A top 2 seed will win the tournament this year, 3-seed at the lowest.
Years where there are one or two prohibitive favorites lead to "surprise" champs. Think of the years where Kentucky, Duke, NC, or Kansas were "supposed" to win it, but did not. That leaves a bigger pool of teams that can "come out of nowhere" to win it. Sometimes it is one of the other powers peaking after a down regular season (think UConn 2011 when Kansas was the prohibitive favorite and once UConn had established itself as a program) or it can truly be someone from left field -- 1997 Arizona springs to mind. But only having a subset of 1-3 teams that "can" win it all results in someone else sometimes getting the ring.
Compare with years that are "wide open" by NCAA standards, but which typically means that 6-12 teams would cut down the nets. This is one of those years. For that reason, I see a top 3 seed as virtually guaranteed to win it. It is easy to bet "the field" against two teams ... harder to bet "the much smaller field" against 10 teams. Simple odds. So bracket filling should be more chalk than ever this year, despite all the talk of the upsets and parity.
Years where there are one or two prohibitive favorites lead to "surprise" champs. Think of the years where Kentucky, Duke, NC, or Kansas were "supposed" to win it, but did not. That leaves a bigger pool of teams that can "come out of nowhere" to win it. Sometimes it is one of the other powers peaking after a down regular season (think UConn 2011 when Kansas was the prohibitive favorite and once UConn had established itself as a program) or it can truly be someone from left field -- 1997 Arizona springs to mind. But only having a subset of 1-3 teams that "can" win it all results in someone else sometimes getting the ring.
Compare with years that are "wide open" by NCAA standards, but which typically means that 6-12 teams would cut down the nets. This is one of those years. For that reason, I see a top 3 seed as virtually guaranteed to win it. It is easy to bet "the field" against two teams ... harder to bet "the much smaller field" against 10 teams. Simple odds. So bracket filling should be more chalk than ever this year, despite all the talk of the upsets and parity.
