The South is where some madness could go down this season.
The Houston Cougars are the top seed and come into the tournament with a 30-4 record. However, they are coming into the tournament off a 28-point loss to the Iowa State Cyclones in the Big 12 semifinal.
Everything that should scare you about the Cougars came to fruition in the game. Houston is 228th in effective field goal percentage at just 49.7 percent. The Cougars shot just 26.8 percent from the field and Iowa State made 50 percent of their shots.
They are an efficient offense but a lot of that is because of their snail’s pace.
The No. 2 seed isn’t all that scary either. Marquette has the most losses (9) of any two-seed in the field and they don’t get to the free-throw line (344th in free-throw rate) or rebound particularly well.
Kentucky is once again loaded with NBA prospects and can light up the scoreboard, but they also have a shoddy defense that is 125th in efficiency.
So if there’s going to be a surprising Final Four team, it feels like it’s coming from this region.
The Texas Tech Red Raiders could be the team that does it. They take 41.1 percent of their shots from beyond the arc and hit them at a 36.5 percent clip as a team. They also play good enough defense ranking 48th in defensive efficiency.
The Red Raiders are a long shot, but they went 4-4 in their Quad 1-A games this season, don’t have a ton of weaknesses and could get hot from three. That’s a scary combination this time of year.
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