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Mike Marteny's 2024 NCAA Bracket Busters for March Madness. His under-the-radar sleeper picks can help you build winning college basketball brackets.
There are always upsets in the NCAA Tournament. All upsets are not created equal. Lehigh. Hampton, Norfolk State. St. Peter's. Illinois-Chicago. Davidson. Princeton and Furman both made the Sweet Sixteen last year as double-digit seeds. All of these double-digit seeds took the tournament by storm and shattered brackets in their wake. Sleepers are one thing. Those are teams that put brackets in shredders across the nation. So which teams might do that this year?
First, let's establish the ground rules. To be a true bracket-buster, it must be a double-digit seed that makes it out of the first weekend. There are some years that this doesn't happen at all, so I'm not saying to use this as gospel and to fill out your brackets by this. However, if one team is to decimate a bracket, it will likely be one of these teams. Do with this information what you will.
In this article, I will be providing you with my bracket busters for the 2024 NCAA tournament. Be sure to also check out the rest of our NCAA Tournament articles and analysis including previews, predictions, sleepers, busts, and guides on how to fill out your brackets. Good luck RotoBallers!
West Region Bracket Busters
(11) New Mexico
The Lobos are an exciting team that got shafted with an 11-seed. The committee certainly did them no favors by placing them in Baylor's pod either. That said, they beat Colorado State twice, San Diego State twice, and Utah State this year. Freshman JT Toppin is a force in the middle that could be a problem for the Bears. Remember Nelly Junior Joseph at Iona last year? He's in New Mexico now and is also a problem in the middle.
May we all be as proud of our sons as Eddie House pic.twitter.com/3wBYviJibW
— Barnt (@barntwn) March 17, 2024
The sons of former NBA players Eddie House (Jaelen) and Jamal Mashburn (Jamal Mashburn Jr.) lead the guards on this team. New Mexico is back in the tournament for the first time in 10 years. They are going to make the most of it! I have them taking down Clemson and wouldn't be shocked if they took down Baylor either.
(12) Grand Canyon
The Antelopes beat San Diego State earlier this season and nearly toppled South Carolina. They won both the WAC regular season and conference tournament titles. Tyon Grant-Foster played sparingly at Kansas in 2020-21 and got injured in his first game for DePaul last year. He finally lived up to all of that promise this season.
Grant-Foster averaged 19.8 points per game, good for 37th in the nation. He posted 18 points with five rebounds and five assists in the upset of the Aztecs. A team with one bright star can make a run through the tournament still. Just look at Princeton with Ryan Langborg last year.
South Region Bracket Busters
(12) James Madison
It took the Dukes a few hours to put the college basketball world on blast when they took down fourth-ranked Michigan State on opening night. That loss sent the Spartans into a tailspin a la the 2022-23 Tar Heels. The Dukes averaged 84.4 points per game this season, which was 10th in the nation. Terrence Edwards Jr. and T.J. Bickerstaff are problems for opposing teams. This is a well-rounded team that is capable of ousting both Wisconsin and Duke.
(14) Oakland
I'm highlighting two teams from each region, but I could have just done one here. Trey Townsend does it all for Oakland, and this is a fun team to watch. They just got an absolutely brutal draw in Kentucky. The Wildcats are scoring at will lately and Oakland can't run a track meet with them.
Arkansas was the only team that was able to slow down Kentucky this season. If Oakland controls the pace and frustrates Kentucky, they might have a chance. It's still not a good one.
East Region Bracket Busters
(10) Drake
That's it. That's all the distance between Drake's campus and their first and (maybe) second-round games. Tucker DeVries is the best player that you've never heard of and the Bulldogs are the closest team to Omaha of the ones assigned there. It's a dream draw for Drake. I really like this Washington State team, but can they win a road game in the NCAA Tournament?
If not, we get one of the more entertaining second-round matchups. Why? Check this out!
That's all that separates Drake University from Iowa State University. The best part? The Cyclones don't want to play them anymore. The teams used to play almost annually in Des Moines. You know... in the big arena instead of Drake's gym so it could be called a "neutral site" game. The Cyclones put the kibosh on this five years ago since Drake hadn't traveled north to Ames since 2010. Once upon a time, this was a heated rivalry.
We had something like this happen in Omaha back in 2015. Kansas was too good to play Wichita State anymore, but the committee seeded them both in Omaha and they met in the second round. Fred VanVleet and the Shockers knocked out the Jayhawks. Can Drake pull the same stunt in the same city?
(13) Yale
The Bulldogs hung with Vermont, almost beat regular-season MAAC Champion Fairfield, beat Colgate, and hung with Gonzaga for a while before heading to Lawrence, Kansas. They led the Jayhawks by 11 at one point in that game before Kevin McCullar Jr. took over. The next week they beat Santa Clara and Howard before heading into conference play.
Danny Wolf and Bez Mbeng form a nice inside-outside duo for the Bulldogs. Auburn is a tough team to play, but the Bulldogs are polished enough to knock them out of their comfort zone. This game is in Spokane, so it's not close to either campus. The crowd will rally behind Yale if they get out to a lead.
Midwest Region Tournament Sleepers
(12) McNeese
The double-digit seeds in this bracket could burn the entire thing down. Oregon stormed the Pac and got a beatable South Carolina team. Akron is physical enough to mess with Creighton's rhythm. Colorado State is physical enough to hang with Texas. Hell, even St. Peter's has a shot against the Vols. And hey, Purdue did lose to Fairleigh Dickinson, a play-in team, last season. There's one more that I haven't mentioned yet. More on that later.
The Cowboys had the best point differential in the country this year, outscoring their opponents by an average of 18.9 points per game. They are 37th in the nation with 80.4 points per game. They are eighth-best from beyond the arc on the season (38.8%). Shahada Wells is a star that can lead this team to an upset of Gonzaga and even further if Purdue does Purdue things in March again.
(13) Samford
If Kansas is hobbled, they could lose this game. Samford is seventh in the country with 86 points per game and seventh in three-point percentage (39.4%). The Bulldogs check every box for mid-majors that pull upsets. Achor Achor is a fun player to watch and Rylan Jones does a good job running this team.
This is the worst possible matchup for a thin Kansas team. They were hobbled down the stretch with Kevin McCullar and Hunter Dickinson missing the Big 12 Tournament. McCullar still might not be 100% and Kansas has the worst bench in recent memory. Meanwhile, Samford has eight players that play at least 17 minutes per game and 10 that average double figures in minutes. Samford can absolutely wear this Kansas team out.
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