To win your bracket pool, you’ve got to pick the right Champ. There will likely be others in your pool that picked the same champ. Your Final Four picks can be the ultimate deciding factor. Here is a collection of computer model results from me (BracketResearch), KenPom, BartTorvik, ESPN, and EvanMiya, to keep in mind when making your Final Four picks.
According to the models, we’re very top-heavy this year. We’ve got another crop of VERY good 1-seeds this year. We’ve only seen 2 tournaments with all four 1-seeds in the Final Four, and one of those was last year. According to the average of the model probabilities, we only have a 5% chance of all four 1 seeds making it again this year.
Observations
- Average implied probability of us seeing a all four 1-seeds in the Final Four is only 5%
- Duke is a consensus MASSIVE favorite to win their region – all 5 models predict Duke is more likely to win the region than not (all above 50%)
- Florida’s chances of winning the South Region are much lower than the other 1-seeds winning theirs
- South Region is “wide open” the top 3 seeds each having a win probability greater than 20%
- 5-seeds Vanderbilt and St. John’s have the highest likelihoods outside of the 1-3 seeds
Final Four by Region
2026 NCAA Tournament · Model Consensus
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4 responses to “2026 Final Four Contenders – Model Results”
With NIL being a big factor last year and this year. Do you think that could theoretically increase the chances of seeing all #1 seeds in Final Four again? Or at the least having the Sum of Final Four seeds being considerably below the usual average?
Great question. Thank you for asking! Absolutely, it makes sense. It already seems like there’s a trend with the lower seeds – less Cinderellas and less bracket busters. It may not extend to seeing 1-seeds more consistently dominate than they already have historically. We’ll see, though, how this year plays out. Two straight years of all 1-seed Final Fours? It’s only two tournaments and 8 regions, but that will certainly be telling.
Is there a correlation between free throw shooting and tournament success? I would imagine there is one because free throws seem to be very important especially in close games. Should Houston be faded for this?
Great question. Thanks, James. I’ve wondered the same thing myself. I haven’t been able to find any good correlation. My theory is that the teams that aren’t good at FT shooting are good enough in other areas to compensate.