Best seed outlook: Could No. 1 Virginia exorcise last year’s demons now that the team is at full strength? Our version thinks. The Cavaliers have a 49 percent probability of cracking the Final Four and a 31 percent likelihood of reaching what is the program’s first national title game.
With De’Andre Hunter, that wasn’t on the court this past year during UVA’s historical loss to No. 16 Maryland Baltimore County, the Cavaliers have been dominant on both ends — the sole team ranking in the top five at Pomeroy’s adjusted offense and defense metrics. Once again, Tony Bennett’s package line defense is suffocating most offensive opportunity and successfully turning games into rock fights. However, this year’s team is even better on the offensive end and should breeze to the Elite Eight, in which it could meet Tennessee. Due to Grant Williams and the wonderfully named Admiral Schofield, the No. 2 Volunteers are enjoying their very best basketball in program history. We give them a 22 percent probability of reaching the Final Four.
Sneaky Final Four select: No. 6 Villanova. Is it”sneaky” to select 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 their final eight regular-season Big East games. However they also got hot over the last week, capping a season in which they won the Big East regular-season and conference-tournament names — and still had among the 20 best offenses in the country based on KenPom (powered through an absurd amount 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 into the Final Four for a third time in four seasons.
Don’t wager on: No. 4 Kansas State. Coach Bruce Weber’s Wildcats nearly produced the Final Four last season, however they might find it harder this time around. K-State has an elite defense (it ranks fourth in the nation based on Pomeroy’s evaluations ), but its offense is more prone to battles — 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 opposite the Wisconsin-Oregon winner in Round 2, could restrict their potential to progress deep into another consecutive tournament.
Cinderella see: No. 12 Oregon. In accordance with our model, the Ducks have the very best Sweet 16 chances (24 percent) of almost any double-digit seed in the tournament, more than twice that of some other offender. Oregon struggled to string together wins for most of the regular season, and its own chances seemed sunk after 7-foot-2 phenom Bol Bol was missing for the season with a foot injury in January. But the Ducks have rallied to win eight straight games going into the championship, including a convincing victory in Saturday’s Pac-12 championship. Oregon fits a similar mold as K-State — excellent defense using a defendant crime — but that’s telling, since 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 long way from being”a fat boy with some ability.” Williams, the de facto leader of Rick Barnes’s Volunteers, has bullied the SEC over the previous two seasons, collecting two consecutive conference player of the year honors.
The Vols might just feature the very best offense of Barnes’s training career — and we’re 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 positions in the 97th percentile in scoring efficiency, according to data courtesy of Synergy Sports.
Williams owns an old-man game you may find in a regional YMCA, a back-to-the-basket, footwork-proficient offensive assault that manifests primarily in post-ups, where he positions in the 98th percentile in scoring efficacy and shoots an adjusted field-goal percentage of 56.1. He can get the Volunteers buckets from the waning moments 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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