All Four Ones, One All-Timer of a Final Four in San Antonio

The Final Four of the 2025 men's NCAA tournament has been set, and we can only assume that Crayola, Tums and some sort of blackboard company rank among the biggest commercial sponsors for the all-chalk extravaganza coming up in San Antonio next weekend.

Only two years removed from a 2023 Final Four in Houston which was the first ever pair of national semifinals devoid of a single No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3 seed, it's back to Texas for a much, much different scenario: No. 1 Auburn vs. No. 1 Florida and No. 1 Duke vs. No. 1 Houston.

[Let the record show that, yes, plenty of people tried to blame NIL and the transfer portal for 2023's uncommon quartet, just as so many are doing this year. Some people just can't be pleased.]

This has happened once before, of course, all four No. 1 seeds reaching the Final Four in 2008, resulting in one of the most unforgettable national championship games of all-time. (Super Mario, FTW.)

However, those No. 1 seeds from 17 years ago could barely hold a candle to this year's quartet, particularly on the offensive end of the floor.

Kansas was pretty darn good as the 2008 champion, but even the Jayhawks would have been a slight underdog on a neutral court against any of this year's Final Four teams.

Venture any further down that '08 list and you're only going to find teams that would have been at least a 6-point underdog against this year's Duke squad.

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Average KenPom ratings of 2008 Final Four teams: 119.75 adjusted offensive efficiency, 88.05 adjusted defensive efficiency, +31.72 margin.

Average KenPom ratings of 2025 Final Four teams: 127.68 adjusted offensive efficiency, 90.83 adjusted defensive efficiency, +36.85 margin.

Translation: Over the course of 100 possessions, the 'average' team in this year's Final Four would've been expected to win by 5.13 points against the 'average' team from the only other time this all four No. 1 seeds thing happened.

Even if the current No. 4 team on KenPom (Auburn) ends up winning it all, after two more marquee wins it would almost certainly supplant last year's Connecticut team as the highest-rated-on-KenPom national champion (+36.43) since Duke won it all in 2001 at a mark of +37.32.

If it's Cooper Flagg and Duke (+39.62) cutting down the nets in San Antonio, though, the Blue Devils would maybe go down as the greatest national champion at least since John Wooden was doing his thing at UCLA half a century ago.

But before we rush to speculate on the historical greatness of the TBD champion of what ought to be a Final Four for the ages, could we just spend a bit of time appreciating how great these four remaining teams are?

Let's start with Houston, if only because the Cougars have never during this season gotten the type of national spotlight they've deserved.

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When they started out 4-3 with a close home loss to Auburn and a pair of overtime losses to Alabama and San Diego State in Las Vegas, people inexplicably left the Cougars for dead, ignoring the fact that breaking in a new point guard (Milos Uzan) against that type of early slate was liable to be a challenge.

Since the end of November, though, Houston has gone 30-1, its lone loss coming almost two months ago in overtime in twice dramatic-comeback fashion from a Texas Tech team that would also be in this Final Four if it hadn't completely collapsed against Florida on Saturday.

Save for that slight hiccup against the Red Raiders, the Cougars are undefeated over the past four months, almost running the table while securing double championships in a darn good Big 12. They have the most efficient defense in the nation, and they are less than one-tenth of a percentage point away from having the most accurate three-point attack to go along with it, thanks to three (Emanuel) Sharp-shooters who convert at a better than 41 percent clip.

In just about any other year, we'd be fawning nonstop over this juggernaut with home-state advantage in the Final Four; one that just completely shut down both Purdue and Tennessee in Indianapolis to bring its "points against" average for the NCAA tournament down to a laughable 56.5.

This year, though, Houston might end up with the worst title odds heading into the Final Four.

For now, that distinction belongs to Auburn, surely in part due to people waiting to hear more on the status of Johni Broome's elbow injury suffered in the second half against Michigan State. (Goodness knows Duke's championship line shifted in an instant when Flagg rolled his ankle in the ACC tournament.)

Broome did return after a brief stay in the locker room, but he didn't look right, reluctant to even move that injured arm on rebound attempts. And in this loaded field, if that star player is anything less than 100 percent next weekend, fourth-best odds would probably be warranted.

If the likely first-runner-up for the Wooden Award is good to go, though, Auburn has been looking doggone good again lately. Between that 20-2 run in the second half against Michigan on Friday and the 17-0 run in the first half against Michigan State on Sunday, we're seeing more and more glimpses of the Tigers team that started out 27-2, feeling like a lock for the Final Four while rolling through the historically great SEC.

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Of course, it was Florida who won at Auburn. As well as at Alabama. Before cruising to the SEC tournament title and entering the dance as the scorching-hot team the entire world had fallen in love with.

There's really no question that the Gators haven't been playing their best basketball in this tournament, turnover-prone, late-arriving and seemingly content with letting Walter Clayton Jr. bail them out time and again. Even "not its best" Florida basketball has been enough, though, and perhaps the Gators can lock back in for another win over Auburn before securing the third national championship in program history.

And for our thoughts on this Duke team that enters the Final Four as the clear betting favorite, you can read this column from Saturday night. The TL;DR version is that the best team of the past quarter century is playing at its apex at the perfect time, and it'd be a surprise if the Blue Devils lose, even in what is an all-time great Final Four.

If you're bored with the way this tournament has played out, well, you know, that's just like your opinion, man.

Watching this all-timer of a quartet strut its stuff all the way to the Final Four has been a sight to behold, and the payoff for not getting any Cinderella stories this year is a pair of Final Four matchups with KenPom Thrill Score ratings of 92.5 and 87.9. (Take it to the bank: The national championship game will be somewhere in the 90 range, too.)

To put those numbers in some sort of context, last year's national championship between Connecticut and Purdue—the one that basically everyone was anticipating on Selection Sunday, pitting the two best teams in the nation against one another—clocked in at an 87.6. Or when Duke played Auburn back in early December in what everyone knew at the time might be a national championship preview, that was an 87.0.

Getting two games north of 87 on the Thrill Score meter in the Final Four is absurd.

Here's hoping the remaining three games deliver the goods that they should.