Getty Image / Jamie Schwaberow
- A college basketball analyst revealed his 8 teams who can win the NCAA tournament today
- He surprisingly omitted one of the nation’s top teams
- Read more BroBible articles here
Each of the last 5 years just before the NCAA tournament, ESPN’s John Gasaway has released his list of teams that won’t win the NCAA tournament. That list leaves him with 8 teams he believes actually can win the tournament. So far, he’s 5 for 5 (which is an accomplishment that gets less impressive when you realize that those winners were 4 1 seeds and a 2 seed).
However, this season he has omitted one team that looks like they could bring an end to his perfect run of picking tournament winners.
This year, Gasaway’s list of teams who won’t win the tournament leaves us with Gonzaga, Baylor, Arizona, Duke, Kentucky, Villanova, Kansas, and Houston who he believes can win the tournament.
A rite of March. Perfect 5-for-5 record so far. (Comparisons have been made to Wooden.)
Yet doomed to fail one of these years if I keep at it. This isn’t college football, after all.
The 350 teams that will not win the national title….https://t.co/I4yOJD1Kq7
— John Gasaway (@JohnGasaway) March 9, 2022
That leaves us with one key omission from the potential winners. Auburn ended up on the list of teams that can’t win the tournament.
His reasoning is that Auburn has struggled on the road recently against some bad teams, but has Auburn really been bad enough away from home this season to warrant concern?
Their 4 losses this season all came away from home, but those 4 losses are by 5 to a Tennessee team that is currently in the top 10, by 4 in overtime to Arkansas who is in the top 15, by 1 at Florida, and in double overtime on a neutral court against UCONN. They also have road wins over Alabama and St. Louis and a neutral court win over Loyola Chicago.
Those aren’t bad losses. Meanwhile, Gasaway has included Houston, whose only wins over teams projected to make the tournament right now were against Bryant in December and at home against SMU (who is Joe Lunardi’s last team in). Houston also needed OT to beat Wichita State on the road just a couple of weeks ago and got crushed by Memphis on the road over the weekend.
Then there’s Duke. Duke hasn’t played a ranked opponent since November and still managed to lose more games during their conference schedule than Auburn has. They also have a road loss to Florida State and bad home losses to Virginia, Miami, and North Carolina. That type of resume doesn’t usually add up to being an NCAA Tournament favorite.
Auburn is overall a very strong team. They lead the nation in blocks, are in the top 50 in turnovers created, the top 5 in opponent 2-percentage, top 50 in opponent 3-point percentage, and in the top 25 in points per game. All of that together makes for a team that will be really dangerous in the tournament.
It seems like a big mistake to consider Auburn unable to win the NCAA tournament this year, especially when listing those two as teams with a chance to win.