Last 12 months, I consider I used to be the one individual on the web who sang the praises of Saint Peter’s earlier than the NCAA Tournament. And then it shocked the nation by beating then-No. 2 seed Kentucky. And the Peacocks received two extra video games earlier than they ended their season one step in need of the Final Four. I’m again this 12 months to provide the same prediction. I’m not going as outlandish for this season’s showcase. No workforce receiving a No. 14 seed or beneath actually jumps off the March Madness web page. You know who does? The Paladins!
Give me Furman to the Sweet 16, besting a Virginia workforce with out the substances to make a deep event run. And whichever workforce wins that coin-flip 5-12 sport between San Diego State and the College of Charleston will fail to make it to the second week of The Big Dance. That’s the place I consider the Paladins’ luck will run out. Even with all of the off-court drama surrounding Alabama, the Crimson Tide has a cakewalk to the Elite Eight and possibly the Final Four. It’ll be a sneaky check to start out week No. 2 of the event for Nate Oats’ workforce. Let me let you know why.
The information to again it up
If you observe faculty basketball and don’t reside beneath a rock, you’ve most likely heard of KenPom, though that’s not an excuse both as a result of you’ll be able to nonetheless get WiFi beneath your boulder of selection. It’s floated across the web that each nationwide champion since 2004 has belonged to 2 classes: Top 40 in KenPom’s adjusted offensive effectivity, which is a flowery option to say the variety of factors a workforce scores per 100 possessions adjusted to take into consideration the standard of the opponent. The second group is an ultra-exclusive membership of being a top-22 squad in adjusted defensive effectivity. It’s the flipped offensive components, with factors allowed that’s adjusted by how good an offense each workforce performs. Furman belongs to a type of two teams. The Paladins are No. 33 within the adjusted offense class. Virginia belongs to neither.
The Cavaliers barely miss the lower in defensive effectivity, at No. 25 in Division I and a whopping 0.3 factors behind the cutoff at No. 22 Seton Hall. The weaker class for each groups seems way more staggeringly dangerous for the Paladins, coming in at No. 183 on the defensive facet, nearly precisely the median workforce of faculty basketball. Virginia’s No. 74 offense isn’t a foul mark, however it’s not nice both and with the model Tony Bennett’s squad likes to play, it’s hardly a needle-mover. In non-nerd analytics discuss, if Furman’s offense can proceed to attain because it did for many of this season and bother Virginia’s defenders higher than these from mid-tier ACC colleges did, the Cavaliers are in enormous bother as a result of their offense isn’t adequate to save lots of them, even in opposition to a mean D-I protection.
Most of this Furman squad returned from final 12 months’s workforce that was a 30-foot buzzer-beater away from qualifying for the NCAA Tournament. The Paladins watched Chattanooga go to The Big Dance in a spot they felt was rightly theirs. And after defeating those self same Mocs on this 12 months’s SoCon Tournament Final, Furman is within the NCAA Tournament for the primary time since 1980. Imagine ready to get again to March Madness for the primary time since Jimmy Carter’s final 12 months in workplace. And straight enthusiastic about the stinging loss for greater than a 12 months. The Paladins used that chip on their shoulder the whole season to dominate their league, whereas Virginia scoring greater than 75 factors in a sport is a minor miracle.
No. 13 seeds all-time are 31-117 within the NCAA Tournament for the reason that event discipline expanded to 64 groups in 1985. The most up-to-date No. 13 seeds to take down No. 4s had been North Texas and Ohio who defeated Purdue and Virginia respectively within the Indiana-only event of 2021. Wait, Virginia is susceptible to the 4-13 upset? Yup, and this Furman workforce is stylistically just like that Bobcats’ squad from two seasons in the past. The Paladins have an skilled, veteran core that may shoot lights out from anyplace on the ground. That’s why Furman is the fifth-best low-major offensive workforce within the nation. And Virginia received’t be capable to cease that scoring barrage.
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