March Madness 2022: Sweet 16: 5 teams most likely to win national title

The Sweet 16 is set after a wild weekend and these five teams are the most likely to finish off March Madness with a national championship.

The Sweet 16 is set and the race to claim the national championship is wide open. The first weekend saw many presumptive title contenders fall to the wayside as Kentucky, Tennessee, Auburn and defending national champion Baylor all got bounced as upset victims.

Losing those teams has shuffled the deck a bit in March Madness with just 16 teams left in pursuit of the national championship. Getting this far is a tremendous accomplishment but there are five teams in an excellent position to cut down the nets in New Orleans on April 4.

5. March Madness teams most likely to win the national title – Houston Cougars

Any presumed questions about how good the Cougars are were answered emphatically in the first weekend. Houston steamrolled 12-seed UAB and 4-seed Illinois to reach the Sweet 16 in the South Region, where they are slated to face 1-seed Arizona in the Sweet 16.

Head coach Kelvin Sampson deserves a ton of credit for reinventing the Cougars, who lost starters Tramon Mark and Marcus Sasser to season-ending injuries by January, into a true national title contender. The March Madness stage isn’t a strange one for Houston, who got to the Final Four a year ago and are one of the nation’s most dangerous teams according to predictive metrics like KenPom.

The fact that the South Regional is in San Antonio is also a boon for Houston, which could have a pseudo-home court advantage this week. The Cougars are peaking at the right time and could be a very dangerous team if they get to New Orleans.