2025 March Madness Preview: West Region
West Region
Overall Analysis
The West Region is what I would consider the “group of death” with several teams that are under-seeded or the best team on their seed line. Typically, guard play wins in March and almost all of the contenders in this region provide elite guard play.
If you remember back to last year, I was very high on Florida in the big dance and it appears I was one year early on Todd Golden’s squad. They are going to end up as one of the chalkier picks given their recent success, but they are an absolute buzzsaw.
St John’s is the best defensive team in the country, and while they struggle to score at times that didn’t prevent them from running through the Big East with ease. They have guys that can take over on offense and being coached by the best team of all-time is not a quantifiable metric in my opinion.
I also love Texas Tech as a three, who is a national title contender if fully healthy. JT Toppin just won Big 12 POY, and can 100% lead the Red Raiders and their brigade of three point shooters on a deep run.
Overall, I think Florida is the best team right now (given Cooper Flagg unknowns), St John’s is the second-best two seed, Texas Tech is the best third seed and Maryland is the best four seed. Any of these teams can make a run and win the region and picking this one right will be huge in determining where you finish in bracket pools. If you’re playing larger field-size or taking the Duke Blue Devils to win it all, this is a spot I would look maybe get weird but as long as you don’t have Duke winning don’t need to search for leverage here.
Potential Cinderella: Colorado State
It’s hard for me to single out a true Cinderella in this region given that I think any of the top seeds could advance, but if picking one double-digit seed it would have to be the Rams. They come into the tournament having won 10 in a row en route to the MWC Championship and are actually favored in their first game over the 5 seed Memphis. If we isolate Bart Torvik’s overall efficiency to the sample size of the last four weeks – this is a top-15 team in the country over that span. Historically, many of the low seeds that have gone on big runs in the tournament have been able to slow down faster teams and play at their own pace while limiting the overall possessions in a game. Colorado State fits that mold, ranking outside the top-250 in tempo and will match-up with Memphis in round one who is a very fast-paced team. I really like this Rams team, and could easily see them winning two (or more) games and being the double-digit seed to make a deep run despite how loaded this region is as a whole.
Pick to Advance: Florida Gators
Written by Ben Hossler