College basketball has an unfair reputation for being slept on until March, but for those passionate fans who have been keeping up since before the New Year, it's already been a great season — one that's only getting better as we approach tournament time. There are no shortage of outstanding teams throughout the country, and many are led by members of arguably the greatest freshman class of all time.
North Carolina's last-second comeback win over Duke on Saturday night, coupled with the Heels' loss two days later at Miami, is proof that anything can happen in college basketball. Even a team as talented as the Blue Devils is vulnerable to an upset, and the difference between almost everyone's ceiling and floor is vast.
Last year's Final Four featured all four No. 1 seeds for just the second time ever. Was that a sign of things to come, or will this year's edition in Indianapolis bring the chaos back? With few exceptions, the elite teams this year have been dominant, but Duke's loss this weekend (and Arizona finally falling from the ranks of the unbeaten at Kansas) provide a glimmer of hope for everyone else out there.
Today's mission is to find teams that are capable of winning their regional and making a trip to Indy who might be flying under the radar a bit right now.
Purdue Boilermakers
Anything can happen in the NCAA Tournament, but there are two things that rarely fail: experience and point-guard play. If that maxim is true, then Purdue has a great shot to still be dancing past the tournament's second weekend.
Braden Smith won the Bob Cousy Award last year as the nation's top point guard, and he's drastically improved his shooting this year to become even more dangerous in his senior season. Smith is the biggest reason why Purdue ranks near the top of the country in assist percentage, and in an age where college teams look completely different from one year to the next, he, along with backcourt mate Fletcher Loyer and forward Trey Kaufman-Renn, have given head coach Matt Painter the kind of organizational stability that other coaches can only dream of.
Purdue was ranked No. 1 early in the season, and they've made it to at least the Sweet 16 in three of the past four seasons, with a national title game appearance in 2024. A three-game losing streak in late January pushed them out of the national conversation, but ignoring this team in March would be a mistake.
The Boilermakers are one of the most efficient offenses in the nation, and they rebound very well on both ends of the court. They rarely turn it over and seldom foul, and they're experts at making their opponents slow down and play their grind-it-out, half-court kind of game. Tuesday's overtime win at Nebraska ended up being closer than it should have been thanks to a rough final few minutes of regulation, but the Boilers, who feature four seniors in their starting lineup, showed the value of experience by shaking off their late collapse and getting the job done when it mattered. However the end of the regular season plays out, they're going to be an extremely tough out in March.
Florida Gators
It feels crazy that the defending national champions are flying under the radar, especially when they're currently in first place in the SEC. But with this year's fabulous freshmen grabbing most of the headlines, the Gators aren't as sexy as some other teams. Still, this is a group that's more than capable of mounting a strong title defense next month.
Florida is one of the best rebounding team in the country, full stop. They crash the offensive glass as well as anyone, and allow precious few second-chance points on the other end. That alone makes them hard to beat, because they just end up getting so many more attempts than their opponents every game.
When Florida loses, it's because their abysmal 3-point shooting comes back to bite them. That's an area where they desperately miss Walter Clayton Jr., who was drafted No. 18 overall in last year's NBA Draft after being named the Final Four Most Outstanding Player. Clayton bailed the Gators out time and again in the tournament with his own personal highlight reel of clutch shots from deep, but there are few competent marksmen on the team this year, which is why Florida ranks 352nd in the country with a 28.8 percent mark from behind the arc.
Outside shooting may be Florida's Achilles heel, but consider what they've been able to do even while throwing up so many bricks. They're 17-6 and 8-2 in SEC play, and their six losses have come by a combined 26 points. That includes a six-point loss to start the year against Arizona, a one-point loss at Duke in the ACC-SEC challenge and a four-point loss against UConn.
By some weird coincidence, the Gators have shot exactly 7-27 from 3-point range in three of their losses, and 7-28 from 3 in another. Despite that, they've still been within a possession or two of beating some of the best teams in the country.
How do they do it? With sheer size: Florida has the bodies to hang with anybody, and they have more experience than most of the teams they'll face. Thomas Haugh leads a balanced attack that features six guys averaging 9.8 points per game or more. Rueben Chinyelu grabs 11.5 rebounds despite averaging under 25 minutes per game. He, Alex Condon and Micah Handlogten average about seven feet tall and form an elite shot-blocking trio. If Arkansas transfer Boogie Fland can generate consistent perimeter offense, like he did when he dropped 23 points in a beatdown of Tennessee last month, this team can overwhelm anybody.
The Joakim Noah-led Gators once repeated as champs nearly two decades ago, and last year Florida knocked out back-to-back reigning champ UConn in the round of 32. They're currently ranked fifth in KenPom, and if they don't shoot themselves out of the tournament, don't be surprised if they make a run at another repeat.
Texas Tech Red Raiders
If we want to extend the search for a Final Four team outside the top 15 of the current AP poll, then that conversation has to start with Texas Tech (and not just because they're currently ranked No. 16). The Red Raiders were the only team outside the top two seed lines to make the Elite Eight last year before losing a heartbreaker to eventual champion Florida, and there's a case to be made that they're even more dangerous this year.
Second-team All-American JT Toppin is back, and he's still one of the best players in the country. Together with Christian Anderson, who has morphed from serviceable rotation player into a first-team All-Big 12 guard, Grant McCasland has one of the most potent scoring duos in the country.
Texas Tech has played an absolutely brutal schedule, but they've more than held their own. They're one of only two teams in the country to beat Duke, and they did it on a neutral court. They also split the season series with defending national runner-up Houston, with each game ending in a four-point margin. A win over BYU and close losses to Illinois and Kansas will help them come Selection Sunday, too.
The Red Raiders can shoot the hell out of the ball from outside. Both Anderson and UNC-Greensboro transfer Donovan Atwell are shooting 43.6 percent or better from 3, both on a high volume of shots, and as a team, Texas Tech has made double-digit 3s in eight straight games. Texas Tech will have an opportunity to make yet another huge statement when they travel to the McKale Center to take on Arizona on Valentine's Day. A win there would give them three wins against probable 1-seeds, but win or lose, bracket prognosticators should confidently pencil them in for another deep tournament run.
Arkansas Razorbacks
When looking for Final Four candidates, you want consistency, and you want a team that has shown that it belongs on the same court as the best teams in the country. Arkansas only just moved back into the top 25 this week, but one look at their resume proves that they meet those criteria.
The Razorbacks boast wins over Texas Tech, Lousville, Vanderbilt and Tennessee. Perhaps even more impressively, they hung with Duke and Houston on a neutral court, and they lost by just three to Michigan State in the Breslin Center — one of the toughest places to play in college hoops.
Many of the top freshman in the country — AJ Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer, Darryn Peterson and Caleb Wilson — have become household names by this point. If Darius Acuff Jr. isn't, then he should be, because he's been terrific in his own right. He's averaging 20.8 points per game and has yet to score less than 17 in SEC play. He's also averaging 6.3 assists while shooting over 41 percent from outside.
Acuff is joined by fellow freshman Meleek Thomas, himself a high-performing former top-10 recruit, and if there's one coach who knows what it takes to make a run with young players, it's John Calipari. Calipari led an uneven Razorbacks team to a Sweet 16 berth last year in his first season in Fayetteville, a run which included a win over Kansas and an upset of No. 2 seed St. John's. This year's squad has an even higher ceiling thanks to their fabulous freshmen and their steadfast refusal to turn the ball over.
Arkansas is one of the most athletic teams in the country, and they love to get up and down the court and play fast. If they don't run into a team that can dominate them on the glass, they can beat anybody.