March Madness: Ranking every NCAA tournament team, from 1 to 68

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The men’s college basketball season began on Nov. 4 with Kansas atop the preseason AP poll and UConn, Baylor and North Carolina close behind.

Five months later, none of those schools are even ranked, nor are they expected to survive the NCAA tournament’s opening weekend.

That turmoil at the top of the sport is one of the many ways this season has defied prediction. A team that starts four Division II transfers won 30 games. A team that starts two projected top-five NBA Draft picks won half that many. A conference best known for its football prowess sent a record 14 teams to the NCAA tournament. A conference synonymous with basketball for decades was lucky to get four NCAA bids.

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Now here comes the most famously unpredictable event in American sports to add to the chaos. Duke leads our annual 1-68 ranking of national championship contenders — grouped into eight tiers and ordered from most to least likely to snip the nets in San Antonio on the second Monday in April. Here’s the full list, and enjoy the NCAA tournament mayhem:

TIER 1: THE FAVORITE

1. Duke (31-3) | E1 vs. American/Mount St. Mary’s

This is the best Duke team in a decade, better than the 32-win Zion Williamson-R.J. Barrett juggernaut, better than the Paolo Banchero-led group that took Mike Krzyzewski to one last Final Four. The Blue Devils are challenging the narrative that a freshman-driven team cannot win a national title in the era of 24-year-old COVID seniors and grad transfers.

While the ACC was way down this season, Duke bulldozed its way to a league title. The Blue Devils outscored their 20 league opponents this season by an ACC-record 434 points. That’s the largest scoring differential in league play by a power-conference team since 1953-54 Kentucky, per Stathead Basketball.

It was more of the same in the ACC tournament, even after Duke lost national player of the year favorite and presumptive No. 1 overall pick Cooper Flagg to a…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/college-basketball/article/march-madness-ranking-every-ncaa-tournament-team-from-1-to-68-145230034.html

Author : Jeff Eisenberg

Publish date : 2025-03-19 14:52:00

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