston. Houston is No. 1 in virtually every advanced metric on the planet and they have yet to lose a home game this season. Houston also has arguably the strongest defense in college basketball, while also having a strong offense. That comes in the form of All-American candidate Jamal Shead. While Baylor transfer L. J. Cryer is the team’s leading scorer, Shead is the player who can single-handedly take over a game that had previously appeared to be on a level playing field. 

The perfect example is Monday night. Houston and Iowa State are two of the best defensive teams in the country, they play the same no-middle defensive style, and they went blow for blow for 32 straight minutes. The only difference between the two teams was that one had Shead and the other didn’t. Shead made ridiculous shot after ridiculous shot during the game’s most critical juncture, scored 20 of his game-high 26 points in the second half, and carried his squad to a hard-fought 73-65 victory.

The final team is Kansas. This is the only team in the country with two players who might be named First-Team All-Americans. Kevin McCullar is averaging 19 points-per-game and has been the team’s top scorer all season long, and Hunter Dickinson (18.2 ppg/11.0 rpg) has backed up his offseason status as the most sought-after player in the transfer portal. While the Jayhawks’ offense still hasn’t clicked the way most thought it would, they still haven’t been beaten at home, and when they’ve been at full strength, they don’t have a loss that truly makes you scratch your head and wonder what happened. The preseason No. 1 has been something of a disappointment, there’s no denying that, but there’s also still way too much talent to count the Jayhawks out of becoming champion.

Overall, any team can win this tournament, that’s why fans love March Madness so much, because of how unpredictable it is. There have been countless teams that have claimed championship hardware that were not even talked about before the tournament. Could that be the case this year? Only time will tell. Selection Sunday is less than a month away and fans across the world will be watching and keeping an eye on where their favorite team will land in the bracket as the March Madness frenzy begins.