Another weekend of college basketball is behind us, which means another week’s worth of data points are available for the resumes that will be used to determine this year’s NCAA March Madness field.
One of the beautiful things about the NCAA tournament is that after the bracket is set on Selection Sunday, it feels like anyone has a chance. We’ve seen incredible upsets in the tournament dating back decades, and as of late, things have only gotten crazier.
However, the reality is that 67 teams are going home without the national championship. There’s only one winner, and since the turn of the century, there’s been a sure-fire formula for being that last team standing.
An advanced metric system created by Ken Pomeroy, better known as the KenPom, ranks all 364 college basketball teams based on efficiency. Since the model was posted in 2002, 20 of the 22 national champions have ranked in the Top 20 of KenPom’s adjusted offensive and defensive metric.
What does this tell us? National championship teams aren’t just elite, but they’re also balanced.
The KenPom has become the go-to stat for March Madness, and it’s proven an effective way of predicting which teams can actually win it all, though there are different ways of breaking down the data.
Twitter user College Basketball Report (@CBKReport) recently shared this data:
- 96% of National Champions since 2001 have had a top-21 KenPom offense pre-tournament.
- 91% of National Champions since 2001 have had a top-31 KenPom defense pre-tournament.
As of right now, there are nine teams that fit that criteria, and the Big 12 has four of them.
Teams That Fit KenPom Criteria (2025)
- Auburn: OFF (1), DEF (16)
- Duke: OFF (5), DEF (4)
- Houston: OFF (8), DEF (3)
- Florida: OFF (4), DEF (9)
- Iowa State: OFF (18), DEF (7)
- Texas Tech: OFF (10), DEF (28)
- Arizona: OFF (14), DEF (18)
- Illinois: OFF (15), DEF (23)
- Maryland: OFF (20), DEF (20)
As much as ESPN has seemingly tried to soil the Big 12’s name as the top conference in basketball, it appears that the league is rounding out just fine in the tried and true metrics of the game.
Things could certainly change between now and tournament time, but heading into the back half of February, the Big 12 appears poised to get back to the top of the sport.
