NCAA Tournament 2019: 5 top seeds that won’t win the national championship

High seeds have the best chance to win the NCAA Tournament, but for a few in March Madness, that is not the case. These top seeds will NOT win the national title.

Leaving March Madness with a national championship is harder than winning a title in any other sport. A team can be dominant all season long and fall flat on their face early in the NCAA tournament, eliminating four months’ worth of work in 40 minutes.

Just ask Virginia.

There is no margin for error in the NCAA Tournament’s win-and-advance model, making it vitally important that a team is versatile and can win in any game scenario.

Since 2002, every national champion sans the 2014 UConn team has ranked in the top 22 nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency AND in the top 39 in adjusted defensive efficiency. No matter how good a team has looked in the regular season, they have fallen short (usually early) if they haven’t met that criteria.

Traditionally, there are three factors that indicate tournament success among teams that fall in those ranges – guard play, rebounding, and defense. All three of those traits travel and allow a team to control the game more consistently than a great jump shooting team.

All of this year’s top seeds have, on paper, the easiest paths to the Final Four and the national championship game, but not all of them have the ability to take advantage.

Here are five top-three seeds that are destined to fall short of their national championship dreams and why you shouldn’t pick them in your bracket.