Illinois/Arizona Stamp Final Four Spots

 So no shock that Arizona is on to the Final Four as I said they were the overwhelming favorite based on their metrics to get to that stage. Remember that Arizona along with the Duke were the only two teams who qualified for all 13 of my final Four indicators and the Blue Devils can get there today with a win over UCONN. The West Region was one where I did say it to place Arizona in the majority of your Final Fours; with some Arkansas and a Purdue on maybe one to change it up if you had a bunch of brackets. Those were the only three teams in the region who even merited a look at the Final Four based on the indicators. 

Meanwhile, Illinois comes out of a weak South region that had a very flawed and red-flag contaminated Florida as the top seed (awful three point shooting that would have bucked some serious FF trends). I did suggest Houston as the majority of my FF selection as their metrics were solid but not overwhelming as they hit only 10 of the 13 systems. This opened the door for a tremendous shooting Illinois team to get there who bucked some strong FF history of their own as I will explain.

Illinois to me was a throw out coming into the tournament as losing their first conference tournament game has been a MAJOR negative when projecting a team's chances of getting to the FF. Driving this point home, coming into the tournament only 5 of the last 100 teams to lose their first conference tournament game reached the FF. Vanderbilt, Alabama, and Texas Tech all also lost their first conference tournament game and all are home right now. Ironically, UCONN could be the second team to beat that very strong trend with a win over Duke today. In addition to this, Illinois becomes the first team since the 1990's to make the FF when more than half their shots come from three. This is a relatively new indicator that I am still giving some time to see if its a keeper due to the fact the game over the last few years has exploded with threes and could change in terms of its trend point as more teams adopt this strategy. It does need to be said however that Alabama, Louisville, and Wisconsin all also qualified for this and none of these teams got out of the Sweet 16. So all in all, Illinois is a "so be it" arrival in the FF who beat two strong trends. That's how it goes sometimes. 

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