Don’t look now, but we’re less than 10 weeks away from a crisp bracket. Oh, what a glorious day that will be. Of course, you’ll be hammered with numerous trends to pare down who will win the national championship.
There is no magic formula to predict a champion. The game has changed way too much. College basketball is on pace for its most efficient offensive season ever. More 3-pointers are being taken. Defense is always important, but the teams who can’t score may be left out in the cold during March Madness.
For transparency’s sake, here is what the preseason national championship tiers looked like in late October before the season started. A lot of the same preseason teams made the first tier in the midseason rendition like Auburn, Duke, Iowa State and Alabama. But there were some misses, namely Baylor, who is now 9-4, North Carolina, who has struggled with a poorly-built roster, and Wake Forest, who is undergoing some serious shooting concerns.
Two months of games can help paint a vastly different picture. Let’s dive into the midseason national title contender tiers, starting at the top:
Tier 1: No-brainers
Houston
The scoop: Three nip-and-tuck losses haven’t changed the outlook on this Houston club at all. Houston is still an absolute freight train, capable of balling up a rock-solid club like BYU and throwing it into the slammer. Houston’s defense is a fortress. It allows no freebies in transition, rips the ball away and can flip-flop two elite rim protectors in Ja’Vier Francis and JoJo Tugler.
Houston still takes far too many non-rim twos (more than any high-major and fifth-most nationally), but…
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