Staring at a March Madness bracket filled with 68 teams can feel both exhilarating and challenging if you are a college basketball fan. The potential of upsets and dramatic buzzer-beaters that can destroy your bracket is part of what makes the NCAA Tournament one of the most fun exercises in chaos that sports can offer.
There is one potential cheat code to access if you are looking to pick your national champion: consulting KenPom's rankings to identify the most balanced teams in the country. While having an explosive offense or a smothering defense can get you into the field of 68, the teams that are best equipped for success in the NCAA Tournament are reasonably balanced on both ends.
Ken Pom uses data to rank teams in terms of offensive and defensive efficiency, and its rankings have been a remarkably accurate predictor of the national champion. Since the 2002 NCAA Tournament every champion has had an offense ranked inside the Top 40 on the KenPom rankings and a defense inside the Top 25, a trend that continued last year with UCONN (1st offensively, 4th defensively).
Which March Madness teams are title contenders according to KenPom?
Based on data prior to Sunday's games, 13 teams in the field of 68 qualify as potential champions. Most of the usual suspects rank near the top of the list, including No. 1 seeds Auburn (1st offensively, 12th defensively), Duke (2nd/4th), Houston (11th/2nd) and Florida (3rd/7th). Two more SEC teams that fit this criteria include Tennessee (18th/3rd) and, surprisingly, Ole Miss (31st/25th).
All three ACC tournament entrants fit the title-winning criteria as Clemson (24th/15th) and Louisville (27th/21st) are well balanced teams capable of winning in multiple ways. Michigan State (29th/5th), Wisconsin (10th/33rd), Michigan (37th/16th), Maryland (28th/6th) and UCLA (36th/17th) are the Big Ten's top contenders according to KenPom while Iowa State (20th/5th) rounds out the group of 13 title contenders.
Not all 13 of these teams are created equal, as the teams on the top line are better at this particular skill set than the likes of Ole Miss, UCLA, Michigan and Louisville. The path through the bracket matters as well, so seeing a lot of teams that fit KenPom's criteria in your favorite team's region may make life more difficult to project them as national champions.
Which notable teams don't qualify in the KenPom criteria?
Several notable March Madness teams don't fit the bill on at least one half of the metric, with some of the more glaring omissions coming from the SEC with Alabama (4th offensively/31st defensively), Texas A&M (45th/7th), Kentucky (8th/57th) and Missouri (5th/73rd). The Crimson Tide and Aggies are close enough that it wouldn't be outlandish to see either win the title, but history says they will fall short.
Another notable team that is disqualified by KenPom is St. John's, which went 30-4 to claim the Big East's regular season and tournament crown while losing its four games by a combined seven points. While Rick Pitino's team is the nation's top defense according to KenPom, the Red Storm's 64th-ranked offense (which falls below the likes of teams that missed the field like Villanova, Santa Clara, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, UC Chattanooga and Penn State) could be their downfall.
Big 12 contenders Texas Tech (6th/37th), BYU (12th/68th) and Baylor (16th/58th) are among the teams that KenPom thinks have a defense that isn't good enough to win it all. Teams lacking on the offensive end include Saint Mary's (56th/8th), New Mexico (79th/19th) and Kansas (48th/11th).
While these metrics aren't the be-all/end-all for picking a champion, history has favored teams that fit KenPom's criteria of a potential champion. Going with one of the aforementioned 13 teams should produce the national champion but which one it ends up being will be determined by a lot of factors that will play out on the NCAA Tournament stage over the next few weeks.