The Peach Basket: The Terps Enter the Picture - Off Tackle Empire

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A few weeks out, who’s in?

TLDR: In 2022, I was infinitely bored because I broken my collarbone in an unfortunate but successful attempt to conduct blood magic on behalf of the Illinois basketball team. And hey, we won the B1G that year!

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As I convalesced, my hometown buddy/OTE commenter Verdauga and I compiled pre-tournament KenPom data dating back to 2007. We wanted to find the ghost in the machine, the key to the lock, the true predictor of March Madness success. Like a glowing symbol in the sky, there it was:

“A March Madness champion must have a pre-Tournament top-20 KenPom-ranked offense AND a combined offense and defensive rank of 40 or less. O-20 or below, O+D=40 or fewer.”

To win a title, you need an elite offense first and foremost, but also secondarily need a damn good defense. Great defense alone won’t win it all, nor will phenomenal offenses with a sieve on the other end. Year to year, about 4-8 teams fall into that category, which we call the Peach Basket. If you’re in the Peach Basket before the tourney, you have a (remarkably predictive) shot to win it all.

Of the 123 teams that made the pre-tournament Peach Basket, over half made the Elite 8. Nearly 1/3rd made the Final Four. And over 10% won the whole damn thing.

There have been three and only three years in which the NCAA champ was not in the Peach Basket pre-tournament: 2014 UConn, 2015 Duke, and 2021 Baylor. Every other year in our data set (thank you KenPom!), the metric held up its end of the bargain.

So, who’s there as of Tuesday, February 25, 2025? And what can the sportsbooks tell us about the best value?

Seven teams remain as we head into the final stretch, with Maryland leading the charge for the Bee One Gee. Other teams just outside of the metric: Tennessee’s offense isn’t good enough, Bama’s defense sucks, Iowa State is living just outside the line, as is Wisconsin and Michigan State. (My beloved Illinois took a ... I don’t know. I choose to imagine that the Duke game was a fever dream.)

What do you, the OTE readership, say? Who among this group takes the title? Can someone from outside the Basket pull off a surprise?

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