ESPN’s John Gasaway has handicapped the upcoming NCAA Tournament by listing all 343 teams he thinks can not win the championship this season.
Kentucky makes the list of 20 that he considers near misses of making the list of 8 teams that Gasaway thinks the champion will eventually come from.
9. Kentucky Wildcats
Putting Kentucky here could go badly. The Wildcats seemed to be figuring things out at warp speed before the loss at Florida, and this offense was shredding opposing defenses prior to the visit to Gainesville. UK’s late-season offensive rebounding, in particular, was lethal. So what’s the problem? The problem is the rules of this game say there’s space for only eight teams, and anyway, the habit Kentucky’s opponents have of missing an unusually high number of 3s feels like something that could come to an end abruptly in one tournament game (as indeed it did against the Gators).
Read “The 343 teams that will not win the national championship” by clicking here.
The final 8 teams are: Arizona, Duke, Gonzaga, Michigan State, North Carolina, Purdue, Villanova and Virginia.
