2023 March Madness predictions using KenPom rankings

It’s Conference Championship Week, and many of you are tuning into the conference tournaments that are on starting at around noon each afternoon until well after midnight on the east coast.

For those of you thinking about placing a bet on a specific team to win the National Championship because you like what you see during the conference tournaments, be wary of falling into recency bias.

Instead, look at the season long profile for who to place your bets on come “The Big Dance.”

Last week, I broke down how to spot the profile of a National Championship team by using the advanced metric site KenPom, and the teams that fit the criteria. You can read the full article with further explanation here, but here’s a snippet.

“Since 2002, if you added up the AOE and ADE of each team that won the National Championship prior to the start of the NCAA Tournament, every single team except for one would have had a sum of less than 50.

“The outlier is 2014 UConn, who went on a torrid run to the title with Shabazz Napier.

“This is as good of a way to capture teams that are well balanced and elite on both sides of the ball.”

With that being said, here are the three groups of teams that I have filtered likely tournament teams under. I used the projected seeds by taking their Bracket Matrix seed as of Wednesday, March 8. There will be some that don’t qualify for now.

2023 National Championship Odds

2023 National Championship Contenders

The group of teams that make up the National Championship contender group, with an adjusted offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency adding up to below 50, stands at nine the week of Selection Sunday with Tennessee joining in the latest update.

However, there’s some key notes on some of these teams, namely on the injury front. First, UCLA’s Jaylen Clark, arguably their best defender, will miss the NCAA Tournament with an Achilles injury, a massive blow to the Bruins’ title hopes.

While Tennessee entered the less than 50 group, it is hanging on by a thread and will not have starting guard Zakai Zeigler after he tore his ACL.

Further, UConn took a big step forward from a holistic perspective by bullying DePaul, 88-59, last week.

2023 National Championship Dark Horses

These are teams just outside the magic number of 50, between 51 and 75 when you add up the two teams rankings.

Marquette’s defensive efficiency dropped after it played in a high scoring affair against St. John’s over the weekend, holding on to win 96-94, but still figures to be a top-three seed come Selection Sunday.

Texas A&M scored the most notable victory of the weekend amongst this group, beating Alabama at home as the team continues to surge up the odds board, slicing its number in half after being at 120-1 to win the National Championship last month. The Aggies are well balanced and have strong guard play with Wade Taylor IV and Tyrece Radford.

2023 National Championship Early Exits and Cinderella

I lump these two together because they have similar profiles, but they are lopsided. For teams that are expected to make a deep run, including the two best offenses in the country in Gonzaga and Baylor, they don’t have many counters if their high powered offenses go cold.

We saw that play out over the last week as Baylor couldn’t figure out Iowa State’s top 10 defense at home in a deflating double-digit loss on Senior Day.

We saw the other side of the coin, though, with Gonzaga throttling St. Mary’s (who has the profile of a National Championship team) in the WCC title game on Tuesday night, winning 77-51.

The key to a tournament run historically has been balance on both ends of the floor, and these are the team’s that lack that. As for the team’s further down the seed list, such as Toledo or VCU, they could cause havoc in one game samples and with far less expectations.

This is not a fool proof formula, but when the brackets get released on Sunday night and you sit down to fill out your picks, this is a good reference to contextualize the field and which teams excel in a particular area.

All stats are up to date prior to March 8.

Track all of Reed’s bets at Betstamp HERE!

—

Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.