Another Selection Sunday come and gone, which means the 2023 NCAA Tournament bracket is finally in our hands. Now the question becomes how best to keep your bracket from taking a one-way flight into the trash can after watching your national champion lose to a No. 15-seed on the first afternoon of the Big Dance.
That means it’s once again time to break out the ol’ Flagrantly Unscientific Natty Kalculator (FUNK) and determine with absolute certainty the only teams that can actually win the national championship in three weeks. For the uninitiated, the FUNK is a tried-and-true method which has (almost) never failed to correctly identify the national champion using a series of historical trends.
In recent years, we’ve started off by immediately cutting out everyone below a No. 5 seed (over 70% of the field) because only four champions in the seeding era were seeded 6th or lower. But these days, double-digit seeds make runs to the second weekend with regularity, and a No. 8 seed in last year’s national championship nearly sunk the FUNK.
So, without further ado, let’s kick this off with a brand new rule …
Brackets are here! Get back in your pools and join our Men’s and Women’s Challenges for the chance to win a new SUV and a college basketball dream trip!
Rule 1: The road not taken looks real good
Unlike the old No. 1 rule (the cream has already risen to the top), this doesn’t have a single exception since NCAA Tournament seeding began in 1979. A national champion must enter the tournament with at least one road/neutral win over a fellow tournament team. (The last champion that didn’t was 1977 Marquette, nearly 50 years ago.) Just like that, we’ve culled almost a third of the field without summarily throwing away seeds based on number alone. Twenty teams failed this entry level test, including 17 automatic qualifiers and a trio of at-large programs: Nevada, NC State and Providence. Hit the road…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/2023-ncaa-bracket-predictions-march-madness-eliminator-centers-on-three-potential-tournament-winners/
Author : Andrew Tulin
Publish date : 2023-03-15 15:52:17
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