2025 men's NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen preview (Thursday)
The winner of BYU/Alabama will be this year's entrant into the Fab Fifteen (for 30 minutes)
Yep, it’s back. First game’s free as an example, remaining seven (including all of tomorrow’s) are paywalled. Some tweaks this year: one video for each game, new stats, new things to look for, deeper previews.
ALSO. I have an announcement: I will be at the Final Four. Well, probably not at the games, but in San Antonio. If you are a coach, writer, known friend, trusted agent, advisor, or literally anyone that subscribes to this and would like to say hello, please let me know privately at statsbywill@gmail.com or just reply to this email when it goes out. Hope to see you there and finish this season off strong.
Let’s begin:
(2) Alabama (-5.5) vs. (6) BYU, 7:09 PM ET, CBS
This is every Ball Knower and pundit’s favorite matchup of the Sweet Sixteen for the same reason it would be a 9-year-old Maddenite’s favorite: points. The projected total for this game sat at 175.5 at the time of writing, which converts to roughly a 90-85 Alabama win. Those are the types of games we had more or less lost in the NCAA Tournament, and indeed the only Tournament games in BetIQ’s 28-season database with a total of 170+ were Alabama’s first three games last Tournament.
But of the available options, Alabama drew pretty much the only non 1-2 seed in the entire field that can go score for score with them. (A reasonable argument can be made for Texas Tech, but since New Year’s Day, BYU’s offense is better.) Intriguingly, across Nate Oats’ six years at Alabama, this will be the 22nd game with a total of 170 or higher. The over is 14-7, but Oats himself has gone just 12-9 straight-up and 9-12 against the spread, which says more about a leaky defense than it does his own offensive gameplans.
This will be a change of pace of sorts for BYU, who is used to blitzier and more aggressive perimeter defenses with their Big 12 schedule. The only Big 12 team even somewhat close to Alabama in terms of a lack of ball screen aggression is West Virginia, who BYU dumped 1.14 and 1.21 PPP on with fairly normal 3PT% days (35.7% and 33.3%). BYU hasn’t been above some bad turnovers this year, with the 12th-best TO% in Big 12 play and a bottom-three turnover margin in conference play, but no team left in the field forced fewer turnovers than the Tide.
Using the Ball Screen Aggression tool but with offensive data, no one left in the field faced more aggressive P&R coverages than BYU. Giving them more room to operate up top feels like a bad idea to me. When Alabama faced these sorts of “undroppable” offenses in the regular season - Purdue, Illinois, and North Carolina were the top three in terms of teams who played against the most aggressive coverages on average - Alabama got spit-roasted to the tune of 1.11 PPP (83 points in a 75-possession game), 52% on twos, and 68% at the rim. They don’t force turnovers, and the rebounding problem we’ve covered previously is quite concerning.
The problem: you can potentially say all of these things about BYU’s own defense. Since February 1, BYU’s offense has been unstoppable, averaging 130.4 points per 100 possessions (adjusted for competition) over a 15-game stretch. It’s without absurd 3PT% (37.5%), too; they just generate quality two after quality two after quality two. But the defense is a problem: 65th since February 1, one which allows the second-highest opponent three-point attempt rate left in the field behind Tennessee during that stretch.
My concern would be that BYU’s only played one offense close to this this year and it’s Texas Tech, who dropped 1.18 PPP on the Cougars at the Marriott Center. Now, BYU still could’ve won that game had they not shot 22% from three and 57% from the FT line, but such is the risk you run in life. BYU is not a terribly aggressive perimeter defense, either; they would have come out as the third least-aggressive perimeter D in the SEC, just ahead of LSU and Alabama. The good news for BYU: Alabama posted just 1.05 PPP against LSU in their one faceoff this year and got rocked on the boards. The bad news: that was the game Mark Sears was benched for the entire second half of, which makes it borderline useless as data.
I do think that with 3PT% removed, these teams are functionally equal on a neutral court. Much was made of the SEC gauntlet this year, but since February 1, BYU’s schedule ranks fourth-hardest out of the 16 teams remaining, ahead of teams like Auburn, Tennessee, and Florida. The Big 12’s gauntlet was no slouch, either. This more-or-less equal affair comes down to two items for me: is Alabama simply going to be happy sitting back in drop coverage against a 93rd-percentile team in jump shooting efficiency, and is BYU going to be able to handle full-on rim denial with not allowing wide-open catch-and-shoot threes at the same time?
THING TO WATCH FOR: Look, crazy as it sounds to you right now, these teams are gonna miss some shots. What the team who misses the shot does defensively might decide the game. BYU went 17-1 this year when scoring 11+ fastbreak points. Alabama went 15-2 when dumping 15+. In the first 10 seconds of the shot clock, Alabama shoots 74% on twos and 49% on threes. BYU cannot win this game if they’re letting Alabama run wild off of missed field goals. Worth noting that Alabama went 10-6 this year when getting off less than 35% of their initial field goal attempts off in the first 10 seconds of the clock (17-2 otherwise), per CBB Analytics.
I’ll assume they are already because they’ve got a smart staff, but BYU should probably study the last few games Alabama has played against Tennessee for cases of proper rim denial and transition denial. Tennessee’s consistently held an otherwise nasty Alabama offense to season lows in points, efficiency, and pace over the last three seasons. Watch how Tennessee gets back after a missed field goal here and stops the primary break in its tracks, turning it into a longer possession.
THING TO CTRL+F THE BOXSCORE FOR: Honestly, if this game touches a 10+ point lead in either direction. Combined, these teams went 45-1 (Bama 22-0, BYU 23-1) this year when leading by 10 at any point of a game. It sounds stupid, but if one team gets up 10 the other team simply doesn’t have the defense to get back in it.
THREE MOST SIMILAR GAMES: 2024 (4) Alabama over (1) North Carolina; 2017 (2) Kentucky over (3) UCLA; 2002 (1) Kansas over (2) Oregon
PREDICTION: The line is too high for me here for two teams that, again, are pretty much the exact same thing. I’ll ride with the team with superior shot volume and a more sustainable path to easy points. (I’d also be wise to note that Oats is 2-5 ATS in NCAAT at Alabama when the opponent has 3+ days to prep, and BYU does have a one-day rest advantage here.) BYU 92, Alabama 91 in an instant classic.
The rest of the matchup previews are behind a paywall. For $20/year (through March 31), you can read these and the other 120-150 posts this newsletter cranks out each season.