College BasketballCollege BasketballWhich teams have a legitimate shot at winning it all—and which should just be happy to be here? Let’s rank the remaining tournament teams ahead of the Sweet 16.
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By Steven RuizMarch 27, 2:40 pm UTC • 18 min
And just like that, the 68-team men’s March Madness field has been trimmed down to the final 16. It’s a stacked group: The four favorites—Duke, Auburn, Houston, and Florida—are still around and have created some separation from the rest of the pack, but all of the remaining teams are tough outs in their own right. Here, we’ve ranked and tiered the remaining 16 teams based on how likely they are to take home the championship.
The sooner you accept it, the better.
Duke isn’t just the top team in the country right now. This might be the best men’s college basketball team of the century. Entering the Sweet 16, the Blue Devils have the best adjusted offensive efficiency of the KenPom era, which goes back to 1997, and the second-best net rating, behind only the ’99 Duke team, which fell to an all-time UConn group in the national title game. This team has won 29 of its last 30 games after losing to Kansas back in November. And over the past five months, Duke has grown into what looks like an unstoppable force.
This was primarily a defensive team over the first few months of the season, but coach Jon Scheyer has built it into an offensive machine. It’s operating at max efficiency in the tournament, averaging 1.34 points per possession, which leads the field by a comical margin. The gap between Duke and the team in second, Wisconsin, is as wide as the gap between second and 41st place.
Duke is obviously loaded with offensive talent, including the presumptive first pick in the upcoming NBA draft, Cooper Flagg. But its height across the board might be the most important factor in its offensive dominance. In Sion James (6-foot-6), Tyrese Proctor (6-foot-6), Kon Knueppel (6-foot-7), and Flagg (6-foot-9), the Blue Devils have four pick-and-roll threats who stand 6-foot-6 or over. They can easily deliver passes over defenders, which makes playing their ball screens aggressively a dicey proposition. Doing so when Flagg is the one setting the screen is especially risky. He’s a skilled passer who can float the ball to a big man:
When that option isn’t there, he can quickly scan the court and locate an open shooter:
And if defenses don’t play those screens aggressively, instead having the defender guard the screener, Proctor and Knueppel can pull up and hit 3-pointers off the bounce. Flagg has become a scoring threat and playmaker when operating as the ball handler in a pick-and-roll.
This is just one layer of Duke’s offense, which also excels at freeing up shooters off the ball. Overall, the Blue Devils shoot well, they screen well, they pass well, and they cut well. They’ve also got the best player in the country in Flagg, who has been able to take over games when his teammates aren’t hitting at their usual clip.
Duke has it all on the offensive end, and it’s not bad on defense, either, ranking fourth in adjusted defensive efficiency, per KenPom. The best team doesn’t always win in a single-elimination tournament, but it’s hard to see anyone stopping this group.
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Nine times out of 10, these teams would probably lose to Duke … but it only takes one!
After going 8-of-16 from beyond the arc in an 81-76 win over Gonzaga in the second round, Houston now leads the country in 3-point shooting. It’s a genuinely shocking development considering this program’s recent history. The Cougars haven’t ranked in the top 100 in that stat since 2018, when they were 34th. It’s the first time coach Kelvin Sampson has had a top-10 shooting team since he took Oklahoma to the Elite Eight in 2003. This is uncharted territory for a Houston program that is typically powered by its defense.
But this team hasn’t let up on defense, either. It leads the country in adjusted defensive efficiency, per KenPom. It forces turnovers at a high rate and defends the 3-point line at an exceptional level. Houston is a bit undersized, but it was able to get past Gonzaga, who led the nation in scoring from the post this season. It’ll face another unique offensive threat in the Sweet 16, going up against Purdue’s pick-and-roll duo of Braden Smith and Trey Kaufman-Renn. They’re both good passers who should, in theory, be able to handle Houston’s intense pressure. If the Cougars can overwhelm those veterans, there won’t be another team in the Midwest region that will give them issues on the defensive end. And even if their defensive dominance doesn’t continue, Houston now has the shooting capability to overcome it. That wasn’t the case when Sampson’s teams were knocked out in the Sweet 16 the past two seasons.
Florida came flying into the tournament after winning the SEC championship, but UConn dragged them back down to earth, at least temporarily, in the Gators’ 77-75 second-round win. Going into the game, Florida had been running opponents off the court, but they scored just eight points in transition against the Huskies—which is 11 points lower than their season average, per Synergy. The offense was still efficient overall, thanks to the team’s hot shooting from the 3-point range, but was not at its typical level. Entering the tournament, I was concerned about how this group would perform in a slower game. Against a mediocre Connecticut defense, the answer was “pretty well.” Still, Florida’s offense is hardly a concern. Even in the half court, Todd Golden’s team generates good shots and can create second-chance opportunities as well as any squad left in the field.
If Florida loses before the Final Four, it likely won’t be due to a lack of scoring. It will be because of its defense, which has been good throughout the season but has shown some vulnerability lately. The Gators have yet to hold an opponent to under a point per possession in the tournament, and that includes a game against Norfolk State’s 157th-ranked offense. It’s been five games since they’ve done that to any opponent. With matchups against Maryland and potentially Texas Tech standing between Florida and the Final Four, the defense will get tested over the weekend.
The Gators have already leaped over one hurdle by beating the defending champs. If they can shore up their defense and get it back to playing at an elite level, this could be the one team left that has enough talent to challenge Duke.
It’s getting harder to continue giving Auburn the benefit of the doubt as it works through this spell of underwhelming play. The selection committee gave the Tigers the top overall seed in the bracket, but it’s been nearly a month since they looked like the dominant outfit that tore through the SEC in January and February. Since the start of March, Auburn has ranked 20th in the country in adjusted offensive efficiency and 43rd in adjusted defensive efficiency, per BartTorvik.com. And while the SEC regular-season champs are in decline, the other 1-seeds are peaking. I considered dropping Auburn further down in these rankings, but there was a sizable gap between the top-seeded teams and the second tier entering the tournament, and that latter group hasn’t done enough over the first rounds to close it.
The Tigers need Chad Baker-Mazara, the team’s chief instigator and tone-setter, and Johni Broome, the team’s best player, to get back to playing at their typical level. Baker-Mazara has been hurt and just picked up a hip contusion in the team’s win over Creighton. He says he should be good to go against Michigan on Friday night, but it’s unlikely that he’ll be 100 percent. Broome is healthy, but his outside shot has gone cold. He hasn’t hit a 3-pointer since March 8 and has started the tournament 0-for-7 from deep. The National Player of the Year candidate has scored just 22 points total over the first two rounds. He’ll need to average somewhere around that for the rest of the tournament if Auburn is going to play up to its seeding and make it to San Antonio.
Broome has also become a bit of a liability on the defensive end, and opponents have homed in on it lately. They’ll put him in pick-and-rolls or force him to defend in the post whenever they can. And Auburn hasn’t defended those plays well through two rounds. Opponents are averaging 1.14 points per possession on pick-and-rolls, per Synergy. That could be an issue against a Michigan team with a unique pick-and-roll attack, which we’ll cover when we get to the Wolverines.
Good enough to upset one of the title contenders—but not two or three of them in a row.
Tom Izzo is trying to end a six-year drought without an Elite Eight appearance, and he’s put together a throwback Michigan State team to do it. This group has all the hallmarks of an old-school Spartans team. It scores in transition, it rebounds the hell out of the ball, and it doesn’t give up easy baskets on the defensive end. Outside shooting isn’t a strength, but this team does everything else well enough to offset that big weakness.
Michigan State may not squeeze much juice out of the 3-point arc, but neither do its opponents. The Spartans lead the country in 3-point field goal defense, per KenPom. They do give up a decent chunk of 3s, but most are contested—not by reckless closeouts, but by defenders staying on their feet and getting a hand up.
Michigan State is getting the best of both worlds on the defensive end. It’s making 3-point shots more difficult for its opponents and guarding against drives to the rim. The Spartans don’t force a lot of turnovers, but they challenge every shot and usually clean up the misses. That formula has given Izzo a top-five defense by efficiency, the first time he’s had one since 2012.
The offense will ultimately decide how far this team goes, though. The Spartans can score in the open court, but they get cramped in a half-court setting because of their lack of shooting. Inserting freshman Jase Richardson into the starting lineup in early February has helped give State a boost, but there still isn’t much shooting around him. Jeremy Fears and Jaden Akins are better inside the arc. Power forward Jaxon Kohler can step out to the 3-point range, but it’s not something he does often.
If you can stop Michigan State from running, you can shut off their main source of offense. They rank 126th in offensive efficiency in the half court, per Synergy. But keeping the Spartans from running is easier said than done. Again, they force a lot of long bricks, which leads to run-outs. With Fears leading the break and Akins, Richardson, and Coen Carr, an athletic ball of chaos, running the court, they don’t need much of an opening to turn up the pace.
It’s hard to shake the feeling that Alabama is just one bad shooting night away from getting bounced. It nearly happened in the first round against 15th-seeded Robert Morris, when the Tide shot just 6-of-21 from 3 and scraped by with a nine-point win. I’d be more trusting of Nate Oats’s team, which plays quickly and jacks up the first open 3 it gets, if it were a bit more efficient with its perimeter shooting. Alabama ranks 116th in 3-point field goal percentage, per KenPom. A cold night isn’t unrealistic.
Though Alabama is known for shooting 3s, it’s been better inside the arc this season. It ranks third in the country in 2-point field goal percentage even though it doesn’t have a reliable post scorer. Most of those points come from ball screens set for guards Mark Sears and Labaron Philon and drives by forward Grant Nelson. Nelson is the team’s best inside scorer—he’s shooting a ridiculous 64.6 percent inside the arc—but he’s been hobbled by various injuries over the past month, according to Oats. A knee injury kept him out of the starting lineup against Robert Morris. He was limited to just seven minutes in that game but did play 28 minutes in the 80-66 win over Saint Mary’s in the second round. The Tide will need him close to 100 percent to stand a chance against Duke in a potential regional final.
Texas Tech is another team that needs to get back to full strength in a hurry. Chance McMillian, the team’s best shooter, missed the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament and the Big XII tournament semifinal loss to Arizona with an upper-body injury. Arkansas coach John Calipari said Wednesday that he’s been informed that McMillian will play in the Sweet 16 matchup, but Tech coach Grant McCasland said it would be a game-time decision.
That decision could have a huge bearing on Thursday’s matchup. JT Toppin is one of the nation’s best post scorers and looked unstoppable against an undersized Drake team in the second round. But Arkansas has one of the tallest teams in the field and should provide a stiffer challenge. Toppin and Darrion Willams, an undersized power forward who can distribute from the post, are Tech’s main creators on offense. But if Arkansas has one less shooter to worry about on the perimeter, it will be easier for the Razorbacks defense to crowd the paint and throw extra bodies at those two down low.
McCasland could also use McMillian’s size on the defensive end. Arkansas has big, quick guards who could take advantage of a Tech backcourt that’s undersized when McMillian isn’t out there. With their senior shooter in the lineup, the Red Raiders are a legit Final Four team. Without him, they could get bounced by Arkansas.
Maryland’s Crab Five lineup has outscored opponents by 190 points this season, per CBBAnalytics.com. That leads the country. One through five, there aren’t many core groups better than the Terps’—but their lack of bench support is well known. It’s also a little overblown. While it’s true that Maryland gets almost no scoring from its bench, coach Kevin Willard has done a good job of staggering the Crab Five’s minutes to keep each member fresh. Before Sunday’s dramatic win over Colorado State, the lineup hadn’t played more than 20 minutes together in a game since a March 1 win over Penn State.
Willard’s bench isn’t deep, but he makes good use of it. And he always makes sure to have two or three members of the Crab Five on the court to carry the scoring load. The reserves, DeShawn Harris-Smith, Jay Young, and Jordan Geronimo, provide energy on the defensive end that can be converted into transition opportunities for their star scorers.
Depth can be overrated in March, anyway. The last two Connecticut teams that dominated the tournament ranked outside the top 200 in bench minutes, per KenPom. The Kansas team that won a national title in 2022 played its bench for only 24.5 percent of the team’s minutes, which ranked 301st that season. This Maryland team ranks 319th, at 24.3 percent. If the Terps get knocked out of the tournament this weekend, it won’t be due to a lack of depth. It will be due to the team’s inability to protect the defensive glass against good offensive teams, like Florida, and its tendency to go cold from the 3-point line. But if the Crab Five is hitting its shots and limiting second-chance opportunities, it can play with anyone. Even the red-hot Gators.
I would like this Kentucky team a whole lot more if Jaxson Robinson were still available. But the sweet shooting guard is out for the season with a wrist injury, which has limited Kentucky’s half-court offense. The Wildcats don’t have a perimeter scorer who can take over games. Koby Brea, one of the nation’s best shooters, can get hot from the 3-point line, but he doesn’t attack the rim or create much off the dribble. Lamont Butler plays the point but isn’t a creator either.
Coach Mark Pope leans on his frontcourt to create offense, which has led to mixed results. When things are going well, this Kentucky team can be a pain to defend. Center Amari Williams, a Drexel transfer, is a unique player. He brings the ball up the court whenever he grabs a defensive rebound and can go coast-to-coast.
The offense runs through him in the half court as well. Pope puts Williams at the top of the key and has him run screens and cuts off the ball. The big man isn’t much of a shooter, so defenses sag off him, but that just gives him more time to pick out a pass. It’s like giving a good quarterback a big pocket to throw from.
Williams has had a hard time putting the ball in the basket through two tournament games, and he can turn it over when he gets too ambitious with his passing. Without a lot of knockdown shooting on the perimeter outside of Brea, defenses can clog the paint and cut off Williams’s passing lanes.
The recent emergence of Collin Chandler, a highly touted freshman out of Utah, could raise Kentucky’s ceiling if his success continues. Chandler, who flipped from BYU to Kentucky when Pope left the Cougars for the Wildcats offseason, is playing basketball for the first time in two years after returning from a Mormon mission. He’s scored 15 points off the bench in two tournament games and was the first substitution in the win over Illinois. Chandler has already hit four 3-pointers through two rounds. That should get him more playing time going forward. If he makes good use of it, Kentucky will be a tough out for any team.
I’m way lower on this Tennessee team than most—and the numbers suggest I’m off base. The Vols rank fifth in KenPom’s ratings thanks to a 17th-in-efficiency offense and a third-in-efficiency defense. That’s the statistical profile of a real contender.
There’s just something about the way this team plays, though, that prevents me from fully buying in. Rick Barnes is an older coach who prefers a slower style of basketball. Tennessee rarely pushes the ball down the court and doesn’t go for steals on the defensive end, so it doesn’t create a lot of transition opportunities. The Vols have scored just 12 points in transition in two tournament games. That ranks 45th in the 68-team field, per Synergy. Only 36 teams have played multiple games!
Every offense is more efficient in transition, so by not pushing the ball, Tennessee is putting a lot of pressure on its half-court game. Chaz Lanier and Zakai Zeigler are the team’s two primary sources of offense. Lanier does his damage off the ball—Barnes will run him off screens until he can shake free of the defense for an open look. And Zeigler is more of a pick-and-roll threat, but he can hit a spot-up 3-pointer, too. Reserve guard Jordan Gainey can do a little bit of both. But beyond those three, there isn’t much offense to speak of. When those guys aren’t hitting their shots and Tennessee isn’t scoring easy buckets in transition (by design), this team can be prone to long scoring droughts.
Tennessee has already lost to Kentucky, its Sweet 16 opponent, twice this season. In the last matchup, Pope stuck Butler, an elite perimeter defender, on Zeigler and had Otega Oweh face guard Lanier. In the two games, Zeigler and Lanier went 4-of-20 from the 3-point range and combined for 55 points total. Those two have to be better to get past the Wildcats in the third installment.
While I won’t be picking Michigan to pull off the upset over Auburn, I won’t be shocked if it happens. Danny Wolf and Vladislav Goldin, the Wolverines’ pair of 7-footers, should present a challenge for Auburn’s interior defense—and Broome, in particular. As I mentioned above, opponents have attacked Broome by forcing him to defend pick-and-rolls. Michigan is the rare team that can run pick-and-rolls with two bigs thanks to Wolf’s unique game. His height allows him to see over the defense and pick out passes to Goldin as he rolls down the lane.
There are some drawbacks to this tactic. Wolf can be a turnover machine, which can hurt Michigan’s usually stout defense. The Wolverines give up 1.00 points per possession after live-ball turnovers, which ranks 233rd, per CBBAnalytics.com. They also rank 348th in live-ball turnover frequency, at 11.5 percent. If the Tigers defense that we saw from November to the end of February shows up for Friday night’s game and forces Wolf into multiple turnovers, it will be a long night for the Big Ten champs. If Auburn and Broome play defense like they have been for the past month, though, Michigan could knock off the no. 1 overall seed in the field—and potentially set up a matchup against Michigan State with a trip to the Final Four on the line.
Enough talent to play with most teams—just not Duke or Houston.
I nearly placed this surging BYU team in Tier 3 because I think there’s a good chance it’ll beat Alabama on Thursday night. Led by first-year head coach and former NBA assistant Kevin Young, the Cougars are comfortable in a fast, spread-out game. Young runs a pro-style offense built around projected lottery pick Egor Demin. The 6-foot-9 guard is an elite passer in the pick-and-roll. His height allows him to skip passes over the defense, either to a rolling big man or to an open shooter in the corner. If Alabama wants to get into a 3-point contest, the Cougars will be up to the challenge. Demin’s not much of a shooter—though he is 5-of-13 from 3 in the tournament—but he’ll set up Richie Saunders (43.1 percent from 3) and Trevin Knell (44.0 percent) with open looks all game if Alabama provides him the space to do so.
Still, Alabama has more talent and should be the favorite on paper. And with Duke likely up next should BYU advance, the Cougars’ outlook for this weekend isn’t promising.
Arizona is walking into a buzz saw against Duke, so paying any attention to this team feels like a waste of time. It was a good run for the Wildcats. They made it back to the Sweet 16 after starting the season 4-5. If they don’t get raided in the transfer portal this offseason, Tommy Lloyd will see some good young players take on more significant roles next season. Arizona could make a Final Four run in 2026.
For the Wildcats to have any chance of making it there in 2025, though, they’ll need an all-time Caleb Love game against Duke. That’s certainly within the range of outcomes for college basketball’s streakiest star. As a player for North Carolina, he ended Mike Krzyzewski’s career with a dagger 3 in the 2022 Final Four.
He’s been chasing that high ever since. In his four subsequent games against Duke, Love has made 4-of-27 shots from beyond the arc. He’s lost all of those games, including a 69-55 home loss in November against a young Blue Devils team that was still in its primordial stages. Love went 1-of-9 from 3, and Arizona had no answer for Flagg (24 points) on the other end. Both Flagg and Duke have leveled up since that game. I’m not sure Arizona has. It will be up to Love to make up the difference.
Watching Smith and Kaufman-Renn try to solve the Houston defense for 40 minutes should be a blast for any basketball nerd. Smith is a smart passer, but he does take risks that lead to turnovers. He’s also a bit undersized and could be overwhelmed by Houston’s ball pressure. Kaufman-Renn could be the key to relieving that pressure. When the Cougars defense gets beaten, it’s usually by a big man who can read the court quickly and find open shooters on the perimeter.
I’m more concerned about Purdue on the defensive end. Matt Painter has had his team playing better defense over the past month, but they don’t have the athletes to stay in front of Houston’s guards, and any foul trouble for Kaufman-Renn would leave them vulnerable to post-ups by J’Wan Roberts. Painter will also have to decide where to stick Smith, who can be a liability on defense. As Houston’s lead guard, Milos Uzan is Smith’s direct matchup, but Uzan would have a significant height advantage over the Purdue star. The Boilermakers could try to match Smith up against Houston’s leading scorer, LJ Cryer, but Cryer would have the quickness advantage. There are no good options.
Somehow still standing after making it through the SEC … but just barely.
I want to believe in this late-season resurgence for Arkansas, but I watched Calipari’s team lose to a bad South Carolina squad earlier this month. I saw the Razorbacks struggle to pull away from a St. John’s team that couldn’t make an open 3 or a layup, inexplicably benched its best player in crunch time, and had its second-best player foul out in 15 minutes. Arkansas was a terrible matchup for the Red Storm, but Texas Tech is an even worse matchup for the Razorbacks.
If Ole Miss can maintain its form as the best 3-point-shooting team left in the field, having made 47.5 percent of its 3-point attempts in the first two rounds, then I have them ranked way too low. But I’m assuming that the team, which shot 37.8 percent on unguarded catch-and-shoot 3s on the season, won’t keep making them at a 64.3 percent clip, as it has in its two tournament games thus far. Regression is coming for this scrappy, undersized team—and it’s coming in the form of a Michigan State squad that dominates around the rim and protects the 3-point line better than any team in the country.
Steven Ruiz has been an NFL analyst and QB ranker at The Ringer since 2021. He’s a D.C. native who roots for all the local teams except for the Commanders. As a child, he knew enough ball to not pick the team owned by Dan Snyder—but not enough to avoid choosing the Panthers.
