NCAA Tournament 2017 Sweet 16: 5 most likely national title contenders

Parsing through the Sweet 16 field to find the five most likely national title contenders

Opening weekend of the NCAA tournament in the books, and it was yet another great one. While we didn’t get the upsets craved in the first round, we certainly got them in the second. Duke, Villanova, Louisville, and Florida State went down, and just about every other top seed besides Kansas could have lost their Round of 32 game. Even still, with just one double digit seed still in the field, we’ve got a collection of very good teams.

Someone among these sixteen will rise to the occasion and win the national championship. Sometimes, it’s tough to tell who it will be. Even last year, it would have seemed crazy at this time to pick Villanova — who had just made its first Sweet 16 in seven tournaments — to take home the national title. It would have been right, though.

In the spirit of trying to see the future, let’s whittle down the field to the most likely combination of contenders. A large of the equation decision will be team strength, but we’ll also consider matchups, recent events, and path through the tournament. They all matter more than most fans would like to admit. Let’s get to it.

Kansas

Kansas is back to contend once again. They really always do — Kansas hasn’t garnered worse than a No. 3 seed since the 2005-2006 season, where they fell all the way to fourth. Them’s the breaks when you win thirteen consecutive Big 12 titles, and have two national title appearances (with one win) over the same span.

While Kansas has somewhat fairly earned a recent reputation for crashing out too early in the NCAA, they’re still one of the most successful programs in the country. And, in fact, they’ve outperformed ‘expectations’ as a program in the last 15 tournaments — and they’ve been in all of them.

But none of that has anything to do with this year’s squad. Kansas has adopted a guard-centric small ball approach, embracing offense at ‘sort-of’ expense of defense. They’re currently a top-5 offense in the country, but their defense is ‘only’ 25th best — one of the lowest marks of the Bill Self era. But necessity is always the mother of invention — after years of playing two bigs, Self’s best players are a pair of guards and one lottery-bound wing that’s best off playing power forward in college. It was natural to pivot to this approach.

The ball-handling tandem of NPOTY favorite Frank Mason and Devonte Graham lead a 3-point attack among the country’s most dangerous — Kansas hits over 40 percent of their 3-pointers. Josh Jackson adds lottery-caliber talent and versatility at the forward position, and has hit nearly 44 percent of his 3-pointers — though on a low number of attempts — since conference play started. Everyone else on the team knows and plays their roles to perfection.

Not only is Kansas quality — they’re the top seed in a region whose 2-seed didn’t survive the round of 32 (Louisville), with a 3-seed that must adapt to a season-ending injury to one of its best players (Oregon). There’s no guarantee Oregon even survives Michigan, currently one of the hottest teams in the country.

The combination of talent, team quality, opportunity, and the fact that the Jayhawks were basically the only top seed not closely threatened by upset in the Round of 32 points toward a good opportunity for Self and crew. We’ll see if they take advantage — but for now, they have to be considered one of the favorites to make the Final Four, at least.