These 2025 NCAA Men’s Tournament Teams Are Set Up to Impress — Or Disappoint

This year’s bracket is top-heavy, but some Madness is surely still in store.

Ja'Kobi Gillespie and Maryland might be an interesting sleeper pick. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

The brackets are out, and everyone is furiously experimenting with different versions of their picks to get things exactly the way they want (only to have them crash and burn immediately on Thursday and Friday) — or is that just me?

Either way, to help with that process, I released a forecast model on Sunday right after the committee made their selections, which simulates the tournament thousands of times based on power ratings that are themselves a composite of predictive metrics from KenPom, Bart Torvik, TeamRankings, Sports-Reference/CBB and ESPN’s BPI:

So check that out for each team in the men’s field’s odds to advance to each round of the tournament — and eventually win the championship. But one of my favorite additional early-week exercises after the bracket comes out is to search for teams that have either been over- or under-seeded, or otherwise positioned in a favorable or unfavorable place in the regions and/or seeds.

We can look at this in a number of ways, but here is a comparison between each team’s total expected wins (based on the 2025 NCAA tournament forecast simulations) and how many wins their seed has tended to win per tournament¹ since the 64-team bracket era began in 1985:

It’s a top-heavy year in general, as the No. 1 seeds were already showing up with at least double the championship odds of anyone else in the field. But that is reflected in some of the teams who are projected to outperform their seeds as well, with Duke expected to win around a half-game more than the typical No. 1 and a handful of top-four seeds represented at the top of the list overall.

(For those top teams, check out the difference between their expected wins over historical and expected wins over the 2025 field average for their seed — basically, the seedline-wide average for 2025 is stronger than the typical teams at those seeds in previous years.)

Chief among those stronger-than-usual teams is Maryland, the 4-seed in the West regional, who carries a 0.51-win edge in expected victories over the historical No. 4s since 1985. They are heavy favorites (90 percent) to beat 13th-seeded Grand Canyon in Round 1, and they have a 77 percent chance in Round 2 over the Memphis-Colorado State winner, which has a 12-5 upset written all over it. (CSU is outright favored according to the power ratings, with a 56 percent chance to beat Penny’s Tigers.)² If they get that far, the Terps would also have a decent chance (~40 percent) to make the Elite Eight, considering that Florida is the only No. 1 seed with below-average expected wins relative to the historical norm. (The Gators must go through the UConn-Oklahoma winner right away, then face an underseeded Terrapins team most likely.)

Keep an eye on the bottom half of the West bracket as well, with No. 3 seed Texas Tech in the mix to make some tourney noise. They are huge first-round favorites over No. 14 UNC-Wilmington, and the power ratings give them around a 70 percent chance against the Mizzou-Drake winner in Round 2 as well. Second-seeded St. John’s has been red-hot this year, but they got a tough draw with No. 7 Kansas lurking in Round 2 — and the composite of power ratings actually have the Red Raiders higher than the Johnnies if they meet up in the Sweet Sixteen. It’s not crazy to think we could get a weirdo 3-vs-4 Texas Tech-Maryland regional final out West.

Duke, of course, is no surprise as a stronger-than-usual No. 1 seed, since they have been dominant all year — and were rounding into peak form before Cooper Flagg turned his ankle in the ACC tourney. (All indications are that he should be back in the lineup for the NCAAs.) And then among the higher seeds, East No. 4 Arizona and South No. 3 Iowa State are also projected to go further than the typical team at their respective seeds. The Tucson Cats are on a collision course with Duke, of course, but their path there is easier than the usual No. 4 has in front of it.³ And the Cyclones are actually rated higher within their pod than No. 2 seeded Michigan State, which makes for surprisingly good Elite Eight odds by No. 3 seed standards.

We already highlighted West No. 7 Kansas above for their potential to knock off No. 2 St. John’s in Round 2, which gives the Jayhawks the best expected-wins-versus-history of any team outside the Top 4 seeds, but how about Midwest No. 8 Gonzaga as well? The Zags have been a much better team all season than their résumé would indicate — they rank ninth in the nation in KenPom, for instance, despite being seeded eighth in their own region — and that makes them a dangerous opponent for not only Georgia in Round 1, but also top-seeded Houston in Round 2. And if the Bulldogs pull of that upset, look out; they have 31 percent Final Four odds conditional on making the Sweet Sixteen, despite the presence of No. 2 seed Tennessee down in the bottom half of the region.

Aside from Colorado State, who we already mentioned above — and are a great 12-5 pick over Memphis, though they could get chewed up by Maryland shortly thereafter — that’s most of the teams who figure to go further than history would predict from their seed. Relative to the rest of the 2025 field, there’s also Clemson, No. 5 seed from the Midwest, who is easily the best 5-seed in the bracket and has a fairly favorable draw early on. And East No. 11 VCU is the second-most likely first-round winner among double-digit seeds, facing No. 6 BYU.

As a bit of an aside, that also brings up a distinct lack of upset potential in Round 1, relative to history. Among teams seeded ninth or lower, only East No. 9 Baylor, South No. 11 North Carolina (if they make it), East No. 11 VCU, West No. 12 Colorado State, and West No. 16 Norfolk St. have higher odds to win in Round 1 than the 1985-2024 historical average first-round winning percentage for teams at their seed:

This doesn’t mean no upsets will happen! But it does mean they are, on the whole, less likely than usual, perhaps as a consequence of the general top-heaviness of the men’s Division I basketball season overall.

Anyway, the flip-side of the teams primed to exceed expectations are teams at the other end of the list, who are potentially set up to do worse than expected based on their seed. Tops (err, bottoms) in this group is West No. 5 Memphis, who we’ve already mentioned a few times as a first-round underdog in the stats versus No. 12 Colorado State. The predictive metrics simply do not like the Tigers; KenPom has them ranked outside the Top 50 nationally, for instance, surrounded by a bunch of 10- and 11-seeds (plus teams like Indiana who didn’t even make the tourney). If the stats are any indication, Memphis is a prime candidate to disappoint.

San Diego State and Texas also show up high (low?) on that list, though that’s in part because they must brave the play-in round. Conditional on making the Round of 64, they still have below-average expected wins for an 11-seed (as does the Longhorns’ play-in opponent, Xavier), but not as much of a shortfall as before we adjust for the extra game they must win. Then again, West No. 11 Drake has no such excuse — the Bulldogs have roughly as many expected tourney wins as Xavier, despite getting a bye to Round 1, because they had a tough draw in Missouri and then potentially Texas Tech, who we talked about before. Aside from VCU, the 11 seeds in this bracket are less likely to win in Round 1 than usual — and a lot less likely to go on a run, with an average of 0.46 expected wins (compared with the historical average of 0.67 for 11-seeds).

St. John’s has a tough path for a No. 2 seed out of the West, for reasons we discussed above, and that gives Rick Pitino’s team the worst expected-wins-versus-historical-average of any high seed, about double the projected shortfall of the next-lowest team seeded fourth or better (Michigan State). And aside from some stray No. 8 (Mississippi State) and No. 9 (Georgia) seeds, we also see that neither McNeese nor Liberty is projected to do much for the club of Cinderella 12-seeds.

Does all of this sound sort of like a bummer? Maybe. But remember: Brackets are meant to be busted. Just because the numbers suggest a top-heavy year doesn’t mean March Madness won’t find a way. And not every upset run belongs to Cinderella anyway: For instance, there’s a better-than-usual prospect of finding teams seeded third or fourth — or maybe even fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth — deep in the tourney, even if it might be hard to find 11s and 12s in the second weekend.

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Filed under: College Basketball

1. Excluding those annoying play-in games.

2. CSU themselves also rank relatively high on the expected-wins-versus-seed-average list, as the Rams are better than we would think for a 12-seed and are insta-favorites against Memphis.

3. As much fun as bombs-away Liberty is to watch when they’re on their game.