The 345 teams that will not win the national championship
The 345 teams that will not win the national championship
ESPN PLUS ($ MATERIAL)
Welcome to the fourth annual bad-news icon known as "The 345 teams that will not win the national title." This venerable buzzkill is now 3-for-3, having correctly exempted Villanova from inclusion twice and North Carolina once since the list's beginnings in 2016.
The smart thing to do would of course be to quit now. All that this imposing edifice of oracular infallibility needs to come crashing down is one dark horse like Connecticut in 2014. In fact, that is absolutely going to happen if we keep doing this. It's only a matter of time.
But what the heck, this is just a game in which people put a ball through a hoop. The streak beckons to be extended.
Here are my selections for the 345 teams that will not win the 2019 national title, broken up into three sections:ineligible,near missesandno clear path.
1. Auburn Tigers That was one impressive stretch run, Tigers. You made my laptop look smart after it had been insisting pretty much all season long that there was more than met the eye with a team that, well, lost a ton of games against tough opponents. Then, finally, wins against Mississippi State and, especially, Tennessee ended our bickering and instead brought laptop and user together in a true evaluative kumbaya moment. So, thank you for that. Still, your opponents shoot exceptionally well inside the arc and rebounding continues to be an issue at both ends of the floor. 2. Buffalo Bulls Let's not lose sight of the big picture. The very fact that a Mid-American Conference team is on a list of "near misses" for a national title is itself the paradigm-altering news here. Nate Oats, CJ Massinburg, Nick Perkins& Co., take a bow!
3. Cincinnati Bearcats Leave your program stereotypes at the door. You think of the Bearcats as a bunch of blue-collar, tough-as-nails defenders -- and with good reason. That's the way Cincinnati has been, well, forever. This year, on the other hand, American Athletic Conference opponents hit 37 percent of their 3s and fared surprisingly well on their offensive glass. Jarron Cumberland is one of best (and most underrated) 3s-and-assists hybrids that Mick Cronin has had at Cincinnati, but magic-eight status is just out of reach this time. 4. Florida State Seminoles Putting the Seminoles here is going to look like a mistake when and if Mfiondu Kabengele continues to increase his minutes off the bench. Against Virginia Tech, for example, the 6-foot-10 sophomore rendered this whole "off the bench" thing meaningless by logging 38 minutes against the Hokies in a 73-64 win that went to overtime. He is dominant in the paint, but, alas, his teammates are less hegemonic when it comes to hitting shots from the perimeter. Florida State hasn't shot better than 35 percent on its 3s in a game in nearly a month. 5. Iowa State Cyclones Iowa State is to 2019 roughly what Purdue was to 2018. If we were doing this exercise five weeks ago, the Cyclones might have been categorized differently. Steve Prohm is perfecting a self-sustaining high-efficiency machine on offense in Ames, but do not ask about defensive rebounding with Iowa State in 2019. 6. Kansas Jayhawks Every year, Kansas shows up on this list, and every year, it feels incredibly reckless to have the Jayhawks here. In 2019, by stark contrast, everyone will see Bill Self's guys among the benighted 20 and think, "Well, duh." The only rational conclusion is that KU will indeed win the 2019 national title. Frankly, there could be no finer end to this ersatz "teams that won't win" mini-streak than to have it killed by the program that authored the capital-S Streak. Go to it, Jayhawks. 7. Kansas State Wildcats Let's see, this is a 2018 Elite Eight team that, when healthy, returns the bulk of its rotation and that, oh by the way, co-ended possibly the most incredible streak in mass-audience team sports. That does not sound like "no clear path" material. So, right, famous last words, but here goes: K-State's bottom-line street cred on defense comes far more from forcing turnovers than from forcing misses. Historically, that hasn't gone well in late March and early April. (Save your Louisville whataboutism. The Cardinals were great at both in 2013.) 8. LSU Tigers For the present, let's eschew all off-court drama and controversies and instead note merely that the Tigers outscored the SEC by about the same per-possession margin as did Auburn. That didn't prevent this team from winning the regular-season title outright (salute), but it does suggest close-game voodoo was aberrantly kind. LSU went to overtime six times in conference play and won five of those games. The Tigers' mileage might vary in future crunch times. 9. Louisville Cardinals Chris Mack has done wonders to put a team on this list when the offense in conference play finished right at the ACC average in every major category from accuracy and turnovers to offensive boards. Doubtless he will have the Cardinals in the fabled octet sooner rather than later.
10. Marquette Golden Eagles This is an odd thing to say about a team that has Markus Howard, but the Marquette defense was head-and-shoulders better than the offense in conference play. The Golden Eagles have a turnover rate that is worrisome but not terrible, and the same can be said of their number of second chances. When you put those two things together, however, you get an offense that posted the lowest shot volume of any team in Big East play not named Creighton.
Now, go out and make me look good. After recent events in Lawrence, Kansas, this right here has become the most impressive streak in all of college basketball. Take it from a completely unbiased source. 11. Maryland Terrapins What if Mark Turgeon could keep this (effectively) no-seniors rotation together for 2019-20? By gar, then we'd see something. Then again, in the here and now, these precocious youngsters do play to at least one stereotype and cough up the ball with a fair degree of frequency. We all understand that "fair" is a decorous euphemism for "alarming," right? 12. Michigan Wolverines Betting against John Beilein in the NCAA tournament is not, goodness knows, a particularly sagacious course of action. More specifically, the very-good-offense version of the Wolverines that surfaced in a losing cause at home against Michigan State and then stuck around for subsequent wins against Nebraska and at Maryland can absolutely make this the wrong place to have Michigan. This pick feels incredibly risky, but rules are rules and my editor said no to "344 teams that won't win." 13. Mississippi State Bulldogs In Ben Howland's fourth season in Starkville, the Bulldogs have methodically worked way up to inclusion on this rather august list. When the next version of Mississippi State rolls around and displays a bit more aptitude on the defensive end, it's conceivable that the upward trajectory of the program could notch its next milestone within this oh so venerable feature. 14. Nevada Wolf Pack Some of us charted every possession in Mountain West play in anticipation of this Nevada question arising in March. (At last, this is where tracking that Wyoming vs. San Jose State game pays dividends. Sweet!) Eric Musselman has built a defense that it not to be trifled with, but the common refrain in all three of the Wolfpack's conference losses was insufficient offense. If it happened against New Mexico, it could recur against a Sweet 16-caliber opponent. 15. Purdue Boilermakers Right, as long as this list is foolishly excluding self-evidently great Big Ten teams, by all means let's not forget the co-champion of what was statistically the strongest conference in the nation. Smart move! No one who was alive in 2016 and 2018 and saw who won it all in those years should be in any great hurry to tut-tut about Purdue's extreme perimeter orientation, but the Boilermakers' Big Ten opponents also shot a high number of 3s. When Matt Painter's guys run across a team that doesn't give the ball away (and you always will, eventually, in the NCAA tournament), this could be an issue. 16. Texas Tech Red Raiders Now we're living dangerously. Any laptop worth its salt thinks this pick is strange, and, well, it is. In fact, this is clearly a dumb move if the Red Raiders continue scoring points the way they've been doing now for [checks notes] the past month? Whose idea was this 345-teams thing again? This is the part where skeptics say 43 percent 3-point shooting and a Bo Ryan-level microscopic turnover rate can't "possibly" continue for another three weeks the way both of those things have persisted for the past 30 days. Maybe so, but if the skeptics are incorrect on just these two points, Texas Tech can and will prove this "near miss" business flat wrong. 17. Villanova Wildcats Jay Wright only wins national titles in even-numbered years, so this one was easy. No, really, this version of the Wildcats doesn't have the "insane accuracy from the field" square covered on the bingo card the way past Villanova teams did.
18. Virginia Tech Hokies The Hokies were the second-slowest-paced team in ACC play this season (you'll never guess who was first), so apply that mental correction to the following figure: Virginia Tech's conference opponents drained 168 shots from beyond the arc. That number reflects the fact that 46 percent of opponents' shot attempts were 3-pointers. Feels like a risky way to proceed.
19. Wisconsin Badgers In the new supersized, 20-game Big Ten schedule, the Badgers played 1,303 possessions of basketball and scored 1,305 points. For better or worse, we haven't seen the point-per-possession approach work for six straight NCAA tournament games for a while. 20. Wofford Terriers Let's not lose sight of the big picture. The very fact that a Southern Conference team is on a list of "near misses" for a national title is itself the paradigm-altering news here. Mike Young, Cameron Jackson, Fletcher Magee & Co., take a bow! No clear path (322 teams)
Thanks for posting! Interesting read. I agree with his 8 and would even go further to say you can remove Houston, and I’m skeptical that UVA, Duke or UK win it all with so few seniors. Nobody wants to back this UVA team after last year’s fiasco, but damn they really are so much better offensively this year so idk...
SBR Top-Rated Sportsbooks
The 345 teams that will not win the national championship
1. Auburn Tigers
2. Buffalo Bulls
3. Cincinnati Bearcats
4. Florida State Seminoles
5. Iowa State Cyclones
6. Kansas Jayhawks
7. Kansas State Wildcats
8. LSU Tigers
9. Louisville Cardinals
11. Maryland Terrapins
12. Michigan Wolverines
13. Mississippi State Bulldogs
14. Nevada Wolf Pack
15. Purdue Boilermakers
16. Texas Tech Red Raiders
17. Villanova Wildcats
Reply With Quote
