The 2024 March Madness champion is (almost definitely!) one of these 9 NCAA men's teams

There are two simple things that every team needs in order to win a national championship in college basketball.

March Madness is chaos and predictions are challenging, but all of the teams that have cut down the nets at the end of the tournament typically have these two things in common: They’re really good on offense and they’re really good on defense.

Before the tournament, according to KenPom ratings, the average winner of the tournament has ranked 8.9 in adjusted offensive efficiency and 16.7 in adjusted defensive efficiency.

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Further: Among all title winners dating back to 2001, per KenPom, all but one team (the 2014 UConn Huskies) had a top-25 adjusted offensive efficiency heading into the tournament. Additionally, all but one (the 2021 Baylor Baylors) that have won the tourney have ranked inside the top 40 in adjusted defensive efficiency.

That concept isn’t particularly complicated or hard to understand, and it works. In fact, when we used a very similar approach last season, we correctly focused on UConn as one of the potential winners of the tournament.

So why don’t we use history to apply these lessons to the upcoming tournament? These are the only teams that meet the aforementioned qualifications:

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