Welcome to the place where we try and separate the contenders from the pretenders in college basketball. I’m sure if you’re here you have your own healthy cynicism when it comes to the AP poll or the NET rankings, but with all the ways to measure teams out there the picture can get muddy real quick no matter how you look at it. I’m going to try and make it clearer for those of us who are focused on one thing, March success. Forget about neutral court favorability or which team is deserving of what seed, let’s just figure out who’s going to succeed in March.

The goal of this entire exercise is simple, try and place the “best” teams in college basketball into Archetypal buckets, and assess their likelihood of going on a deep run in March based on where they fall. This will all be derived from years of Kenpom data (2005-2024) which I have compiled to create 8 unique archetypes that, in my opinion, will help all who take notice avoid backing a horse that falls in the first weekend, and instead, lead you to hitch your wagon to one that finds itself making a deep tourney run. What we’re not attempting to do is pick the team that comes out of nowhere and goes on a deep run, a la NC State last year.

So, we will focus on the top-30 in Kenpom as of each update. For context, entering the tournament just 8 of the 76 (10.5%) total Final 4 teams since 2005 have entered the tourney outside the top-30. Just with that we already can narrow down our focus and begin to identify what characteristics of those teams we can identify as key indicators. On top of that we can track week over week movements and spot teams who are improving vs fading.

The 8 Archetypes are:

• Elite
• Great
• Solid
• Strong Enough
• Run N’ Gun
• Grinders
• Vanilla
• Wannabe’s

Below I will briefly explain each category and list the teams that fall in at the time of publishing. There will be a graphic for each category that shows the criteria and the percentage of teams who fell into that category since 2005 that made it to each round. For example, there has never been a team in the “Great” category lose in the 1st round (100% R2), which also applied to the Elite category until last year when Auburn lost to Yale, a loss on par with Virginia losing to UMBC as a first-of-its-kind while receiving a tenth of the attention, I should add.

Visual of what’s to come

ELITE:

Here is where we find the cream of the crop in college basketball, as these are the teams who are top-10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency. Shockingly, you’ll find these teams perform the best in the tourney, with even better chances of advancing than even just the standard 1 seeds (by an average of about a 3% increase). This flies in the face of anyone who wants to tell you the best teams don’t win, as oftentimes they mistake the highest seeded teams for the “best”, when statistically that isn’t always the case, especially once you break from the 1 seed line. In fact, over 2/3’s of teams that fell into this archetype made it to at least the Elite 8 as you can see above, which is 12% higher than any other archetype and at least 54% better than any of my vulnerable categories. Of course, as with Auburn last year, there are statistical outliers, but if you’re trying to find what historically has the best odds when picking a team to go on a deep run, this is it.

GREAT:

The next couple are going to be pretty obvious but we’re notching down a peg to teams who weren’t top-10 but do happen to be top-15 on both ends of the floor. It’s pretty consistent in terms of odds of getting out of the first weekend, but does drop off decently as you go to Elite 8 and beyond. Still, with only 31 teams to have entered the tourney as “Elite” since 2005 we may find the 2nd or 3rd options this year fall here, as we do this week. These aren’t always your top seeds either, with 2023 UConn being a perfect example as a 4 seed falling here and winning the whole thing.

SOLID:

Following the trend here, down a peg to teams who were top-25 on both ends but outside of top-15. I will note the difference between top-20 and top-25 was negligible so they’ve been combined, but it stands to reason you can have a bit more confidence in Gonzaga with their #2 offense than St. John’s who is teetering on Wannabe status. Context and some discretion is of course advised here.

STRONG ENOUGH:

This is where we start getting a little unique and into the weeds, as we’ve had to find a bucket for those that fail to land in the top-25 on both ends but are elite on one end of the floor. Conversely they aren’t horrible on the other end, so they don’t drop down to our vulnerable categories. They’re just good enough on their weaker end of the floor that their elite abilities are able to carry them with some confidence out of the first weekend. You will see it’s a stark difference in success from the “Run N’ Gun” or “Grinders” categories just by limiting that weakness.

RUN’ N GUN

Now we get into the teams we have to start worrying about which are the overly unbalanced teams. This group will be the track meet types, who struggle to stop you but can score at an elite level and whose ability to win relies on winning a shootout. We’ve seen time and time again this type of team lose in the first round, including top seeded teams like Kentucky (’24), Iowa (’22), and Ohio St (’21) just to name a few recent examples. The data tells us if you’re gonna be bad on one end it’s better to be worse on D than O, but it still is a stark drop off from 62% (Solid) to the Sweet 16, to just shy of 37% here.

GRINDERS:

Similar to the Run N’ Gun group this group of teams is very unbalanced, just on the other end of the floor. We all know teams like this, that are forced to take you to the deep waters and test your resolve. Physicality, toughness and relentless pressure on D, but they just can’t seem to score the basketball on a consistent basis. These teams historically have really struggled in March, with nearly 3/4 of them flaming out the first weekend. Some recent examples include Iowa St (’23), LSU (’22), Kansas and Tennessee (’21) among many others.

WANNABE’S

I classified these teams as wannabe’s because they are unbalanced, excelling on one end of the floor compared to the other but not at an elite level. They’re solid on one end and competent on the other, keeping them out of the Vanilla category thanks to their better than average ability on one end but still it is not enough to make up for their deficiency on the other.

VANILLA:

These are your purely average teams, who don’t truly excel on either end of the floor. They find ways to win and remain amongst the top teams but without that true identity to lean on and without the overall elite ability they’re just kind of meh, and you see it in the numbers. With greater than 80% failing to make it out of the first weekend and nearly half checking out after just 1 game these are the last teams you want to trust come March. Some recent examples include Texas Tech (’24), Virginia/Duke/Indiana (’23) and Illinois/UConn (’22) who all failed to get out of the first weekend.