Welcome to the place where we have set out to use historical March Madness results to try and identify the characteristics that most often lead to success in the big dance. Or simply, to define what true Championship DNA looks like. I understand many will scoff at the idea of basketball being reduced to numbers on a screen, and trust me I can sympathize with that, but what I’ve done is accept the reality that my own eyeballs cannot consistently make correct predictions in March. Data can do a much better job than my eyeballs, and most likely yours as well. I’m here to show you that you in fact can reliably start to sort the top teams in the country and recognize which teams are going to have the best shot at the Final 4 and ultimately winning a national title. Many have tried, often saying something like “no team outside of x or outside of y that also hasn’t done z has won it all”, but I’m going to try and make it more about reliability than elimination. Allow me to explain.

The Data:

The base layer of this is that I’ve taken pre-tourney Kenpom efficiency data from every season since 2002 and compiled it. The obvious thing when looking at the numbers on the surface is that the game is changing stylistically as teams chase offensive efficiency and overall offensive skill develops. To put it concretely, average offensive efficiency in 2002 was 102 while currently in 2025 it is 107.4. To get even more granular, the 2nd best offensive team in 2002 was Oregon with an Ortg of 119.9. Today they would rank 23rd. In their day, that Oregon team was an elite offensive group relative to their competition, so we need a way to normalize this rating in order to fairly judge teams across time. We need to put every current team on the exact same scale, so we’ll be using normalized efficiency (OE++ / DE++) so a dominant 2002 offense isn’t punished next to today’s higher-scoring game. Think of it like this: KenPom data will tell you who’s good any given year relative to that year’s competition. OE++ and DE++ tell you how good they are compared to every tournament field for the last 23 years. Ultimately, the goal was to confidently be able to remove team name and season, and be left with a fair assessment of all teams since 2002 and their results in March.

Once the data was compiled it was time to test my original theory and see if I could identify common characteristics that most often led to deep runs in the tournament. My original hypothesis was that despite high overall efficiency, the teams that lean heavily on one end of the floor struggle more than well balanced teams, even if less efficient overall. As I studied and pulled the data my hypothesis was largely proven right, so I began to try and classify certain archetypes of teams. I landed on 8 key archetypes; Elite – Great – Solid – Strong Enough – Matadors – Grinders – Wannabes – Vanilla. Here is the table with exact historical results: Note: R2 indicates teams who reached the 2nd round, all the way to CH which indicates the teams who reached the Title game (46 total over 23 years).

For some additional proof this is still applying today even as the game changes:

2025: Final 4 was comprised of our 4 Elite teams. A direct reflection of how strong the field was at the top.

2024: Only 1 Elite team – UConn who won the title

2023: 0 Elite teams and the bracket descended into madness. However, our 2nd most reliable team UConn (Strong Enough) won the title as a 4 seed.

For a clear example of this playing out on the other end of the spectrum with specific ++ data consider this. Of the top-5 OE++ teams since 2002, two of them lost the first weekend – 2012 Mizzou (Matador) and 2014 Creighton (Matador). Both of them struggled to defend, which is why they landed in the matador archetype, and they suffered first weekend upsets. Meanwhile, the other 3 all fell in a reliable archetype and made deep runs, including the greatest offensive team 2015 Wisconsin (OE++ 131.87) who lost in the title game to Duke.

While nothing is 100% you can clearly see the stronger you are overall, combined with the ability to succeed on both ends of the floor, are strong indicators of your reliability to have March success. So, moving forward I am going to post a weekly update on Friday morning’s showing where the top-40 teams in Kenpom stand. For context, entering the tournament just 5 of the 92 (5.4%) total Final 4 teams since 2002 have entered the tourney outside the top-40 so that is why I landed on 40.

It begins today: Here is your Week 1 Championship DNA Board

Week 1 Thoughts:

The obvious thing jumping out at me early this year is we have a lot of really good teams at the top of the sport right now. I have a few thoughts on why, but let’s just get it out there, 20 teams in my reliable archetypes, including 5 in elite, would make for an outlier season. I do not expect that to be the final number once we get to Selection Sunday. In general, these efficiency numbers tend to bloat early in the season thanks to cupcakes on the schedule that the really good teams handle with ease, so I expect the rigor of conference play to diminish the number of teams in these reliable archetypes at least by a handful. There is a competing force as well though, as I do think the transfer portal and influx of talent from overseas is causing the teams at the top to improve. It has never been easier for a team to plug holes, reload after guys leave and even add depth, than it is right now. Unfortunately, for those who love upsets and chaos in March, we may be moving toward an era where that is drastically reduced. I don’t want to jump to that conclusion just yet, but after last year having all 4 number 1 seeds be dominant teams that all made the Final 4, and the way this year is starting out, you can’t help but go there. The exciting thing is we’re going to get to see this all play out as this will be a weekly update, so we’ll see if it’s more bloat from early season cupcakes or if we truly are seeing a concentration of talent at the top of the sport. Until next week, enjoy the hoops.