The second round of the men’s NCAA Tournament did not provide a lot of upsets. Only two lower seeds won in the 16 games, and one of those, Gonzaga, was favored. Will we see more chalk in the Sweet 16? My model projects scores and title chances for every remaining team.
UConn is still the clear favorite. The Huskies won the title in more than a quarter of my simulations and made the Final Four a majority of the time. Houston, Purdue and Tennessee also remain the top contenders. In my projections, Arizona is ahead of North Carolina in the West Regional, but it favors the No. 1 seeds otherwise.
Advertisement
Before getting into the numbers, it’s worth explaining what you’re looking at. I created a college basketball model to project the outcomes of games. I take several metrics into account and adjust them for the opponent, and that makes a projection for each team on how likely they are to win a game against an average opponent. From there, I set up the bracket and simulated the tournament — all 15 remaining games — one million times to get my projected odds. With this method, I can have odds for how likely it is for every team to reach each round of the tournament.
You can buy tickets to any tournament game here.
GO DEEPER
Will Caitlin Clark and Iowa's second-round struggles be the key to a Sweet 16 victory?
Full projections for the 2024 NCAA Tournament
Below is the percentage chance each team has of winning a game in the round listed. UConn’s 56.9% chance below E8 is the chance the model projects the Huskies to have of winning in the Elite 8 and thus make it to the Final Four.
| team | champ | f4 | e8 | s16 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
26.8% | 40.8% | 56.9% | 81.1% | |
15% | 27.8% | 48.1% | 66.2% | |
11.9% | 23% | 40% | 68.9% | |
9.8% | 20% | 36.6% | 70.4% | |
7.4% | 15.9% | 39.2% | 71.7% | |
6.5% | 13.5% | 24% | 62.3% | |
6.1% | 13.3% | 33.6% | 61.7% | |
3.8% | 9.2% | 20.9% | 33.8% | |
3% | 8.6% | 23.2% | 67.5% | |
2% | 5.3% | 11.6% | 37.7% | |
2% | 5.5% | 17.2% | 38.3% | |
2% | 5.4% | 13% | 31.1% | |
1.3% | 4% | 10.3% | 29.6% | |
1.1% | 3.2% | 7.6% | 18.9% | |
0.8% | 2.6% | 10% | 28.3% | |
0.5% | 2% | 7.8% | 32.5% |
2024 men’s NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 projections
| teams | proj. score |
|---|---|
73.3 | |
81.3 | |
61.5 | |
72.5 | |
84 | |
86 | |
71.5 | |
72.5 | |
71.5 | |
77 | |
74.3 | |
79.8 | |
65.5 | |
68.5 | |
69.8 | |
75.3 |
(Photo of Dan Hurley and Stephon Castle: Elsa / Getty Images)
