2024 NCAA Tournament Preview: How KenPom's Metrics Handicaps March Madness Field Before Conference Tournaments

The regular season has concluded, and with conference tournament upon us, lets set the field and see who can contned for a National Championship.

As we have been doing since January, I have been using Monday's as a time to reset the college basketball landscape, separating a large group of teams into three buckets, teams that fits the college basketball bible, KenPom, criteria for a National Champion.

Since 2003, all but two teams have finished the season inside the top 20 in adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency. While this is a real time metric that is updated with every game, including the NCAA Tournament, framing the field like this can give us insight into who can win it all come the first weekend in April.

I have chosen to break down the field through three filters, teams that fit the criteria now, teams that are near the threshold, and teams that are elite on one side but struggle on the other, ripe for volatile outcomes.

Before we set the stage for this week, here's the current NCAA Tournament odds.

2024 NCAA Tournament Odds

National Championship Contenders

It's a lot of the same characters in this group of title contenders, but I do find it interesting that Marquette has remained inside the 20/20 threshold despite not having Tyler Kolek for the past three games three games. The reigning Big East Player of the Year's status is in question for the conference tournament this week, but if he returns healthy, his time away could be a catalyst for a team that looks like a title contender on paper.

UConn remains the best team in the country, in my eyes, but it's Houston that is the top team according to KenPom. The nation's best defense could use a bit of a breather, though, starting to run out of healthy bodies, now down three key rotation players on an already thin bench.

The Cougars are the No. 1 seed in the Big 12 Tournament this week, but an early exit may due Ralph Sampson's team some good ahead of the 'Big Dance' next week.

Contender Lites

While these teams aren't contenders at the moment, a strong week in conference tournaments, and beyond, will have this group inside the 20/20 threshold come the Final Four.

In my opinion, the National Champion will come from the two above groups with a lot of teams dropping off over the past few weeks. This is the smallest the contender lite group has been all season as teams begin to reach its final form.

There are plenty of marquee names in this bunch, but Gonzaga is the wild card that appears ripe to be this year's mid-major darling, if one emerges. The Bulldogs, though, are running white hot from beyond the arc, fresh off a month in which the team shot nearly 40% from beyond the arc. I'm a bit skeptical, though, as the Bulldogs are still an interior reliant offense, one player made more than 35 three's this season.

The other team I have a critical eye of is Creighton.

The team looks good on paper, but is simply too three-point reliant for my liking. The team takes three's at the seventh highest rate in the country, nearly 50% of its shots are from beyond the arc. While the team can get inside and finish, the team has had bouts of cold shooting, evident when it nearly blew a doule digit second half lead to Villanova. Physical teams on the glass that can turn the Bluejays shaky ball handlers over are the antidote to this potent offense. Keep an eye on that come Selection Sunday.

Can't be Trusted

This list keeps growing. While there are plenty of talented teams, the unbalanced nature of these teams set up for dissapointment come March. If teams can't win in multiple ways, it's tough to trust them to win six straight games against a variety of teams that look different on quick turnarounds.

Plenty of these teams have high ceilings, say Kentucky, but simply don't have the consistency that looks like a champion.

For those that say Kentucky has "flipped the switch" or "turned the corner," the Wildcats defense remains terrible. Including the win at Auburn on Feb. 17, UK is 98th in Bart Torvik's adjusted defensive efficiency rating. However, the offense is scoring at a torrid rate, shooting nearly 43% from beyond the arc while winning six of seven games. Prior to that Kentucky was 118th in terms of defensive efficiency, the jump is very small and is not an actual change, the team is just humming on offense -- as expected.

While the team has the upside to score in bunches again, there will come a matchup when the team doesn't shoot over 40% from three and can't run up-and-down the floor, and the team will come up short.

A few of these teams will play to that high ceiling, to be fair they are elite on one side of the floor, and win games come March, but there will come a time when a balanced team can weather the storm and are more reliable over the balance of the three-week long tournament.

I think the gap is becoming more defined between the true title contenders and the pretenders, as noted in this article.

Best of luck during conference tournament week as we continue to see teams play themselves into the 20/20 bucket!

Stats updated through Monday, March 11th

Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.