Who Will Win the 2009 NCAA Basketball Tournament? Part Three: Conclusion

Who will win the 2009 NCAA Basketball Tournament?

Article courtesy of Ted Sevransky, a professional college basketball handicapper featured on Touthouse.com. If you are looking for winning 2009 March Madness picks, be sure to buy Teddy Covers March Madness picks at Touthouse.com.

In Part One and Part Two of this article, I used a variety of statistical and historical considerations to narrow down the field of potential NCAA tournament champions to seven legitimate contenders: North Carolina, Wake Forest, Oklahoma, UConn, Pitt, Villanova, and Michigan State.

Today, I’ll narrow that list even further, settling on the team that I’m picking to cut down the nets in Detroit on the first Monday of April.

The next step is to analyze the point guard play from those seven squads, using assist-to-turnover ratio as the primary method of determining greatness.

My formula here is simple—I’m looking for a minimum of a 2:1 assist to turnover ratio from the primary point guard or point guards. If a player/team doesn’t have that ratio at the point, they get bounced right here.

Ty Lawson at North Carolina dishes 6.5 assists and commits only 2.0 turnovers per game. Michigan State does well in the "dual point guard" department, with Kalin Lucas and Travis Walton combining for a 7.9-3.3 ratio.

Oklahoma’s Austin Johnson has solid numbers with a 3.9-1.5 ratio. Pitt’s Levance Fields might not have much of an NBA future, but he’s got the best assist-to-turnover ratio of the entire "short list" group, dishing out 7.6 dimes per game, while committing only 1.9 turnovers.

UConn hasn’t been the same team since Jerome Dyson got hurt, a team that lacks a perimeter shooting touch (not to mention depth).

A.J. Price’s numbers at the point reflect those shooting woes: 4.6 assists to 2.5 turnovers. Craig Austrie and Kemba Walker also get time at the point, but their numbers don’t pass the test either: 4.7 assists, 2.6 turnovers between them.

Wake Forest has Jeff Teague, a great scorer but not a great assist man or ballhandler, as evidenced by his 3.6 assist to 3.3 turnovers ratio. Ish Smith coming off the bench is more of a true point guard for the Demon Deacons, but his 3.5 assist to 2.0 turnover ratio doesn’t wow me either.

Scottie Reynolds and Corey Fisher both get time at the point for Villanova. Reynolds has a 3.7 assist to 2.6 turnover ratio. Fisher’s ratio is 2.8-1.9. A third distributor for the Wildcats, Reggie Redding, averages 3.0 assists to 1.8 turnovers. Not one of the three passes the 2:1 test.

Villanova, Wake Forest, and UConn all get bounced from my "short list" here. We’re down to our Final Four already.

Teams with at least two NBA first round picks in their lineup tend to do well come tournament time.

Last year, we saw Kansas get three players drafted, including Brandon Rush in the lottery, Darrell Arthur later in the first round, and Mario Chalmers at the beginning of the second round. The year before, Florida had three lottery picks—Al Horford, Corey Brewer, and Joakim Noah.

Oklahoma’s got a pair of likely lottery picks in Blake Griffin and Willie Warren. North Carolina can’t match those two expected lottery picks, but they’ve got their entire starting five in action.

Lawson is a surefire mid-first rounder. Tyler Hansbrough is a late first rounder/early second rounder, and Danny Green could potentially join him that high. Both Wayne Ellington and Deon Thompson are on the NBA’s radar screen for the second round, and frosh Ed Davis will be an NBA-er whenever he decides to go pro.

Pitt has late-lottery pick DeJuan Blair and late first round/early second rounder Sam Young.

Michigan State, however, comes up short in this department. Kalin Lucas, Raymar Morgan, and Durrell Summers aren’t projected first rounders from any of the mock drafts that I have seen. We’ll send the Spartans packing here.

I know that Michigan’s Fab Five made it all the way to the national title game back in 1992 with five true freshmen in their starting lineup. But let’s not forget that the Wolverines lost to Duke by 20 in that championship game, their youth and inexperience showing up in a big way as they got blown out in the second half.

When the all-sophomore Wolverines made it back to the title game against North Carolina the next year, they didn’t come away with the title either.

A couple of key freshman contributors is a good thing. A team that relies almost exclusively on underclassmen is a problem.

Oklahoma’s best two players—Griffin and Warren—are both underclassmen. That’s 36.7 points, 16.3 rebounds, and 5.5 assists from a frosh and sophomore star, with nobody else on the team averaging more than nine points or six boards per game. I’ll send Oklahoma home here.

We’re down to the last two teams standing—North Carolina and Pitt, the two best teams from the two best conferences. They are currently ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the polls and in the RPI, and deserve to be ranked where they are—how boring.

I didn’t plan it this way. I had no preconceived notions when I started this article; I just ran through the criteria one by one, eliminating one team after the next, until I reach my final two. Even here, the hard numbers make all the difference in terms of which team I’m going to pick to win it all.

I’m calling for the North Carolina Tar Heels to beat the Pitt Panthers in my championship game, although these two teams could hook up in the national semifinals should both reach the Final Four (as I expect they will). There are two reasons as to why I’m picking Roy Williams over Jamie Dixon this time around.

First is free throw shooting.

Anyone who doubts the importance of closing out games at the charity stripe needs to review some video of last year’s national title game, when Memphis was unable to close out Kansas at the line, allowing the Jayhawks to, quite literally, steal the Tigers' title away from them.

Free throw shooting was the difference in that ball game—nothing more, nothing less. Memphis couldn’t hit the shots when they counted the most, and it cost them dearly.

North Carolina hit their free throws at a 76 percent clip this year, the 11th-best free throw shooting team in the country. Pitt shot 67 percent from the charity stripe, ranking 235th out of 343 teams. Advantage: Tar Heels.

The second factor here is depth, particularly in the frontcourt.

Every time Pitt’s Blair or Tyrell Biggs gets in foul trouble, the Panthers have no suitable replacement coming off the bench. Gary McGhee only gets seven minutes of playing time per game, and he’s no Blair or Biggs just yet. This is where the injury to prize recruit Austin Wallace finally hurts the Panthers.

All three of Pitt’s losses this year—Louisville, Villanova, and Providence—came in games when Blair got into foul trouble. They almost lost to Rutgers when Blair was limited to eight minutes with foul trouble. This past weekend, when Blair left the game after picking up his third foul against UConn, the Huskies immediately went on a 10-0 run before Blair came back into the game.

The irreplaceable frontcourt player is a big problem for a team that is looking to win it all, and Blair is that player.

So, that leaves us, by process of elimination, with North Carolina as our national champ this year. The Tar Heels have all the factors that we look for.

They are from a major conference. They are going to be seeded at No. 3 or higher. They’ve been winning away from home all year. They have a great point guard. They have great depth. They rebound.

They play defense. They hit free throws. They have balance. They can win slowed down games using their half court offense and up-tempo games where they’ll run and gun.

There’s no surprise here—North Carolina has ranked among the top two or three teams in the country all year, and I’ll call for them to finish as the No. 1 team when the final buzzer sounds four weeks from today.