How We Did With Our 2025 NCAA Tournament Predictions
Image credit: (Photo by C. Morgan Engel/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
We offer a lot of predictions at Baseball America, but we also try to show our work to make sure that our readers can evaluate how well we do. After all, what good are predictions if you can’t see whether they’re worth paying attention to?
This year, in our final Field of 64 projection led by college writers Jacob Rudner and Peter Flaherty, we predicted 63 of the 64 teams that made the official NCAA Tournament bracket.
Our lone miss? That would be Kentucky, which we predicted would be the first team out. Instead, the Wildcats had their name called while Xavier, one of our predicted last four in, failed to make the field.
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In our penultimate projection before regional hosts were officially announced, we predicted 15 of 16 of the hosts correctly. We also wound up correctly predicting eight of 16 for their actual seed: No. 1 Vanderbilt, No. 2 Texas, No. 6 LSU, No. 10 Ole Miss, No. 12 Oregon, No. 14 Tennessee, No. 15 UCLA and No. 16 Southern Miss.
Of the other eight, one was missed by one spot (we projected Arkansas for No. 4 rather than No. 3). Another three were two spots off (No. 5 North Carolina instead of No. 3, No. 7 Georgia instead of No. 5, No. 11 Clemson instead of No. 9). Two were three spots off (No. 4 Auburn instead of No. 7 and No. 9 FSU instead of No. 12). And two were five spots off (No. 8 Oregon State instead No. 13 and No. 13 Coastal Carolina instead of No. 8).
It proved much tougher to predict a full regional. We had 13 teams in the correct regional bracket and spot. Our closest to nailing a full bracket was Austin, Texas, where we predicted No. 1 Texas, No. 2 UTSA and No. 4 Houston Christian.
We also did pretty well in identifying future tournament teams in our preseason bracket prediction/ We correctly predicted 39 of the 64 teams who made the actual field. We predicted 10 of the 16 national seeds correctly (Vanderbilt, Texas, Arkansas, North Carolina, LSU, Georgia, Oregon State, FSU, Clemson, Tennessee). There were two predicted national seeds (Texas A&M and Virginia) that failed to make the tournament.
