Sweet 16 power rankings for NCAA Tournament

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Now that we’re down to 16 teams in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, the time has come to try and figure out which has the best chance of cutting down the nets in San Antonio in less than two weeks. The short answer? Anyone could. But that wouldn’t make for a very interesting article, would it?

That admission is necessary, however, before we embark on this exercise of ranking the remaining participants. The fact is, all the teams still in the field are more than capable of winning any game on any given day. They’re all members of major power conferences, after all, and they’ve all won their fair share of such contests to get to this point. We therefore base our power rankings upon each team’s accomplishments to date while also taking into consideration its path forward through the regionals.

We should add that while we did have the two eventual finalists at the top of our list a year ago, the upper tier of this season’s Sweet 16 looks a bit more crowded. But with all that in mind, here’s our attempt to put them in order of championship likelihood.

No. 1 Florida

Our expert (snort) bracket has the Gators winning the whole thing. We’ll stick to that, though they needed everything in the tank to get past two-time defending champ Connecticut in the second round. Now that they’ve made it to San Francisco, they match up favorably with the rest of the teams in the region.

No. 2 Duke

Bearing in mind what we said above about Florida, however, it’s difficult to envision anyone in the field beating the Blue Devils if they maintain this level of play. The hot shooting of Tyrese Proctor has to be especially scary for future opponents who already have to contend with Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel.

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No. 3…

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Source link : https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2025/03/25/march-madness-sweet-16-reseed-ncaa-tournament/82640596007/

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Publish date : 2025-03-25 10:09:00

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