| You're about to get to know Moe. From cbbnextup's Instagram. |
There's no reason for you to know Moe Odum. The only reason I know him is because the West Coast Conference basketball tournament's games aired two weeks ago in the stretch of time after my wife and I would put the kids to bed every night.
Moe Odum is a 6-foot-1 junior from the Bronx; he spent the last two years at Pacific and is currently the point guard for the Pepperdine Waves. He's good - 4th in Division I this year in assists per game, and he's the Waves' 2nd-leading scorer. But Pepperdine was not a good team this year. Prior to the WCC tournament, they went a nondescript 10-21 and finished 9th out of 11 teams in the WCC standings.
When I tuned in about 3/4ths of the way through their first WCC tournament game against the 8th seeded Portland Pilots, it looked like Moe and the Waves weren't long for the postseason. They trailed by 14 with 12 minutes to go in what had been a game that looked like two teams just playing out the string of their seasons.
And then Moe went supernova.
After a Pepperdine timeout with 12 minutes left, Moe single-handedly tilted the axis of the game completely toward himself. Over the next four minutes, Pepperdine scored on all 7 of its possessions; four of them ended with Moe knocking down 3-pointers. In this stretch, Moe had 14 points, an assist, a steal...and a technical foul for his celebration after the last 3-pointer.
The Waves took the lead at that point. Then, they scored on their next 6 possessions. Moe had the ball on a string the whole time, dishing out four assists in that stretch as Pepperdine built their lead to double digits. His swagger was undeniable. It felt like the two or three points Pepperdine put up on every possession over this stretch was pre-ordained, like they were already on the board as soon as Moe had the ball in his hands.
The Waves outscored Portland 46-19 over the last 12 minutes and won running away. Moe's 2nd half stat line: 26 points, 6 assists, 2 boards, and that technical for an exuberant celebration, which, whatever man.
That exuberance stretched into his post-game interview, which resembled a cross between a pro wrestling promo and the best motivational speech you've ever heard. The whole time, Moe's teammates were posing and dancing and going nuts behind him and the interviewer.
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| The good times persisted in the locker room. From Malibu Times. |
Again, this was a 9-seed beating an 8-seed in a conference tournament game. This has happened many times before.
What happened the next two nights hadn't happened as many times before. Pepperdine went into games against 5-seed Oregon State and 4-seed Santa Clara as double-digit underdogs. Moe went wild in both games, racking up double-doubles in each and helping the Waves erase another 2nd-half double digit deficit against a very good Santa Clara team.
After both games, there was Moe in the post-game interview with a new 60-second high-intensity sermon delivered on the heels of a thrilling climax, with his teammates serving as delirious backup dancers.
And then the Waves crashed into the St. Mary's Gaels - a 7-seed in the big tournament that starts tomorrow - and got blown back out to sea. (Because of the structure of the WCC tournament, it was Pepperdine's 4th game in 4 nights, but regular season league champ St. Mary's was playing just their first, receiving a bye all the way to the conference semifinals.)
You won't see Moe in the NCAA tournament this week. The Portland game wasn't even important enough to merit a non-AI penned recap on ESPN's website - I had to look up the play-by-play just to relive that insanity.
If we're lucky, we'll see a few gargantuan performances like those Moe put up two weeks ago, which helped drag his 10-21 team to the brink of what would have been one of the most improbable NCAA tournament bids of all-time.
But I hope there will be plenty of Moe's moxie, his confidence, his exuberance that clearly rubbed off on his teammates all tournament long. I hope we see others display his sense of rising to meet the moment. Moe's run was a much-needed reminder of how one person can act as a catalyst to get your teammates out of a rut and effect the changes you need to see - the changes you need to make to win.
You're never out of it. What happened yesterday doesn't matter. Welcome, once again, to March Madness.
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First, the annual "I am not an actual doctor" disclaimer. The letter "D" is not found anywhere on my college degree; I simply went to a bunch of different websites over the past 12 or so years and wrote a bunch of things down. I do, however, very much enjoy the annual updating of the Warehouse, my collection of data points from what is now the past13-ish years of NCAA tournaments. Running statistical analyses on this data has uncovered some nuggets of wisdom that may help push you to the top of your bracket pool. Let's dig into what was revealed in this year's model:
1. Who's Everybody Got:
More people are picking Duke to win this year's title than we saw choose UConn last year. And it seemed like a majority of ESPN's analysts and prognosticators had Florida as their pick for this year's champ. Something like 46% of brackets on ESPN have one of those two teams as their winners.
And honestly, they're both great choices this year. They are two of the 3 teams that are truly “elite,” that are ranked in the top 10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency, per the inimitable Ken Pomeroy at kenpom.com. The third "double elite" team is another 1-seed: Houston. The only 1-seed not in the "double elite" club this year is, go figure, the #1 seeded team in the entire tournament: Auburn.
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| POY candidate Johni Broome hopes to "sweep" away the competition this March. From Yardbarker. |
Over the past 12 years, 19 teams have entered the tournament with "double elite" status, and 14 of them have won three or more games in the tournament. Last year's only double elite team - Auburn - was the first one ever to lose in the first round. (And they likely wouldn't have added their names to the "3-win club" anyways - they would have had to play eventual champs and soul destroyers UConn in the Sweet 16).
2. Nailing the Final Four:
So what allows you to leap into the money in your bracket pools? 2 things separate pool contenders from pretenders:
A. You nail as much of the Final Four as you can.
B. You gain a small advantage early on by picking the right upsets.
How do you accomplish A? Often, especially in pools that a lot of people enter, the highest expected value for your Bracket Buck is to pick a team to win the title that falls outside of the top few favorites that most of your competitors will likely pick.
This year we have an EXTREMELY strong crop of 1-seeds; I can see why 2/3rds of all brackets on ESPN have a 1 going all the way. The selection committee did a good job this year of giving the best teams the best seeds. Typically, at least one 1-seed makes the Final Four, but all four 1-seeds have made the Final Four together just once this century so far. So who has the best chance of knocking off these juggernauts?
Typically, you're looking for balanced teams who are among the top ~20 most efficient offenses but still play D well enough to be around top 40 or better in defensive metrics. The teams who best fit this criteria in each quadrant of the bracket are:
SOUTH: 1) Auburn, and that's it. #2 Michigan State and #3 Iowa State both juuuuuust barely miss the top-20 offense criteria (And Iowa State is facing other issues, as I'll note below). Curiously, the 2- through 8-seeds in this quadrant all have better defensive numbers than offensive ones. Another close call in this region? #11 North Carolina, who many thought shouldn't have even made the tournament! After last night's thrashing of San Diego State, UNC has the 19th best offense and 52nd ranked D."Who even INVITED them? Nobody even INVITED them." --Ole Miss on Friday, probably.
From Tar Heel Blog.
EAST: 1) Duke, 2) Alabama, 3) Wisconsin and 4) Arizona all meet the criteria here. Duke has been so dominant this year, though, that I would expect them to be at least 6 or 7-point favorites against any team they might face here.
MIDWEST: 1) Houston, 2) Tennessee...and 8) Gonzaga are the only teams that qualify out of this quadrant (#5 Clemson and #6 Illinois are MUCH closer to hitting the criteria here than #3 Kentucky and #4 Purdue, who both have defensive deficiencies.)
WEST: 1) Florida and 3) Texas Tech are the only two teams who fit the bill here. #2 St. John's is an awesome team, fun to watch, and the #1 team by defensive metrics, but they've gone through some stretches of stagnant offense at times this year.
3. The Lil' Conference Tourney Fun Fact:
I mentioned this last year for the first time: No team has ever won a national championship after losing its first game in their conference tournament.
This actually isn't a problem for any of the 10 teams listed in #2 above. But it should give you extra pause before you advance two particular top-4 seeds - Iowa State and Texas A&M - very far in your brackets this year.
4. Early Upsets:
We’ve talked about just how good those top 4 teams appear to be this year. Now, we’ll mention who might get you the advantage in the early rounds of tourney. Here are the double-digit seeds that my model points to as inordinately strong for their seed line this year; whether or not I picked them to advance, and how far, is entirely match-up dependent:
11) VCU. The seasoned Cinderellas from Richmond, Va., are, along with Gonzaga, one of the most underseeded teams this year - they've got the metrics and record to be a 6- or 7-seed, and they've got one of the toughest defenses to score on in the country.
Drake is also a very good 11-seed; they have an almost entirely different team from the squads who have blown some leads in the tournament the past couple years. Their first-year coach is a multi-time D-II basketball champ, and he brought several players from last year's NW Missouri State championship team to this Drake squad, so they know how to win in the one-and-done format.
North Carolina is also very good for an 11-seed and has a VERY attackable draw in the bottom half of Auburn's region.
12) Tournament debutantes UC San Diego rate as the best 12-seed in my model since...the Middle Tennessee team that beat the Minnesota Gophers in the 1st round in 2017. Their star player is a Kiwi! New Zealand's own Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones puts up 15-8-8 stat lines like they're, uh, actually easy to do. But they're not.
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| Don't ask him to put another shrimp on the barbie - he's from the other one. From bvmsports.com. |
Colorado State is also red-hot, features an NBA prospect in Nique Clifford, and they're playing the worst 5-seed in the first round - a team dealing with a significant injury issue right now, too.
13) High Point and Yale are both good enough to merit better seeds in a year when fewer favorites won their conference tournaments. Yale is the team that caused that 1st-round upset of Auburn last year that I mentioned earlier.
Grand Canyon are also above average and won a game in the tournament last year (and are arguably better this year), but they're also facing my model's best 4-seed in Maryland.
14) Lipscomb and Troy are frisky compared to previous 14-seeds. They're also both facing 3-seeds who are both dealing with injuries to their point guards who are their main distributors and best defenders.
15) Don't pick a 15 this year.
5. Extremely skewed profiles:
Usually, we'll see around 5-6 teams in the field that are heavily skewed great O/mediocre D, or vice versa (top-40 efficiency in one, close to or sub-100 efficiency in the other). We're right around that number this year, and one of the five teams who fit this description (San Diego State) already lost.
These teams are worth noting because they usually don't make deep runs - in fact, they average only one win per team, and more than half of them don't win a game at all. This list includes an Alabama team that defied the odds and made the Final Four last year. But it also includes last year's 3-seed Kentucky - who were shocked by 14-seed Oakland in round 1 - last year's Florida Atlantic, who lost to Northwestern in their first game, and a 2023 3-seeded Baylor who only won one game before losing.
Don't pick any of these teams to win the whole kit n' caboodle: Only four of the 61 teams who fit this description have made the Final Four in the past 12 years, and none have made the National Championship game.
The teams that skew toward good O/bad D this year are: the frickin' 2-time defending champs, UConn (8-seed), Utah State (10), and High Point (13).
The bad O/good D teams? San Diego State (we hardly knew ye) and New Mexico (10).
6. Floor Generals:
Stand at attention for one of my favorite stats to bring up year after year! If you've got a steady presence as your point guard/primary ball handler, your team may be in for a longer stay at the tourney.
Over the past 12 years, if your team has a "floor general" who averages at least 3.8 assists per game (it doesn't necessarily have to be a traditional point guard - Duke's this year is national player of the year candidate and 6-foot-9 Cooper Flagg!), you win about a half-game more than teams who don't. 38 of the past 48 Final Four teams have had a floor general toting the rock up the court. So having a capable point guard helps both the mid-level seeds get a win or 2, and it helps the top teams get closer to tasting glory.
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| Here's Cooper Flagg, likely about to pass the ball to, uh, the inside part of the rim. From WMTW. |
I usually bring this up to pinpoint which teams lack this resource as candidates for early exits, because often, most of the top seeds have someone who fits this criteria. But this year's pack of notable floor general-less teams includes a couple teams that are sort-of-on, sort-of-off the list because their point guards are questionable for the start of the tournament.
This year's floor general-less teams are: Auburn (Again! Their guard play led to their demise last year and it's still kind of a problem this year, even though they're the top overall seed!), Iowa State (due to injury), Wisconsin, Kentucky (maybe? Injury concern here), Arizona (although their main ball handler, Caleb Love, has been playing college ball since I think the mid-1990s at this point), Oregon, Clemson, Ole Miss, Missouri, UCLA, Mississippi State, Georgia, Texas, and UC San Diego (I wanted to give Aniwaniwa and his 3.7 assists per game a pass, but I can't lie to my adoring public!)
The late-season injury/left-the-team bug is often a difficult thing to account for in your bracket picking. When players go down in the last couple weeks of the season, that's often too late for the advanced analytics fully “price in” these absences or adjust for their potential effect on their teams' journeys through the tournament.
These are worth knowing about and monitoring, as some of the players on this list are key contributors for their teams, and their absences could tip the scales in favor of their opponents if these players either aren’t on their teams’ rosters or can't get cleared in time for their tip-offs. Here's a list of the injuries and other departures you should know about this year, and keep in mind: injuries to point guards and big men often hurt the most in March. (Number denotes team's seed)
1) Duke – Cooper Flagg (national player of the year candidate, 6-foot-9 do-everything guy) ON THE PROBABLE SIDE OF QUESTIONABLE for 1st weekend after turning an ankle in his conference tournament.
1) Houston – J'Wan Roberts (senior forward, great rim protector, 11ppg/6rpg) QUESTIONABLE for first round with an ankle injury.
2) Alabama – Grant Nelson (Starting big man, key member of their Final Four run last year, 12ppg/8rpg) QUESTIONABLE, left their SEC semifinal game against Florida with left leg injury and didn't return.
3) Iowa State – Keshon Gilbert (starting senior point guard, 13ppg/4apg) OUT for tournament with a groin injury.
3) Texas Tech – Chance McMillan (starting senior combo guard, 14ppg/4rpg) and Darrion Williams (junior wing and starter, 14 ppg/5rpg/3.7apg) didn't play late in TTU's Big XII tournament run and are both considered GAME-TIME DECISIONS for 1st round tournament game against UNC Wilmington.
3) Kentucky – Lamont Butler (starting senior point guard and best defender, 11ppg/4.3apg) ON THE PROBABLE SIDE OF QUESTIONABLE for their 1st round game vs Troy.
5) Michigan – Roddy Gayle Jr. (starting wing, 10ppg/3rpg) QUESTIONABLE for round 1, left the Big Ten championship game with a hamstring issue.
5) Memphis – Tyrese Hunter (Senior starting point guard, 14ppg/4rpg/3.4apg) ON THE DOUBTFUL SIDE OF QUESTIONABLE for their 1st round game vs Colorado State. Was on crutches and in a walking boot during his team's conference final on Sunday.
9) Oklahoma – Sam Godwin (starting senior big man, 6ppg/6rpg) QUESTIONABLE for 1st round game vs. UConn, has been out with knee issue their last 3 1/2 games.
10) Arkansas - Boogie Fland (freshman sensation point guard, 16ppg/5.7apg) hasn't played since January 18 because of a hand injury, but is planning to COME OFF THE BENCH in round 1 game vs Kansas.
| PICTURED: Boogie Fland in more injured times. From Getty Images. |
8. The Luckiest Boys in School:
Ken Pomeroy tracks a stat he calls "Luck," which basically encompasses teams had the ball bounce their way, whether they made a big shot or a big stop in really close games more often than not, or if they couldn't quite get over the hump in a lot of their 1- or 2-possession games.
For our purposes, the team dubbed the "luckiest of the tournament" has lost in the 1st round in 18 of the last 21 tournaments.
Which is horrible news for 14-seeded Montana! They're the luckiest team in the country this year, but apparently odds are that won't carry over into their 1st-round matchup with Bucky Badger.
Memphis and Utah State were both ranked in the top-25 luckiest teams, which seems worthwhile to note since St. Patrick's Day was less than 48 hours ago.
9. Round 1 Best Bets:
Some people like to bet on sports, and some don't. And that's fine! Sometimes I bet on sports, and sometimes I do other things!
If you're wondering which teams I might place a few buckaroos on in the first couple days of the tournament, well, get in line! Who WOULDN'T take the advice of a guy who has gone a RED HOT, uh, 13-11 on these picks combined over the last three years? Pure profit, baby! Eh, these are just for fun, but these are the bets I would make if you were so inclined.
THURSDAY
Louisville -2.5 vs Creighton
Houston -29 vs SIU Edwardsville
Drake +6 vs Missouri
Yale +7.5 vs Texas A&M
UC San Diego +2.5 vs Michigan
FRIDAY
Troy +11.5 vs Kentucky
Oklahoma +5.5 vs. UConn
North Carolina -2 vs Ole Miss
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That's a wrap on the 2025 Tips & Tricks, everyone. Have a great 1st weekend of the tournament, please avoid getting a wedgie at all costs, but if you do get one, tell Ian Eagle and he will properly hype it up for you.
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