Early March Madness predictor: Why history suggests one of these 12 teams will win the men’s national championship

[ad_1]

History suggests Bruce Pearl and Auburn are among 12 teams that have a shot at cutting down the nets in April. (Photo by Lance King/Getty Images)

Early congratulations, Tennessee, Auburn, Iowa State and Duke! Start mapping out the parade route, Kentucky, Marquette, Alabama and Gonzaga! Make room for a banner in the rafters, Florida, Kansas, Purdue and Oregon!

History suggests that one of you will be climbing ladders and cutting down nets in San Antonio on the first Monday night in April.

Those are the top dozen teams in this season’s newly released Week 6 AP poll, a poll that has been a surprisingly accurate tool when predicting men’s college basketball’s eventual national champion. The past 20 national champions and 34 of the past 35 were each ranked in the top 12 in their respective season’s Week 6 AP poll.

Since the 2003-04 season, the average Week 6 ranking of the eventual national title winner has been 4.8. As former ESPN college basketball writer John Gasaway was the first to note, no other week during the season has been a better barometer, not even the polls that come out in late February or March.

The average preseason rank of the past 20 eventual national champions has been 9.5. Those soon-to-be national champions have an average ranking of 5.6 in the final AP poll before the NCAA tournament begins.

The last time a team outside the top 12 in Week 6 made a national championship run, freshman Carmelo Anthony was leading Jim Boeheim to his lone title at Syracuse. The late-blooming 2002-03 Orange didn’t enter the AP Top 25 until mid-January but caught fire thanks to the heroics of Anthony, Hakim Warrick and Gerry McNamara.

Before that, you have to go all the way back to Danny Manning’s 1987-88 Kansas team to find another national champion that didn’t crack the Week 6 AP top 12. Those 11-loss Jayhawks earned the nickname “Danny and the Miracles” when they went from a No. 6 seed in the NCAA tournament to winning the national title.

Why is Week 6 the predictive…

[ad_2]
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/early-march-madness-predictor-why-history-suggests-one-of-these-12-teams-will-win-the-mens-national-championship-183300046.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-12-09 18:33:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.