Make America FU(N)K Again

Is this thing on? It’s been a minute, I know. Since this exact same post a year ago, to be specific. I’ve just been hanging out, watching society crumble and buying obsolete physical media players so I can listen to albums about fucking the fascism away. Kidding (or not) aside, I hope everyone is aware of the fact that I’ve been writing a women’s hoops newsletter five days a week since last January. While I’d love more paid work, I haven’t felt the need to work for free here since that project launched. It doesn’t help that publishing on this platform on a regular basis already leaves a shitty taste in my mouth, but I don’t think our current situation is particularly conducive to turning down my only offer to get paid to write about sports.

One thing I will do for free, however, because this one is my baby, is run this year’s men’s NCAA Tournament field through the infamous Flagrantly Unscientific Natty Kalculator (FUNK). You most likely know the drill: I’ve got rules, some of which are substantiveish, others of which are very much not, and just about every fucking year, one of the teams I say at the end wins the national championship. Nailed Florida last year. Probably gonna nail it again this year, if only because there’s less and less Madness in March as time goes on. More teams passed the substantive part of the test this year than I can ever remember, but it’s about as chalky a group as you could ask for. The poor stay poor and the rich get rich, nothing ever changes man, ain’t that a bitch.

First things first: the UConn men’s basketball team, part of my Holy Trinity of Hate alongside the Atlanta Braves and Dallas Cowboys, is exempt from all rules, because it is inevitably those motherfuckers who break the rules when it happens. As fate would have it, this rule wasn’t necessary this year, but I will never eliminate UConn again, nor will I leave it to fate. The Huskies are immortal now, baby dolls, they couldn’t die if they tried.

Eliminated — still not UConn womp womp

Alright, now that I’ve covered my ass, it’s time to start swinging the scythe and grim reapering some college hoops seasons. Seeding in the NCAA Tournament turns 47 years old in 2026, and there has yet to be a national champion in all that time that didn’t come into the NCAA Tournament with at least one road/neutral win over a fellow NCAA Tournament team. Seems like a perfectly reasonable expectation that a team that hasn’t done it yet isn’t about to win six straight neutral-site games against NCAA Tournament teams. So we say goodbye to 20 teams, most of them low-seeded autobids who had precious few opportunities to earn such wins, but a couple of exceptions are No. 7 seed Saint Mary’s and No. 9 seed Iowa (also a first-cut elimination in the women’s tournament edition).

Eliminated — Akron, Cal Baptist, Furman, Hawai’i, Howard, Idaho, Iowa, Kennesaw State, Lehigh, McNeese, North Dakota State, Northern Iowa, Penn, Prairie View A&M, Queens, Saint Mary’s, Siena, Tennessee State, UMBC, Wright State

For my next trick, I’ll be shipping out any program without a Final Four appearance. Since March Madness expanded to 64 teams in 1985, only one team has won a national championship in its first Final Four appearance, that team being 1999 UConn (of course). This rule continues to be bad news for Tennessee in particular, as the No. 6 seed Vols have been to the second weekend of the tournament three years in a row and four times in the last six NCAA Tournaments without yet making their first trip to the third weekend. They’re one of 18 teams hitting the road here, as are top NBA prospect AJ Dybantsa and No. 6 seed NYU, among others.

Eliminated — BYU, Clemson, Georgia, High Point, Hofstra, LIU, Miami (OH), Missouri, Nebraska, Saint Louis, South Florida, TCU, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Troy, UCF, Utah State, Vanderbilt

You don’t need to be lucky if you just score every time down the floor, so it comes as no surprise that national champions tend to score efficiently. Every national champion in the KenPom era, save for 2014 UConn, has finished in the top 20 in opponent-adjusted offensive efficiency at KenPom. Allowing some room for the rankings to shift during the tournament, I’ll keep anyone currently in the top 30, but everyone else has to go. Sadly, that means the end of the line for my beloved No. 8 seed Villanova Wildcats, who are 41st in AdjO, but Kevin Willard’s done an excellent job in his first year on the job, go cats. Six other teams join Nova on the way out the door, including three other multi-time national champions.

Eliminated — Kansas, Kentucky, Miami (FL), North Carolina, St. John’s, VCU, Villanova

Last year’s national champion Florida Gators were the 26th out of the last 30 teams to cut down the nets who would go on to have a player drafted in the first round of that year’s NBA draft. All four of the exceptions brought multiple future NBA players back to school, with two of them (2006 Florida and 2016 Villanova) going on to win another national championship with some or all of those players within the next two seasons. Which is to say, national champions have at least one future pro on the roster, and more often than not they have more than one. People increase their stocks quite a bit during the tournament and mock drafts are always a minefield, so I always cast a pretty wide net with this one, but if your school doesn’t appear anywhere in NBADraft.net’s latest two-round mock draft, your season is over. That’s gonna cost us 11 teams including several top-three seeds: No. 2 seeds Purdue and Iowa State and No. 3 seeds Gonzaga, Illinois and Virginia.

Eliminated — Gonzaga, Iowa State, Michigan State, NC State, Ohio State, Purdue, SMU, Texas, UCLA, Virginia, Wisconsin

Me saying that “defense wins championships” became a cliche because it’s true has almost become a cliche itself at this point, but both statements remain true nonetheless. Some FUNK rules come and go, but this one is always here and it’s always late in the game, because I really believe in it. Every national champion in the KenPom dataset except for one finished in the top 20 in opponent-adjusted defensive efficiency, and the exception, 2021 Baylor, finished 22nd. I’m sticking with top 20 as the threshold, because I am a stubborn motherfucker and I want these tests to do the job of eliminating teams, but either way they’re well within the top 10 percent of D-I defensively. Four teams made it all the way here, past 56 others, only to fail this final substantive test. Stop someone next time, suckers!

Eliminated — Alabama, Arkansas, Santa Clara, Texas Tech

You know it, you love it, you might have mocked me on television for it. National champions wear a shade of blue as one of their official colors. Deal with it. We’re up to 18 of the last 21 NCAA tournaments.

Eliminated — Houston, Louisville

Six teams made it all the way to the end and for the first time I can remember, all of the No. 1 seeds are among them. Congratulations to the champions of the 2026 NCAA men’s basketball tournament, Arizona, Duke, Florida, Illinois, Michigan or (ugh) UConn. That’s four 1-seeds, a 2-seed and a 3-seed. If you throw in the two teams who don’t wear blue, you get another 2-seed, but there’s at least a 6-seed in the mix.