March Madness 8 - Final and Most Important, the Best Teams Being Put on the Court

While we've broken down seven factors that can give a team a chance for an upset in March Madness, we finish with by far the most important factor - who is the best team on the court in each game?

The best team doesn't always win, but they win two-thirds of the team.

If course the first place people should go as a starting point is www.kenpom.com, who revolutionized analytics. However, I do suggest people also go to www.valueaddbasketball.com for one reason - it breaks the ratings down to each player on a team so that you know how much an injured player will hurt them or who much better their rating would be with a player who has returned.

The following rankings for all teams who will (or in a few cases might) make the tournament are based on the following:

1. VA5 indicates the sum of the player rankings at www.valueaddbasketball.com - which is similar to www.kenpom.com but represent more than a point (e.g. Gonzaga is a 51.97 here and a 32.97) mainly because our math indicates players on good teams would be even more valuable if the could play more.

2. Then the big difference is the "healthy" column. If that number is 0 then there is no adjustment because there have been no major injuries. However, if that number is a positive number then it is added to the first number because it indicates the team's ranking is actually higher when a player who misses some games is back. However, a negative number means the team is missing a key player or players so is actually not as good as their www.kenpom.com or raw www.valueaddkbasketball.com ranking would indicate.

The two really tough variables are from the Big Ten. Both Illinois and Ohio State have key players that might or might not be ready to play in the tournament, so look at the notes on them in particular and move them up or down several spots based on monitoring those key injuries at this site.

The following are the most important numbers if you only read one of these blogs.

Rnk	Team	VA 5	Healthy?	Team on Court	Notes on injuries, or players who were out
1	Gonzaga	51.97	0	51.97
2	UCLA	47.33	2.51	49.84	Despite their loss to Arizona in the Pac-12 title game, the fact that Jaylen Clark, Cody Riley and Johnny Juzang all appear to be healthy pushes them to the No. 2 team on the court.
3	Arizona	46.94	0	46.94
4	Texas Tech	43	2.22	45.22	With Kevin McCullar and Terrence Shannon back, Texas Tech is loaded again.
5	Houston	46.18	-1.3	44.88	The drop of Houston assumes Marcus Sasser is not coming back.
6	Kentucky	44.56	0	44.56
7	Kansas	43.21	0	43.21
8	Villanova	42.99	0	42.99
9	Duke	42.91	0	42.91
10	Tennessee	43.51	-1.32	42.19	As great as they have been, they are hurt by Olivier Nkamhoua being out.
11	Purdue	41.33	0	41.33
12	Auburn	40.95	0	40.95
13	Iowa	40.34	0	40.34
14	Connecticut	38.05	0.76	38.81
15	Loyola Chicago	37.65	0.95	38.6
16	Baylor	44.85	-6.69	38.16	The defending champs are the most hurt, with both Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua and LJ Cryer out.
17	Saint Mary's	38.01	0	38.01
18	Illinois	38.82	-1.3	37.52	if Jacob Grandison's shoulder is ok and he plays, this improves by 2.3, if not drop it by 2.3 - so one of two big question marks.
19	Arkansas	36.64	0	36.64
20	San Francisco	36.62	0	36.62
21	Alabama	36.49	0	36.49
22	San Diego St.	36.36	0	36.36
23	Michigan	35.84	0	35.84
24	Texas	37.31	-1.68	35.63	This drop assumes Tre Mitchell does not return - if he does they go back up to a 37.31.
25	LSU	35.53	0	35.53
26	Murray St.	35.42	0	35.42
27	North Carolina	36.43	-1.03	35.4	No word on Dawson Garcia, so assuming he is out for the season.
28	Memphis	32.86	1.84	34.7	As disappointing as Memphis has been with all that talent, if they win the American tomorrow with Jalen Duren and DeAndre Williams playing, they could be a scary first round game.
29	Davidson	32.55	0.91	33.46
30	Oklahoma	33.44	0	33.44
31	Wisconsin	33.29	0	33.29
32	Virginia Tech	33.29	0	33.29
33	Boise St.	33.05	0	33.05
34	Wake Forest	31.97	0.67	32.64
35	Colorado St.	32.47	0	32.47
36	Michigan St.	32.38	0	32.38
37	TCU	32.02	0	32.02
38	Vermont	30.89	0.75	31.64
39	Iowa St.	31.31	0	31.31
40	Xavier	31.22	0	31.22
41	Marquette	30.74	0	30.74
42	Indiana	30.69	0	30.69
43	USC	30.64	0	30.64
44	BYU	30.42	0	30.42
45	Providence	29.63	0.67	30.3
46	Seton Hall	32.18	-2.3	29.88	Bryce Aiken's concussion has kept him out for a while, one of the biggest injuries and they would shoot up several spots if he returned.
47	SMU	29.75	0	29.75
48	UAB	30.78	-1.21	29.57
49	Miami FL	29.35	0	29.35
50	Wyoming	29.12	0	29.12
51	Ohio St.	33.15	-4.1	29.05	Key is if Kyle Young and Zed Key are back. If not -8.2 instead of -4.1, but if back take the -4.1 away. They would move all the way up to 33rd if both are back, but drop to 60th if not - so I split the difference here.
52	Richmond	28.82	0	28.82
53	Creighton	29.85	-1.43	28.42	All know Ryan Nembhard's injury hurts, but if Trey Alexander keeps playing well in his place, the inside outside with Ryan Kalkbrenner - who now ranks on the verge of All-American as the 17th best player in the country - can still make them lethal.
54	Chattanooga	27.48	0.75	28.23	Gillespie's only competition for 1st team All-American PG is this Malachi Smith (there is another one at Dayton), and with Silvio De Sousa back they are stronger.
55	Texas A&M	28.17	0	28.17
56	Notre Dame	28.15	0	28.15
57	South Dakota St.	28	0	28
58	Rutgers	27.1	0	27.1
59	New Mexico St.	25.49	0	25.49
60	Princeton	24.08	0	24.08
61	Long Beach St.	22.46	0	22.46
62	Georgia St.	19.79	1.4	21.19	They will be a big underdog, but with one of their two players in the top 10% of all players, Eliel Nsoseme, back they will be a stronger challenge.
63	Montana St.	20.54	0	20.54
64	Saint Peter's	20.26	0	20.26
65	Colgate	19.5	0	19.5
66	Jacksonville St.	18.73	0	18.73
67	Norfolk St.	18.5	0	18.5
68	Bryant	17.1	0.72	17.82	Bryant would have ranked higher if Hall Elisias didn't miss games, but he is back now.
69	Longwood	17.78	0	17.78
70	Yale	17.44	0	17.44
71	Delaware	17.32	0	17.32
72	Cal St. Fullerton	17.21	0	17.21
73	Akron	16.96	0	16.96
74	Wright St.	15.83	0	15.83
75	Texas Southern	10.97	0	10.97
76	Southeastern Louisiana	10.8	0	10.8