Winter has passed, the leaves are returning to the trees and the calendar has officially turned to March.
For college basketball fans, this is the greatest time of the year as the postseason rolls around and the madness of March begins. Conference tournaments are in full swing, and the NCAA Tournament is just a week away. Bracket talk has ramped up throughout the college basketball community, so The Reveille has created this guide to help readers create a winning bracket.
Obviously there is no way to correctly predict the outcome of all 63 games without a genie in a bottle, but in the era of advanced metrics and analytics, it has become much easier to find a winning formula. Historical evidence would suggest, though, that the most important factor is the defense.
The ideology that defense wins championships is among the oldest clichés in sports, but it remains a defining factor when it comes to the NCAA Tournament.
Arguably the best metric to measure how good a team is defensively is adjusted defensive efficiency. This statistic measures how many points a team gives up per 100 possessions against an average Division I team.
For context, having a rating under 100 is considered decent and would put a team within the top half of Division I teams, but a rating under 90 is considered elite, placing a team in the top nine in the country according to the current rankings.
Looking at the last nine national champions, all nine have had a rating under 100, and eight out of those nine ranked in the top 25 in adjusted defensive efficiency.
The main reason why defense is so important is because defense is easier executed than offense. It’s easy for a team to show up cold and the shots just don’t fall on offense; there are plenty of variables that go into having a good game offensively. On defense, though, these variables often don’t exist, depending on the matchup of course.
As of March 9, Texas Tech, San Diego State, Tennessee, VCU, LSU, Oklahoma State, Gonzaga, Auburn, Saint Mary’s and Iowa State made up the top 10 in this defensive metric. All but Iowa State have a rating under 90 and are considered elite defensive teams. Elite defenses give all these teams a shot to make a run, especially looking at teams like Texas Tech, Tennessee, LSU, Gonzaga, Auburn and Saint Mary’s, who are all projected to be top-five seeds.
When looking at the higher seeds to pick for a Final Four or National Championship run, it would be smart to take defensive statistics into account. Even when looking at possible Cinderella teams, defensive metrics like adjusted defensive efficiency are a good way to see which teams might surprise fans in a tournament scenario.
The question on Baton Rouge’s mind, though, is how LSU stacks up in these metrics. With LSU ranking fifth in the nation for adjusted defensive efficiency at 88.2 points allowed per 100 possessions, its elite defensive ranking sticks out as its strongest feature. The way the Tigers press and force turnovers makes them a tough team to strategize against in a short amount of time.
LSU is far from the most talented team in the tournament, but its defense’s ability to wreak havoc can cause nightmares for even the strongest of teams. The VCU Rams employed this strategy, to its success, during the 2011 NCAA Tournament, where the team became known for its famous “havoc” defense that trapped teams and forced turnovers to disrupt offenses.
The Rams didn’t have the NBA talent that many of the teams they faced in the tournament had, but their unpredictable, high-pressure style of play allowed them to fight their way to the Final Four anyway.
LSU’s similarities to VCU’s defensive strategy is no coincidence 一 the assistant coach at the time, known for being the mind behind that “havoc” defense, was none other than current LSU Head Coach Will Wade.
Despite having a team that is often inefficient on offense, Wade finally has a team in LSU that is able to play his style on the other end of the court, which has resulted in the Tigers having an elite defensive rating, a No. 1 ranking in the country in total steals and a second in steals per game.
Picking LSU to make a deep run is by no means a foolproof formula, however. The Tigers have been inefficient on offense for stretches this season, and turnovers have plagued them at times. If LSU matches up against a team that shoots and protects the ball well, the Tigers could be in a real dogfight going toe-to-toe with a team in the half court.
That brings up the biggest variable in tournament play: matchups. The phrase “styles make fights” is often used in combat sports, though it’s no different in basketball. With the bracket not released yet, there’s no way to go in-depth about specific matchups, but paying attention to each team’s play style and how they offset each other can make a world of difference.
For LSU, the positive is that the variable of matchups will work in its favor more often than not. LSU plays with such an unpredictable (and sometimes strange) play style that it is difficult for most teams to match up well against. In a setting like the NCAA Tournament, where it seems like nothing makes sense at times, an erratic playstyle like theirs often creates the best Cinderella stories.
