Our Final 4 Short List has some major changes

Our ‘Green List’ has gotten smaller, and our ‘Yellow List’ has had some names drop off and a perennial power jump back on. Let’s see who is peaking at the right time and who isn’t.

Georgetown, West Virginia, BYU, and UConn have fallen off our Final 4 short list, which isn’t surprising. The Huskies have disappointed time and time again as of late. They haven’t been the same team since they beat Villanova in mid-January. BYU and Georgetown you can attribute to suspensions and injuries, respectively. West Virginia has not has the bench strength, literally and figuratively , to be part of the equation this season.

Our Green List consists of Ohio State, Kansas, Duke, Texas, and Syracuse. Duke is the weakest team on the Green List due to three point dependence, but they are on the right side of the line for now. Syracuse is the weakest team in terms of net points per possession.

Kentucky is the strongest team on our ‘Yellow List’ as our doubts persist as they dance from one side to the other of our road performance and three point dependence thresholds. Florida is the new team on our ‘Yellow List’.

Remember, we feel 3 teams will come from our ‘Green List’ and one team will come from our ‘Yellow List’ based on tracking this over the past 12 years. We have one more week for this to change, so let’s see what happens.

Final 4 Short List as of February 20^th

Tags: North Carolina, Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, Final 4, NCAA Tournament, Bracketology, Bracket Analysis

Here is a look at our current Final 4 short list. I have expanded the list slightly and will explain more below.

Villanova has fallen dramatically, but when you lose to Rutgers and play DePaul, that stuff will happen. Their last four games should allow them to get back near the top of the list.

Six teams have all the attributes for a likely Final 4 appearance. Ohio State, Texas, Kansas, Georgetown, Syracuse, and Kentucky all show they have what it takes. We are slightly worried about Kentucky as they really rely heavily on the three and they get so many points from there playing at home, it really makes you wonder. The other teams have had some hiccups, but that will happen during the season.

Duke’s point distribution is improving and they could be on the Green List by next week. Wisconsin is the only other team that can move from yellow to green at this point.

The orange list was created because I am getting several inquiries about “What about ______?”. If you are not on the orange list, you have absolutely no shot. The orange list provides a margin of error that casts the widest net of outcomes. If a team makes the Final 4 and isn’t on this list it will be unprecedented based on our filters.

Just to give you an idea of what this list looked like last year, I have reproduced our list going into Selection Sunday.

Two points of interest: (1) Only one team on this list lost in the first round, and (2) only 5 of these teams lost to a team not listed here.