Breaking the Basketball Bracket: A Guide to the South Region, II

The NCAA’s South region offers several potential upsets. But because of a key injury, fans need may not know until tip-off–long after the brackets have been filled out–who to pick.

Ohio State is led by three upper-classmen guards who are likely to go to the NBA, and that gives them the edge for the upset against Syracuse in the second game despite the tough venue of Buffalo. If Joel Embiid is not on the court, New Mexico has a chance at a real shocker over Kansas in the second round. The Lobos have two of the top 30 players in the country including a senior guard.

Home Advantage: Kansas is one of the toughest decisions in the tournament because they could lose to New Mexico if Embiid is not playing. But if he is 100% they can certainly beat Florida in the Elite 8 game played in Memphis. It’s just a few hours closer to Kansas campus, but the Jayhawks would likely have a big edge in the stands.

The following are the Value Add Rankings for each player in the bottom half of the South Region, their team’s seed, height, year in school and which players are NBA prospects (all caps) as well as which of the other players are guards (small “g”). The teams are Dayton (11-seed), Eastern Kentucky (15), Kansas (2), New Mexico (7), Ohio St. (6), Stanford (10), Syracuse (3) and Western Michigan (14).

The items listed for the top few players on each team should be the biggest considerations along with injured players, the home advantage, and which team enters the tournament hot (which we define as improving the most at www.kenpom.com over the past month of the season). The system is a precise measurement of how many points a player adds to his team’s score per game over the player who takes his place. Every score (three-pointer, two-pointer or foul shot), assist, offensive rebound, foul drawn, etc. helps a team score while every turnover and missed shot costs the team points. On defense, every steal, blocked shot, defensive rebound, turnover forced, and opponent’s missed shot takes points off the board while every basket or offensive rebound allowed adds to the opponent’s score. The player’s offensive and defensive combination calculates together with the help of the stats at www.kenpom.com. How many points a player adds to his team’s score appears in the offensive category (shown as “off” in the table below), and his overall impact on points once defense is factored appears as “Total” on the table.