2025 NCAA Tournament Betting Preview: Using KenPom To Find Historical National Championship Contenders

Reed Wallach | Feb 10, 2025

Auburn Tigers forward Johni Broome (4) celebrates a block as Auburn Tigers take on Florida Gators at Neville Arena in Auburn, Ala., on Saturday, Feb. 8, 2025. Florida Gators lead Auburn Tigers 48-38 at halftime. / Jake Crandall/ Advertiser / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

NFL season is over and now everyone will turn its attention to college basketball season, where team's have about a month left ahead of the NCAA Tournament.

With every passing game, teams continue to build a profile that is more and more static. As we take in the data from before, we can spin it forward and use it to handicap the National Championship picture. Throughout recent history, the same types of teams have won in March: balanced ones.

As I've been doing the past several weeks for SI Betting, I've been using KenPom, the college basketball advanced metrics website, to frame a handful of teams that are likely going to figure into the March Madness picture. Here's a quick summary of what the below tables will aim to do.

KenPom, the advanced metric website that is gospel for college basketball bettors, has been compiling stats since 1999, which you can find here. 

Over the past two-plus decades, KenPom has become the market maker for college basketball; the website's metrics also help indicate overall team quality. There is the team’s overall adjusted efficiency metric as well as one for offense and defense (among others) that is a catch-all metric for how to rate teams.

Dating back to 2002, all but two teams have been inside KenPom's adjusted offensive and defensive metrics top 20. The teams that win it all are not only elite but are balanced and able to win in different ways more times than not.

The two teams that didn’t are 2014 Connecticut, paced by a sensational run from Shabazz Napier, and 2021 Baylor, who had a mid-season blip that weighed down the team’s overall rating. 

So, as we continue to go over the data, let’s discuss the title race through the lens of three different groups of teams. 

First, the teams that fit the analytical profile of a typical title team before moving onto teams that are top 40 in KenPom’s adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency metric and nearing the thresholds of a title winner. After that, I’ll discuss teams that are elite on only one side of the ball, top 20 according to KenPom, but outside the top 50 on the other. 

As always, these rankings change after every game, but it provides a snapshot today and where to look as we continue to follow the sport ahead of the NCAA Tournament.

2025 National Championship Contenders

Team	Record	KenPom Rank	Bracket Matrix Seed	KenPom adjO	KenPom adjD	Natty Odds
Auburn	21-2	1	1	1	16	+440
Duke	20-3	2	1	5	4	+450
Houston	19-4	3	2	8	3	+950
Florida	20-3	5	2	4	9	+1300
Iowa State	18-5	8	3	18	7	+1400
Arizona	17-6	10	4	14	18	+3000
Maryland	18-6	18	6	20	20	+8000

While the likes of Auburn and Duke each suffered losses over the weekend -- to differing degrees -- as the Tigers lost by double digits at home while the Blue Devils squandered a late lead against Clemson on the road, both teams still figure to be the top teams in the nation for the remainder of the season. 

I believe it’s important that losses happen over the course of the season and it’s worth keeping in mind that neither team took a massive hit to its season-long profile. Variance happens in different games and can lead to one-off results, but when banking on teams to win six games in an NCAA Tournament setting, balance is the key, which both surely have. 

I'm not breaking much news here, these are the two clear betting favorites, and rightfully so.

Florida of course is on the other side of Auburn’s loss, boat-racing the Tigers on its home floor to beef up its analytical profile and bounce back after its vaunted offense was stymied on the road just a week prior against Tennessee. 

Arizona has been in and out of this 20-20 group during the month of keeping track of these numbers and the team continues to build up its resume, evident with a quality home win against Texas Tech over the weekend. 

The biggest development is the entrance of Maryland into this group. The Big Ten is loaded with quality ball clubs, but it’s the Terps who appear poised to have the most balanced roster. The team is littered with veterans, including power forward Julian Reese who is one half of a dynamic frontcourt duo with future lottery pick Derik Queen. Those two, along with quality guard play has made the Terps a dangerous team as we draw closer to the NCAA Tournament. 

It’s worth keeping an eye on the team’s price, which is +8000 as the team sits as a six seed in projected brackets. The team is on the road on Thursday against Nebraska, but will be favored by double digits likely against Iowa and USC at home after that before a massive home game on February 26th against Michigan State which can be an inflection point for the team’s Futures price.

Fringe National Championship Contenders

Team	Record	KenPom Rank	Bracket Matrix Seed	KenPom adjO	KenPom adjD	Natty Odds
Tennessee	20-4	4	1	33	1	+1400
Alabama	20-3	6	1	3	39	+950
Purdue	19-5	7	2	7	32	+3000
Texas Tech	18-5	9	4	10	28	+3500
Wisconsin	19-5	12	4	9	37	+8000
Kansas	16-7	11	3	39	5	+3500
Illinois	16-8	14	6	15	23	+5500
Texas A&M	18-5	15	2	37	6	+3500
Michigan State	18-6	17	3	26	11	+4000
Marquette	18-6	22	3	22	26	+5500
Michigan	18-5	20	5	23	21	+6500
Ole Miss	18-6	19	5	31	14	+10000
Saint Mary's	21-4	21	8	38	10	+10000
Ohio State	14-10	27	10	32	31	+10000
Louisville	18-6	28	7	27	34	+10000

There are plenty of quality teams in this group with some knocking on the door of being a 20-20 group, so it’s a bit of choose your flavor. 

As I’ve stated before, the Big Ten has a bevy of strong teams with plenty bolstering balanced profiles with Maryland’s strong recent stretch pushing it into the group above. The likes of Purdue, Michigan, Michigan State, Illinois and Wisconsin all are in this group and are worth monitoring moving forward. 

The one team that I want to focus on a bit more is Alabama, whose recent defensive play has cracked the top 40 in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency metric. 

Last season, Alabama was one of the team’s from the next group, an all offense and no defense unit that finished the season outside of KenPom’s top 100 on the defensive side of the ball. 

However, this year’s group has backed up its elite with a far better defense. 

The unit still doesn’t force turnovers, but it’s far better on the defensive glass and avoiding getting into free throw battles with a sky high opponent free throw rate. The group is hovering around the national average in both DREB% and opponent free throw rate at this point of the season. 

The group has consistently played an analytical-savvy game under head coach Nate Oats, shutting off the three-point line for opponents and forcing isolation shots, but now are starting to see better results relative to last year's group that ironically went to the Final Four, the best result of the Oats era.

Volatile Teams in the NCAA Tournament

Team	Record	KenPom Rank	Bracket Matrix	KenPom adjO	KenPom adjD	Natty Odds
Kentucky	16-7	23	4	2	90	+3500
UCONN	16-7	34	8	12	108	+4500
Baylor	15-8	25	8	11	64	+10000
Villanova	14-10	51	N/A	16	127	+50000
BYU	15-8	37	11	17	81	+15000
Mississippi State	17-6	31	7	19	52	+10000
St. John's	21-3	16	5	83	2	+3000
UCLA	18-6	25	6	51	6	+10000
UC-Irvine	20-4	70	12	189	15	+100000
San Diego State	15-6	49	11	116	12	+30000
Cincinnati	14-9	53	N/A	120	19	+50000
West Virginia	15-8	45	9	103	17	+30000
George Mason	19-5	69	12	191	13	N/A

These teams are lopsided in one direction, either over leveraged on an elite offense or defense to win games for the team, which is typically a fatal flaw come NCAA Tournament. 

Interestingly enough, the surging St. John’s Red Storm are on this list. 

Rick Pitino’s group has been one of the hottest teams in the country behind its stifling defense, owners of the second longest winning streak in the country (10 games) that includes back-to-back wins over Marquette and UConn. 

However, I’m still not sold on this team going on a deep NCAA Tournament run, and buying the team now is likely a fool’s errand. 

The team’s elite defense is no joke, second in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency with a ton of size inside to shut off the interior while also playing in-your-shirt defense with a top 15 turnover rate in the country. 

However, the offense is incredibly poor. The group is 248th in effective field goal percentage and is allergic to taking and making three-point shots. On the year, St. John’s is 346th in the country in three-point percentage on the 347th highest three-point rate. The group is at its best when keeping the game in the 60’s, which has worked to date, but it only takes one game for the group to get knocked off its ideal script. 

Keep an eye on some free throw regression. The group is a poor team at the charity stripe, shooting about 69% on the year (282nd in the country), but its opponents are shooting 66%, the seventh lowest mark nationally.

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