Three Best Teams

Michigan State

There are more talented teams in this tournament than Michigan State. There are more accomplished teams and more polished teams too. Despite all of that, Sparty might be the best team in the land. Not only that, they might be the best built for a tournament run.

Michigan State doesn’t rely solely on one player or one system. The Spartans seem to have an answer for anything thrown their way. We have not seen them handle anything close to a back-to-back of Duke and Kansas this season. Michigan State coasted through a relatively easy Big Ten schedule and a very pedestrian non-conference slate. The Spartans played the other tournament teams in the Big Ten only once each. They beat Purdue at home, lost to Michigan at home, and lost at Ohio State. In November, they split with Duke and North Carolina.

The roster to win the entire tournament is there. We just haven’t seen it yet.

Duke

Since switching to a zone defense, the Blue Devils have been excellent on that end of the floor statistically. Anecdotally, it is a sloppy zone that good teams have been able to attack. In the NCAA Tournament, a team unprepared for a zone might be thrown off and destroyed by it.

Against say, I don’t know, one of the best coaches in the sport with at least four days to prep his team for that zone, it would be less effective. Am I talking about the possibility of Tom Izzo and a Michigan State team that’s seemingly built to conquer a zone defense playing Duke in the Sweet Sixteen?

Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Seriously, Michigan State’s pod in Detroit this weekend in no joke.

Kansas

The Jayhawks are a very vulnerable top seed. Kansas is flawed this season and we’ve seen it all year. I profiled what was wrong with the Jayhawks back on January 4 and most of that still holds true. This section stands out:

Kansas ranks dead last in the nation in free throw rate. The Jayhawks attempt just one free throw for every five field goals they hoist. Compare that to Arizona State, who beat Kansas this season, which shoots half as many free throws as field goals. In fact, Kansas also ranks dead last nationally in the percentage of points coming from the charity stripe and just 10.9 percent.

Both of those statistics have upticked a tad and Kansas is no longer ranked last in either, but the Jayhawks are in the bottom 15 of both free throw rate and percentage of points coming from the foul line.

They simply can’t reach the Final Four like that. As good as the shooters on Kansas may be, no team can stay that hot for that long.

Three Best Players

Miles Bridges, Michigan State

Should Miles Bridges be playing power forward for a team without two really good big men next to him? Yes, he should.

Is he still averaging 16.9 points and 6.9 rebounds per game while playing out of position? He sure is.

Lastly, the suggestion that Bridges should be playing a different position implies another player should also be moved, either to a new position or to the bench. Benching Nick Ward or Jaren Jackson would do Tom Izzo and the Spartans no good.

Anyway, Miles Bridges is really good.

Devonte’ Graham, Kansas

When Frank Mason III won National Player of the Year last year and then graduated, most people would have smartly assumed there’d be a drop-off at the point guard position in Lawrence. It was almost guaranteed to happen.

And then Devonte’ Graham averaged 17.5 points and 7.5 assists per game while shooting 42 percent from 3-point range and won Big XII Player of the Year unanimously and is considered by many to the the favorite for the national awards as well. Somehow, Kansas didn’t miss a beat.

Now Graham has a tall task ahead. He needs to lead a team full of shooters with little size at all through a gauntlet of a region to the Final Four. Given what we’ve seen from Devonte’ Graham, it might not be crazy to expect him to pull that off.

Marvin Bagley III, Duke

Marvin Bagley is so physically gifted with size, length, speed, skill, and springiness that the only way for him to fail in college basketball would be a lack of effort or misguided decision making. The biggest decision he made was playing for one of the greatest coaches of all-time, surrounded by sky high levels of talent. Based on that choice alone, he checks that box.

As for his motor, it’s been firing all season. Despite being incredibly gifted, Bagley outworks his defender on a nightly basis. He fights for rebounds. He gives second effort. Maybe it ties back into the decision to go to Duke and play for Coach K, but Bagley hasn’t produced big numbers this season by skating by on his talent. He hasn’t just been good in a vacuum as an NBA prospect. He’s dominated college basketball because he gives his all. To any team standing between Duke and a national title, that’s terrifying.

(I promise, I’ll talk about some of the 13 other teams in the region now)

Three Best Games

Rhode Island (7) vs Oklahoma (10), Thursday 12:15 PM

Oklahoma avoiding the First Four, in favor of the first televised game of the round of 64, certainly feels fishy. Yet here we stand with team that has not won a game outside of Norman, Oklahoma in the calendar year of 2018. Hint: this game will not be played in Norman.

At the same time, we have Trae Young in the NCAA Tournament and that’s just fine by me. He might shoot the ball 40 times, the Sooners might lose by 25, and I don’t care. This is going to be fun.

Kansas (1) vs Penn (16), Thursday 2:00 PM ET

So….people are talking about this game. I think it started when Ken Pomeroy’s formula gave Penn an 11 percent chance at winning this game.

ELEVEN.

But people started whispering, so let’s just say some things at full volume. Kansas shoots too many threes and doesn’t look for other options on the offensive end. Penn allowed the 2nd lowest 3-point shooting percentage in the entire country. Stare at those words long enough and you’re ready to think a little crazy here.

Here’s why it doesn’t happen: Penn stops other teams from making threes. Good luck stopping Kansas. Devonte’ Graham and Svi Mykhialiuk shot a combined 472 threes and made 43 percent of them. Godspeed, Quakers.

Auburn (4) vs College of Charleston (13), Friday 7:27 PM ET

If there weren’t a shot clock, we probably wouldn’t see either of these teams hit 30 points in this game. To be fair, Auburn plays a very fast pace. The Tigers go up and down at the 21st quickest tempo in Division I.

College of Charleston, on the other hand, would happily hold the ball if they could. The Cougars played the 324th fastest pace in college basketball this season. It worked, with CoC committing the fourth fewest turnovers in the country.

Buckle in for a clash of styles here. Whoever can control the pace of the game wins it.

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Shane McNichol is the founder, editor, and senior writer at PalestraBack.com. He has also contributed to ESPN.com, Rush The Court, SALTMoney.org, Larry Brown Sports, and USA Today Sports Weekly. Follow him on Twitter @OnTheShaneTrain.