Mid-Season March Madness 2022 Championship Contenders

The Bracket Wizard has created a section on the blog dedicated to choosing your champion. In this section, criteria is highlighted that history has shown is crucial for a team to become a March Madness champion. Here is that criteria below from The Bracket Wizard blog, along with historical stats that show why this criteria is crucial for champions to possess:

The following criteria should be utilized when picking your champion:

1. Have a projected seed of 1-3 in Lunardi’s Bracketology. 75% of the last 20 final four teams had a 1-3 seed in tournament​

2. **In a power 6 conference? Power 6 include: ACC, Big 10, Big East, Big 12, SEC, Pac 12. Over the last 20 years, EVERY champion has been from a Power 6 conference! **Gonzaga is the outlier here. In recent years, Gonzaga has played the hardest non-conference schedule in the nation and have found a way to consistently go deep into the tournament. Unless something changes, consider Gonzaga immune to this criteria

3. Top 25 Offense EFF rank on KenPom? - In the last 10 years, every national champion has ranked in the Top 25 in Offense Eff​

4. **Top 25 Defense EFF rank on KenPom? - In the last 10 years, every national champion has ranked in the Top 20 in Defense Eff​

5. **Pre-Season Top 25 rank in AP Poll?- In the past 18 seasons, only 3 teams have won the championship who were not in the Preseason Top 25 ​

6. **Top 25 Margin of Victory in the Country? Every national champion over the last 10 years has ranked inside the Top 15 of Margin of Victory​

What about this year? The Bracket Wizard is here to help you identify which college basketball teams in nation meet the above criteria this year. According to our criteria, the following teams can be considered championship contenders at this point in the season:

Baylor

Gonzaga

Duke

UCLA

Auburn

Villanova

Illinois

All of these teams currently meet ALL of the above criteria that The Bracket Wizard has identified as being crucial for teams to possess in order to win the championship. Interestingly, each of these teams represents one of the six power six conferences. As this posts mentions, Gonzaga seems to be immune to the power six conference criteria. The reason for this is that they typically play the hardest non-conference schedule in the nation annually. Maybe The Bracket Wizard is on to something here with each power six conference being represented in the championship conversation, but probably not. Rarely are there THIS many teams still in the conversation at the mid-point of the season. Parity may ring true this year, and there may be several teams with a fighting chance at winning it all. Usually there is a clear favorite or a couple teams favored at this point, not SEVEN! Should make for an interesting tournament folks. The Bracket Wizard believes the championship of the 2022 March Madness tournament will be one of the teams listed above.