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NCAA Tournament Survivor Guide For Round 1 (Friday)

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In yesterday’s column, we discussed the differences between an NCAA tournament survivor pool and a more traditional NFL survivor pool. Many of the strategies are different, and contestants should be aware of all rules and nuances before entering. An NCAA survivor pool takes much more future planning, whereas one can win an NFL survivor pool by taking a week-to-week approach.

Though no games have officially been played yet, we are giving you our planning advice well before the first set of games so you can plan accordingly. And if you do not feel like waiting until the First Four games conclude to make your selections, you should be able to find great picks from the remaining 12 games.

Throughout the tournament, one has to make eight picks: two from the First Round (one for each day played), two from the Second Round (one for each day played), and one from the Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, and National Championship.

Each round, we will provide our analysis broken down by the following categories: Best Picks, Favorites on Upset Alert, and Teams That Should be Saved for Later Use.

Here is a list of odds for all the favorites to win their Round 1 matchups on Friday (odds courtesy of BettingPros consensus).

Check out all of our coverage for the 2023 NCAA Tournament >>

Best Picks

Purdue (-10000), Xavier (-750), Creighton (-225), Kentucky (-175)

It may seem blasphemous to pick a No. 1 seed in the first round of an NCAA Tournament survivor pool, but that is how little faith we have in the Purdue Boilermakers. Granted, no player in the country can stop Wooden Award lock Zach Edey one-on-one, but waiting in the Sweet 16 is a potential opponent who can do a solid job defensively on him. Duke has two 7-footers, Dereck Lively and Kyle Filipowski, who can make life difficult for Edey. In addition, those two teams would meet at Madison Square Garden in New York City if they advance that far, which would feel like a home game for the Blue Devils. Lastly, we do not advise backing teams with two freshman guards in their starting lineup, as we prefer our national title contenders to have experienced backcourts. We do not believe the Boilermakers are subject to the second No. 1 vs. No. 16 seed upset in tournament history, but we are hard-pressed to find a matchup where we would be comfortable using them beyond this round.

The Xavier Musketeers showed their Jekyll and Hyde tendencies on consecutive nights at the Big East Tournament, beating Creighton by 22 and losing to Marquette by 14 in a game they trailed by 27 at one point. Xavier drew an athletic Kennesaw State team that could hang with the Musketeers for a while. Still, Xavier should dominate the defensive glass even without leading rebounder Zach Freemantle, as the Owls rank 217th in the country in offensive rebounding percentage. In addition, we expect the Musketeers to light it up from 3-point range, as they rank third nationally in 3-point shooting percentage (39.5%) and face an Owls defense that ranked tenth in their conference in defending the perimeter (allowed 36% from beyond the arc).

Many were shocked when the Creighton Bluejays’ first-round opponent, NC State, made the tournament field and avoided a First Four game to boot. The Bluejays are a nightmare matchup for the Wolfpack, as NC State relied on pressure all year to force turnovers at the ACC’s third-highest rate in league play. However, Creighton deploys essentially a two-point guard lineup with Ryan Nembhard and Trey Alexander, and they are a big reason the Bluejays rank second among all D-I teams in press offense, per Synergy. And since the Bluejays got center Ryan Kalkbrenner from an early-season illness in late December, they went 15-6 to end the season and beat three tournament teams in that span.

For those that want to roll the dice a little with their opening-round survivor pick, you could do much worse than the Kentucky Wildcats. Providence is one of two NCAA Tournament teams that enters on a three-game losing streak, and its two home losses to end the regular season after going 15-0 at home to start the season suggests there are bigger issues at hand with the Friars. Kentucky is still likely to be without point guard Sahvir Wheeler as he has missed the team’s last nine games. Still, Cason Wallace was able to gut out 37 minutes in the team’s SEC Tournament game against Vanderbilt after missing the regular season finale, which bodes well for the Wildcats’ backcourt depth. Four of Kentucky’s last five wins are against NCAA Tournament teams, and it is a more battle-tested bunch than Providence.

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Favorites on Upset Alert

Baylor (-625), Kansas State (-375), Indiana (-190), Saint Mary’s (-186), Miami (-140), Memphis (-135), Michigan State (-130), TCU (-250), Iowa State (-186)

Teams That Should be Saved for Later Use

Gonzaga (-1600), Marquette (-700), UConn (-435)

Gonzaga, Marquette, and UConn are all Elite 8 contenders, at the very least. So while no team from this list is in danger of a first-round upset, keep them handy for the later rounds when they are still prohibitive favorites while fewer teams are available to choose from.

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Mike Spector is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeSpector01.

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