The first weekend of March Madness is always about upsets, but when it comes to a Cinderella story in the Big Dance, it takes two to tango. For every major upset, there was a flawed single-digit seed that had a major letdown on the big stage. I’m here to help you identify a few of the most vulnerable teams in the NCAA Tournament and expose their big flaws before Cinderella does.
If you catch Brad Underwood’s Illinois Fighting Illini on the right day, they look Final Four good, but if it’s the wrong day, they’re NIT bad. It’s terrifying to trust that volatile of a team in the NCAA Tournament. Illinois does have a bit of an excuse. Injury and illness swept through Champaign, derailing this group in Big Ten play, but even with this group heading into the March Madness at full strength, I’m wary of how long of a stay it will be.
While you can point to the lack of forced turnovers, or occasional struggles on the offensive boards, the crux of the issue is that this team shoots a ton of threes, and they don’t always go in. The Illini are fifth in three-point attempts per game and 311th in three-point percentage. Kasparas Jakucionis and Tomislav Ivisic are such an interesting backcourt/frontcourt pairing, and the ancillary pieces fit well together, but if Illinois goes cold, as it does far too often, it’ll be packing its bags and heading into the offseason.
Dusty May’s Michigan Wolverines are rolling into March Madness off a Big Ten Tournament title and deserved to be seeded much higher than the five-line, but that doesn’t mean this team is perfect, or even that it’s going to win the first round against UC San Diego. And despite lead-guard Tre Donaldson’s stellar play in Indianapolis last week, the Wolverines have a turnover problem and no solution.
Michigan has a 17.3% turnover rate this season (10th percentile according to CBBanalytics.com) and with a front-court-centric roster built around the twin towers of Danny Wolf and Vlad Goldin, you should be hesitant before sending this team on a deep run through your bracket. This first-round matchup is a particularly scary one for the Wolverines because UCSD has the best turnover margin in the country at +7.2 compared to Michigan’s -2.7 which ranks 342nd. All those extra possessions are good news for the underdogs.
Guards run March and Marquette has one of the best in First-Team All-Big East point guard Kam Jones. However, you can't have nothing in the front court and still expect to see the Sweet 16, and that might be the case for Shaka Smart’s group.
The 6-foot-11 235-pound Ben Gold and 6-foot-8 230-pound freshman Royce Parham account for nearly all of the Golden Eagles' minutes at center, and with two undersized options, they tend to get pushed around by more physical teams. Marquette allows a 30% offensive rebound rate to its opponents and in its regular season finale, gave up 27 second-chance points to St. John’s.
Smart’s group earns extra possessions by forcing turnovers, and I wish you luck if you try to play a chaotic transition game with this time, but if you can slow them down, and protect the ball, you can pound Marquette into submission over 40 minutes.
Do not let the logo fool you, these are not the Kansas Jayhawks you’ve come to know and love. Bill Self’s team has been a disjointed mess for much of the season and suffers from many of the same problems that every Hunter Dickinson team has over his five long years in college basketball. Despite an impressive defensive rating, Dickinson remains a liability on that end of the floor, is hunted in pick-and-rolls, and over the last five games the team is allowing opponents to shoot over 70% at the rim. Offensively he forces the Jayhawks to play an inefficient inside-out style. Yet, he’s easily this team’s best player.
Despite an offseason spending spree, the Jayhawks lack depth, so any up-tempo team can run them out of the gym, and they seemingly have no interest in the two most efficient shots in the sport. Kansas has a third-percentile free throw attempt rate of 24.3% and an 18th-percentile 34.3% three-point attempt rate. Without free throws and threes, Self’s team is relying on a steady diet of Dickinson post-ups, Dajuan Harris floaters, and the occasional Zeke Mayo step-back. That’s just not winning basketball in 2025.
Matt Painter has gone through his fair share of early exits in the NCAA Tournament, but this year could bring another for the longtime head coach of the Purdue Boilermakers. Luckily for him, last year’s run to the National Championship Game bought him enough goodwill for a lifetime in West Lafayette.
The unique thing about this Purdue team is that it is vulnerable for a completely different reason than three years ago when it lost to Farleigh Dickinson as a No. 1 seed. Then, Painter’s freshman backcourt of Braden Smith and Fletcher Loyer were inexperienced and turnover-prone, now, they’re one of the best duos in the entire country. The problem is that they don’t have a 7-foot eraser to cover up for their mistakes on the defensive end of the floor.
Purdue’s offensive rating has only dropped from 122.1 (99th percentile) last year to 119.5 (96th percentile) this year, but defensively, the Boilermakers have fallen off a cliff. Zach Edey blocked 2.2 shots a game last year and held opponents to under 40% on shots in the paint and under 25% of their attempts at the rim (94th percentile).
This season, with seven-foot freshman Daniel Jacobsen out since November and Trey Kaufman-Renn and Caleb Furst anchoring the interior, opponents are attempting over 30% of their shots at the while shooting 70%, and 43% in the paint. Purdue’s defensive rating has fallen from 102.4 (85th percentile) to 109.1 (46th percentile), and Kaufman-Renn leads the team with 0.3 blocks per game.