March Madness: 5 opponents NCAA tourney teams want to draw on Selection Sunday

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When the NCAA men’s basketball bracket is unveiled on Sunday evening, a few coaches may subtly fist pump under the table.

Maybe they landed in a region with a wobbly top-four seed with a fatal flaw they can expose. Or maybe they drew an opening-round opponent who peaked in December and is skidding into March.

The purpose of this now-annual column is to identify those opponents NCAA tournament teams should want to draw before the bracket comes out. These are teams that for whatever reason don’t appear to be as strong as ones projected to receive similar seeds.

Two years ago, this column identified Purdue more than a week before it became the second No. 1 seed ever to collapse in the first round. Last year, this column correctly pegged Kansas as ripe for an early exit but mostly swung and missed on the rest. We’ll hope for better results this time around.

Marquette Golden Eagles

Record: 22-9, 13-7 Big East | Projected seed: No. 6

On Friday, January 3, Marquette comfortably defeated Creighton to improve its record to 13-2 and cement its place in the top eight in the AP poll. Hard as it may be to believe, that was the last NCAA tournament-caliber opponent that the Golden Eagles have beaten.

Since then, Marquette has performed like the No. 46 team in the country, according to Bart Torvik’s rankings. The best win Marquette has notched during that span is … at Georgetown? Or maybe home against Villanova? The Golden Eagles dropped all six games against fellow top-five Big East teams since early January, the last one via a St. John’s buzzer beater on senior night.

Marquette is almost certain to be a single-digit seed on Selection Sunday thanks to non-league victories over the likes of Wisconsin, Maryland, Purdue, Georgia and George Mason. Still, if the Golden Eagles don’t hit more of the open shots they’re generating and don’t provide more offensive support for All-American guard Kam Jones, their stay in the NCAA tournament is likely to be brief.

[Yahoo Fantasy Bracket…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/college-basketball/article/march-madness-5-opponents-ncaa-tourney-teams-want-to-draw-on-selection-sunday-132340052.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2025-03-11 13:23:00

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