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How often do we get to a Final Four in which every team involved meets the most basic requirement to go home with the trophy?
We had four No. 1 seeds last year, but it wasn’t then.
It certainly wasn’t 2024, when NC State crashed the party.
The last time every team arrived with at least one first-round NBA draft pick in its rotation was all the way back in 2021, and before that was 2016. So this isn’t something that comes up a lot. There are other requirements of championship contention that winners generally meet, like having a commanding point guard (Duke can tell you all about that) and the need for rim protection and elite efficiency at both ends of the court.
But it is interesting when you can look at the Final Four and know none of the teams would need to break a four-decade historical precedent to win this championship. No one since Indiana 1987 has won without a first-round pick.
And no one will this year, either.
That’s one reason it’s is a really tough call to say who will win it, but this is how I order the likelihood of a championship for the four remaining teams.
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Ranking the Final Four teams
1. Arizona
Why they’ll win it: Remember when there were concerns about Arizona being too young to win in the NCAA Tournament? Say the Wildcats were a legit threat to win it all, and the response would be: “They start three freshmen!” As if it were the same as saying, “They start three sportswriters!”
It’s not like it hasn’t been done before. The freshmen, I mean. Kentucky won with three freshman starters in 2012, and Duke with three freshmen in the lineup three years later.
Saturday, power forward Koa Peat, wing Ivan Kharchenkov and shooting guard Brayden Burries combined for 42 points against one of the most experienced teams in all of college basketball, the Purdue Boilermakers, whose lineup included two four-year starters and a three-year starter.
This is a team with talent, power and more experience than many realize. When coach Tommy Lloyd goes to his bench, he’s sending in senior power forward Tobe Awaka or senior wing Anthony Dell’Orso.
Arizona is one of the top 40 3-point shooting teams in the nation, but they hardly bother with it, because they don’t expect opponents to deal with their physical force. They rank 361st out of 365 teams in the percentage of their points that come from long distance. They score inside or get fouled, or they score inside and get fouled. That’s how Arizona wants to play it, with Peat and 7-2 Mo Krivas joining with Awaka to pound opponents in and around the lane.
Purdue is not the biggest team in college basketball, but they have plenty of size with 6-11 Oscar Cluff, 6-9 Trey Kaufman-Renn and 7-4 Daniel Jacobson. But eventually they wore down and allowed the Wildcats to score 34 of their 48 second-half points in the lane or at the line.
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Arizona also is run by a point guard with elite quickness and finishing skills, and a great sense of the moment. Jaden Bradley is not an extraordinary playmaker. That he averages just 4.4 assists on such a productive offense is not a statistical accident. It’s a reflection of how he functions. He’s in charge of what happens, and when his team must have a clock-beating drive or an offensive boost, he’ll attack the lane and deliver a bucket, even if requires some sort of acrobatic finish. His value is in leadership and direction, so it can be difficult to quantify. But it is reflected the won/loss record. And his Big 12 Player of the Year trophy.
Why they might not: For a half, anyway, Purdue was able to both the Wildcats with length and physicality, and by taking away preferred offensive options. What if someone can shut off driving lanes and force Arizona to the outside? What if someone like Peat gets into foul trouble? It happened in the Big 12 championship game (DQ) and the seven games when he reached at least four personals.
That’s the Wildcats’ biggest concern. They are an accurate 3-point shooting team, but they rarely play with two serious shooters on the floor. It’s either Burries or Dell’Orso the majority of the time. Bradley hits 40 percent from deep, but he doesn’t even get one make a game. Perhaps he could deliver one in an important moment, but there is the possibility an opponent with Michigan’s defensive might could strand the ball on the outside and make the Wildcats overly reliant on players not predisposed to play that way.
2. Michigan
Why they could win: Seriously, they could flatten Arizona like they did Gonzaga, UCLA, Alabama and Tennessee and who outside Tucson would be totally surprised?
I mean, when you see Michigan at its best, it’s a frightening operation. Breathtaking is too light, too casual a description. Arizona’s best basketball blows the opposition off the floor; Michigan’s best basketball wrecks the opponent, leads them to ponder whether backgammon might be a better use of their time.
Forward Yaxel Lendeborg is not only a first-team All-America, he’s the nation’s most improved player. From a baseline-oriented power forward a year ago to an elite wing who uses his acceleration and power to drive the ball into gaps and dare defenders to challenge him at the rim. And he’s shooting better than 50 percent from 3-point range in March.
MORE: Yaxel Lendeborg is old, but his ceiling is a lot higher
Center Aday Mara is a game-changer at the rim on both ends, a nightmare to guard because of his reach and solid footwork, and those qualities make him a challenge to score against and similarly scary as a help defender rejecting shots.
And if I don’t mention that the third-most impactful frontcourt player, Morez Johnson, is 6-9, 250 and averaging 14 points and 8 rebounds in the tournament, well, that’s on me.
The Wolverines also have one of the best benches in college hoops, just not as deep as it was before the injury to point guard L.J. Cason. Guard Trey McKenney is a future first-round pick and a dangerous shooter, and Roddy Gayle Jr is a do-everything wing who can be described accurately as “feisty.”
This is the nation’s No. 1 defensive team, largely because they have three players who can protect the rim when in position and the sort of length and dynamism that allows them to switch on screens and crosses without getting caught in too many dreadful mismatches.
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Why they won’t: The load on point guard Elliott Cadeau has been heavy since Cason was lost early in the month with a knee injury. Cadeau has been handling it nicely, going 34 or more minutes in each of the past three games and averaging just 2 turnovers to 8 assists per game.
Arizona will present the greatest challenge he’s seen all season, though. The Wildcats have the No. 2 defense in college hoops, and Bradley will offer Cadeau a tougher matchup than he’s faced since confronting Ohio State’s Bruce Thornton in the opener of the Big Ten Tournament.
We saw when Michigan played Duke in Washington in mid-February how a determined defensive effort potentially could lead the Wolverines to inertia. They could not penetrate the Devils’ D nor get the ball via the pass to dangerous positions.
That was when Cadeau was struggling the most he has all year. Perhaps he’s beyond that.
There also is the matter of foul trouble. Krivas looks like a 7-2 powerlifter; Mara is lean and may struggle to hold his ground at either end. Even when he’s not struggling with an opponent’s size or power, Mara can be finessed into committing a needless foul. Michigan will need him on the floor, especially against a frontcourt like Arizona’s.
MORE: How Dusty May's belief in Elliot Cadeau has paid off
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3. Illinois
Why they could win: The 2026 college basketball season has been foremost about physical power. Two of the four teams that earned No. 1 seeds in this year’s tournament started converted power forwards at small forward (Michigan with Yaxel Lendeborg, Florida with Thomas Haugh). Two of the teams in this year’s Final Four feature at least one 7-footer. If you were looking for one category that would identify the teams that would make it this far, would you believe average height was an enormous factor? Arizona is No. 7. Illinois is No. 1.
Yeah, No. 1.
The Illini have pretty much all the ingredients of a champion covered. They’ve got the high-end NBA talent, in freshman point guard Keaton Wagler. They have the rim protection, with 7-2 Zvonimir Ivisic rejecting 2 per game and the Illini ranking in the top 35 in that category. They have wings that can break down a defense under pressure; have you seen Andrej Stojakovic attack the rim? He’s converted 59 percent of his 2-pointers, not bad for a 6-7 small forward.
What once seemed a forlorn defense has risen to No. 20 in the nation in efficiency. The Illini have held three consecutive opponents under 60 points, after that happened only five times against major opponents in the regular season. And they own the nation’s No. 1 offense, producing 131.7 points per 100 possessions. That’s the best any team has done since statistician Ken Pomeroy began recording these numbers in 1997.
The Illini at last are understanding how to manage their abundance of offensive options and to prioritize those that will work most effectively to win a particular game. Against Iowa in the South Region final, they needed to use their power and not rely so heavily on 3-pointers; the Hawkeyes are not a tall, physical team. So Illinois emphasized the drive and won while hitting only three times from deep; they tried only 17 3-pointers, down from an average of 31.
Why they won’t: Although freshman power forward David Mirkovic did plenty to get the Illini here, there’s still a nagging feeling he ought to have been able to contribute more than nine points and 3-of-9 shooting in the Iowa game. From the second round of the tournament on, he’s shooting only 40 percent. And yes that includes some meager 3-point shooting, but 45 percent on twos doesn’t feel all that great, either.
Long-distance shooting generally could become an issue, even though the team shoots an acceptable 34.7 percent. See, other than Wagler, the only player over 40 percent from distance is wing Jake Davis, who plays 20 minutes a game. And their made threes are spread almost evenly through the rest of the lineup, from 56 by Mirkovic and reserve power forward Ben Humrichous to a combined 55 makes from Stojakovic and guard Kylan Boswell. Who does Illinois really want taking those shots, aside from Wagler?
There is the concern the Illini defense could resume the habits that led them to allow 91 points to Wisconsin in the Big Ten Tournament, 95 points to UCLA in overtime. That feels less plausible after the work Boswell and Stojakovic did against Iowa star Bennett Stirtz in the Elite Eight; he wound up with 24 points but only three assists and 2-of-8 shooting in the second half. But it’s only been a couple weeks since that loss to the Badgers.
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4. Connecticut
Why they might win it: Because that’s what Connecticut does, right? The Huskies get to the Final Four, it belongs to them. That’s how it worked in 2024, 2023, 2014, 2011, 2004 and 1999.
(We’ll agree to forget about 2009, Huskies fans because they’d prefer to focus on the half-dozen they won, me because it messes with the theme).
So they are not the most talented team that will arrive in Indy.
They were not the most talented in ’99, ’11 or ’14, and we can debate ’04 between UConn (seven future NBA players, led by Ben Gordon and Emeka Okafor) and Duke (six future pros, led by J.J. Redick and Luol Deng).
This UConn team has one first-round pick, probably, that being the guy who ultimately delivered them here. Wing Braylon Mullins is going to be a serious shooter at the NBA level. He’s still working on that now, hitting only 20.8 percent in the tournament and 18.5 percent in March.
This is a coach who knows how to win this, though. Dan Hurley is one of the few in the sport’s history to claim the NCAA championship in consecutive years, along with Billy Donovan, Mike Krzyzewski, John Wooden and four others. And he’s got a player in Alex Karaban who has a chance to become the only non-UCLA Bruin to win three in his career.
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The way to get there this time is most definitely through the post and 6-10 Tarris Reed, who has averaged 21.8 points in the tournament after hitting the 20-point mark just five times in the regular season.
Why they won’t: UConn arrives with the No. 28 offense in efficiency, and we saw why in the Duke game. The Huskies went 5-of-23 from 3-point range and only Reed provided a consistent source of scoring. Guard Solo Ball’s 3-point shooting touch seems to have been misplaced about the time the calendar turned to March; he’s 4-of-28 over his last six games. Karaban has to be more like the player who faced Furman, UCLA and Michigan State (11-of-25 from deep) and pretty much nothing like the guy who shared the court with Duke (except for that one clutch 3-pointer and the assist to Mullin on the game-winner).
Only one team in the 28 seasons statistician Ken Pomeroy has been compiling efficiency numbers has won the NCAA Tournament with an offense ranked outside the top 20. That’s one team on one side of that stat, 27 on the other. So that’s like a 3.6 percent chance.
Of course the team that pulled this off was UConn in 2014, with the 39th-ranked offense that season.
Of course.
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