Make way for the Fab Four.
It’s a heavyweight rumble now in the NCAA tournament. Underdog tales? Cinderella stories? Even the slightest surprise?
You’ve come to the wrong Final Four.
Auburn and Florida, Duke and Houston. No. 1 in their regions on Selection Sunday, all headed for San Antonio now. Nos. 1-4 in the KenPom rankings. Nos. 1-4 in the NET rankings. Nos. 1-4 in the Associated Press poll. To pick all Final Four teams correctly in your bracket this March, all you needed was the willingness to be boring. Go chalk or go home.
NUMBERS TO PROVE IT: 286,354 BCG users correctly picked every 2025 Final Four team
“The four teams that advanced, I think they’re the four best teams in the country,” Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said. “That doesn’t obviously always happen.”
How mighty is this field?
Only once before in the 45 years of seeding has the Final Four been No. 1’s and nothing but. That was 2008.
When Duke and Houston meet next Saturday, it will be two teams who together are 60-2 since December 1. Repeat, 60-2.
And neither of them is even the top seed in the tournament. Auburn is. Know who beat Auburn by nine points on its own floor? Florida did. Won’t that add a little ginger to their meeting. “It’s another team in the way of us getting to the national championship,” the Tigers’ Chaney Johnson said.
The other 64 teams tried to disrupt the natural order, but no dice. These four Goliaths have won 10 of their 16 tournament games by double figures.
Auburn’s closest game has been six points Sunday over Michigan State, but the Tigers trailed for only 22 seconds and were up by as many as 15. “I felt going in that we were better. I felt like I had better players,” Pearl said. “That’s not a criticism at all. I told our guys right now, we haven’t beaten a team yet that I thought was better than us. That’s why we’re the overall No. 1 seed.”
Duke has trailed for only 5:35 in 160 tournament minutes.
Houston had its down-to-the-last-second brush with Purdue but was on top of Gonzaga and Tennessee wire to wire, ahead for all but 58 seconds and up by as many as 14 and 22.
Florida had to hold off Connecticut and rally past Texas Tech, but its knack for the KO punch has been on clear display. The Gators blew past Texas Tech with an 18-4 closing kick, just like they put away Maryland with a 47-33 second half, just like they labored with 58 points the first 36 minutes against Connecticut and then finished off the Huskies with 14 points in the last four.
A LOOK BACK: The full history of No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament
Yep, this is a matched quartet in terms of expectations and dominance and elite rankings on . . . nearly everything. And they roll on in a by-the-book tournament.
The higher seeded teams went 16-0 this weekend, the first time that has happened since the field expanded to 64 teams 40 years ago.
And yet it is also the Tutti Frutti Final Four.
Flavors galore.
There’s a blueblood from Duke, who has been in 17 of these things and won five.
And a long-sufferer from Houston, with six previous Final Fours, a recent run of remarkable success but a still-empty trophy case.
There is Auburn, back for only a second time. And Florida, the biggest name in the sport nearly two decades ago. Tagged by many as football schools but with both eyes on March.
There are two SEC teams, so the super-league narrative continues. But there are also two teams who had to beat SEC opponents this weekend and didn’t just beat them but dropped the hammer. Duke and Houston disposed of Alabama and Tennessee the past two days by a combined 39 points and now will meet one another. The final result: The national championship game is guaranteed to have one SEC team. And also guaranteed not to have two. “Unfortunately,” Pearl said.
Like your coaches on the fuzzy-cheeked side? Duke’s Jon Scheyer is 37, Florida’s Todd Golden 39. When this month began, Golden had never won an NCAA tournament game in his life.
Prefer the geezers? Houston’s Kelvin Sampson is 69, Auburn’s Pearl 65.
National champions among the four of them: Zero. The guy who won all the titles for Duke is in retirement, the guy who won all the titles for Florida is coaching the Chicago Bulls. Sampson and Pearl have been chasing this rainbow for a lifetime.
There are incendiary offenses.
Duke torched Alabama with a late 13-0 surge. That was the 39th time this season the Blue Devils have had a run of at least 10-0, while their opponents have had seven. That’s a major reason for the 22 wins by at least 20 points. For the tournament, the Blue Devils are shooting 56.2 percent, 47.3 from behind the arc and 83.3 from free throw line. And a 77-29 assist-turnover ratio.
Auburn went on a 17-0 run Sunday. Against Michigan State. Who does that?
Florida’s ability to go for the jugular is obvious. Walter Clayton Jr, hitting so many big shots without nerves or fear he seems to be on auto-dagger. He scored 13 of his 30 points against Texas Tech in the final 5:24, including two late killer 3-pointers. He is making better than 45 percent of his 3’s in the tournament and has had his name even put in the same paragraph lately with Steph Curry, though he hoses down the idea. “That’s arguably the greatest point guard in the history of basketball. I’ve got a ways to go,” he said.
Just what was going through Clayton’s mind when he took those critical late shots against Texas Tech with his team’s season on the line? “Nothing was going through my mind. My mind was blank,” he said. The words of a March assassin. Which is why Golden said, “There’s not another player in America you would rather have right now than Walter Clayton with the ball in his hands in a big-time moment.”
Yeah, lots of offense in this group. But then there is Houston’s defense.
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It took No. 2 seed Tennessee nearly 14.5 minutes to reach double figures Sunday. Until then the Vols had missed 19 of 22 attempts, were 0-for-13 in 3-pointers and had had as many shots swatted by the Cougars as went in. The score was 34-15 at halftime — the fewest points in the first half for a team in the Elite Eight since 1979 and the fewest for a team seeded in the top two in any tournament game since the same year.
It ended 69-50, the 22nd opponent the Cougars have held under 60 points this season.
“Houston, they do what they do,” said Tennessee’s Rick Barnes. “That’s why they’re where they are.”
There are freshmen of national renown, and most of them play for Duke. Cooper Flagg & Co. “Age is just a number,” Scheyer was saying. Good thing, because his biggest star is barely 18, “Obviously it’s different to have three freshmen starting. Tonight we played five freshmen on a team that’s going to a Final Four. I think for our program, we’ve always thought about doing things differently”
Then again, Auburn’s Johni Broome will be playing his 168th college game, and if there were no such person as Cooper Flagg, he would have been national player of the year by a couple of laps. His Sunday handiwork against Michigan State and Tom Izzo’s defense: 25 points, 10-for-13 shooting, 14 rebounds. And he did that while missing five minutes with an injured elbow, having to head to the locker room for treatment as an entire fan base held its breath.
“That’s why he’s an All-American. That’s why he’s a Player of the Year candidate. Did a helluva job,” Izzo said. “When your No. 1 guy brings it, and you know he’s been around a few years, they deserve to move on.”
Pearl recalled the conversation when Broome returned to the bench.
“Are you good to go?” Pearl asked.
“I am.”
“Well, get your ass in there.”
Auburn starts four seniors and a graduate student, Houston two grad students and a fourth-year junior, Florida’s top three scorers are two seniors and a grad student. And Duke will be there with a lot of kids. More than one way to get to April.
The featured attraction Saturday? Start with Houston’s defense vs. Flagg and the Duke machine. If the Blue Devils win, Scheyer will have 90 victories and no coach in Division I has ever had that many his first three seasons.
But an all-SEC rematch — and Broome vs. Clayton — ain’t bad, either. Star power enough to light up Texas.
So San Antonio braces for four teams who are much the same, except where they’re different. The thrill in having this moment is a pretty common thread through all four.
For Sampson, in his third Final Four with two different schools, Oklahoma and Houston: “I think being humble and staying hungry every day has really helped us. I’m more excited than I’m letting on right now. I’m really excited. I’m really excited for these kids, but it’s their moment and just happy for them.” The Cougars were in the 2021 Final Four but that was the pandemic bubble in Indianapolis. This will be Houston’s first Final Four with all the trimmings in 41 years.
For Florida’s Thomas Haugh: “I feel like I’m dreaming. I was watching the Round of 64 in the eighth grade sneaking my phone into science class watching it. Now to say I’m playing in the Final Four is wild. It’s wild”
For Scheyer, describing this journey as the successor to the Mike Krzyzewski dynasty. He is the first coach not named Krzyzewski to take Duke to a Final Four in 47 years: “I’ve always wanted to make him proud. Part of his legacy isn’t just the wins. I want his legacy to be how our program continues to be right there as a top program, and that’s something Coach K and I have talked a lot about. So obviously there’s a responsibility you feel and a pride. But this hasn’t been about outside noise for me because it’s just — I don’t know if you can ever win. So my energy has gone into everybody that’s in our building, our team, what we can control. And I just couldn’t be more proud and thankful for having a group that’s believed in me, us, the support from our administration, just down the line, has been incredible. I’m really proud of the people that have believed in me and us to get to a Final Four.”
For Auburn’s Pearl, looking at an era when he has proven to every Auburn fan there is a sport besides the one that has touchdowns. “We are a football school. We are. Don’t ever forget that,” he said. “But we are also an everything school.”
Turned out this March was a month of four mountains, too high for anyone else to climb. “Somebody’s going to go home sad. Today it’s the Spartans.” Izzo said. “Next Saturday it’ll be two more teams. Next Monday, it will be one more team. I don’t want to make it as trite as it sounds because it’s not.”
When this all started the numbers said four teams would be very, very hard to beat. They were. But now three of them will have to be.
