I do this every year, but seeing as I’m desperate for the NCAA Tournament, it seems like a good enough idea to do this exactly one month from the start date of the First Four. It’s been 22 long months since we last saw an NCAA Tournament game, and even longer since we saw the joys of conference tournament week and Selection Sunday. We won’t have that same carefree spirit this year, probably, but it’ll simply be nice to have some of these things back.
When I did this post last year, I tried to focus on teams that played fast-paced, fun offense. This year, my focus is more on the extremes the sport provides. What team in a conference does one particular thing really well? Is there a team that generates a ton of points from the post in the least post-friendly time in college basketball history? What about a team that leads the nation in turnover margin? Or a team that forces the most off-balance jumpers defensively? All of these things can lead to success in March, but even if they don’t, these are all teams I’m pretty curious about and hope to see more of next month.
There is only one rule for this post: on Bart Torvik’s site, the team selected must have at least a 10% chance of making the field. This narrowed it to 124 eligible teams, which means we picked 25% of this group. It worked out well.
I’ve arranged all 31 teams in alphabetical order by conference, meaning the first team you’ll see in this post is from the America East Conference and the final team is from the Western Athletic Conference. There are 10 conferences on each of the next two pages with 11 on the final page. I’ve got at least one GIF lined up for all 31 teams, minus the most obvious pick in this entire post, Gonzaga. They are above GIFs at this point.
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Stats by Will 