This year’s men’s NCAA Tournament might not feel like it has one clear favorite, with Duke, Arizona and Michigan all enjoying dominant regular seasons.
But a preferred choice emerged in The Athletic’s annual staff survey. Arizona was the national championship pick for 14 of the 28 writers and editors we surveyed this week.
Naturally, an aggregated bracket of 28 staff picks tends to ultimately lead toward favorites advancing. But our staff bracket this year did feature a few surprises: Two 11-seeds advancing over their sixth-seeded opponents, a 10th-seeded mid-major knocking out a blue blood, and one No. 2 seed — Houston — preventing us from mocking all 1-seeds to the Final Four.
Here’s a look at which teams got the most votes to advance, along with round-by-round voting tallies and some of our staff’s boldest predictions for this year’s madness.
