March Madness is back: Twelve questions (and answers) for the 2025 men’s NCAA Tournament
READ MORE
2025 NCAA Selection Sunday preview
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage previewing 2025 NCAA Tournament Selection Sunday for men’s and women’s college basketball on March 16.
Expand All
March Madness is back: Twelve questions (and answers) for the 2025 men’s NCAA Tournament
Twelve questions (and answers) ahead of the 2025 women’s NCAA Tournament
2025 NCAA Tournaments: Get blank men’s, women’s printable brackets before Selection Sunday
Looking for an edge in an NCAA tourney bracket pool? These 10 tips could help you win
It’s that time of year again.
The NCAA Tournament is nearly here, and March Madness magic is set to take center stage in the sports world. Once again, 68 schools from around the country are set to compete in a thrilling single-elimination men’s basketball tournament until one is left standing as the national champion.
Locally, plenty of interest will be placed on the fortunes of both Kentucky and Louisville. First-year head coaches Mark Pope and Pat Kelsey have reinvigorated both fan bases, and there are plenty of reasons to believe that a deep NCAA run could be coming for both the Cardinals and Wildcats.
Outside of the commonwealth, storylines are plentiful: What can former UK and U of L coach Rick Pitino do with a St. John’s team that won the Big East Conference? How will freshman star Cooper Flagg fare in his only NCAA Tournament with Duke? Will the SEC live up to its billing as the nation’s best conference?
As the NCAA Tournament returns, you probably have some questions. We’ve got answers.
Here are 12 questions and answers to get you ready for this year’s NCAA Tournament:
When and where is the Final Four this year?
The 2025 NCAA Final Four will take place at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. The venerable venue hosted its first men’s Final Four in 1998, a year in which Kentucky came home with the national title.
This year will mark the fifth time that the Alamodome hosts the men’s Final Four. The stadium also hosted the national semifinals and national championship game in 2004 (UConn), 2008 (Kansas) and 2018 (Villanova).
The national semifinals this year will take place on Saturday, April 5, with the NCAA Tournament championship game being played Monday, April 7.
Where are the other NCAA Tournament games being played?
In addition to the Final Four site of San Antonio, 13 other locations will host NCAA Tournament games this year.
First Four games will be played at the UD Arena in Dayton, Ohio.
First- and second-round games will be played in Cleveland (Rocket Arena); Denver (Ball Arena); Lexington (Rupp Arena); Milwaukee (Fiserv Forum); Providence, Rhode Island (Amica Mutual Pavilion); Raleigh, North Carolina (Lenovo Center); Seattle (Climate Pledge Arena) and Wichita, Kansas (Intrust Bank Arena).
Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games will be played in Atlanta (State Farm Arena); Indianapolis (Lucas Oil Stadium); Newark, New Jersey (Prudential Center) and San Francisco (Chase Center).
Atlanta is hosting the South Regional, Indianapolis hosts the Midwest, Newark gets the East and the West is in San Francisco.
What TV channels will the games be on?
The 2025 NCAA Tournament will feature 67 total games. All games in the tournament will be broadcast by CBS Sports and Turner Sports across TV channels CBS, TBS, TNT, truTV and their associated digital platforms, including March Madness Live.
Who is the defending champion and who are the favorites to win in 2025?
Last year, Connecticut went back-to-back by winning a second straight national title. The Huskies were the No. 1 overall seed for last year’s edition of March Madness, and they carried that top billing all the way through to earn their sixth national title.
All of UConn’s NCAA championships in men’s basketball have come since 1999.
But UConn is not among the favorites to make it a three-peat in 2025. Instead, the front-runners to win this year’s edition of March Madness include Auburn, Duke and Houston.
Head coach Bruce Pearl’s Auburn program has been viewed as the front-runner in college basketball for most of this season. Auburn won the SEC regular-season championship outright, and lost only four times in the regular season.
Entering conference tournament play, Auburn boasted the best offense in the country, per KenPom. Fifth-year forward Johni Broome — who began his college career at Morehead State — is a national player of the year candidate.
One of Auburn’s four losses this season came to Duke, which has been powered by standout freshman forward Cooper Flagg, himself a national player of the year candidate. The 6-foot-9 Flagg is widely expected to be the No. 1 overall selection in this summer’s NBA draft, but first he will attempt to lead the Blue Devils to March Madness success. He’s averaging nearly 20 points per game.
Houston also has plenty going for it as the Cougars look to make their first trip to the Final Four since 2021. Head coach Kelvin Sampson’s team owns one of the best defenses in the country and went a remarkable 19-1 in the Big 12 Conference, winning that league’s regular-season title by four games.
How much money are the players paid?
Currently, NCAA student-athletes can earn money from use of their name, image and likeness.
So you’re like to see a steady stream of commercials during March Madness broadcasts featuring some of the top players in the tournament. Locally, several Kentucky men’s basketball players have already been featured in TV and radio ads in recent months.
That includes the trio of Lamont Butler, Andrew Carr and Jaxson Robinson in a Clark’s Pump-N-Shop ad and Trent Noah in an ad for Appalachian Regional Healthcare.
But, in just a few months there will be a new financial stream available to college players.
If a federal judge approves the NCAA’s House settlement in April, then starting with the 2025-26 year, schools will be allowed to distribute revenue directly to student-athletes. In addition to this revenue-sharing funding, NIL deals would still remain available to student-athletes.
So come this time next year, it seems likely that Kentucky players will be receiving money from both UK and NIL deals as March Madness approaches.
Who has won the men’s NCAA Tournament the most times?
UCLA has won the most national championships with 11, but the Bruins haven’t won a national championship in men’s basketball since 1995. The Bruins will be in the NCAA Tournament field this year, but it is UCLA’s women’s basketball team that has a much better chance of bringing an NCAA title back to Westwood.
Kentucky is second all-time with eight national titles, followed by North Carolina and UConn (six) and two other schools with five national championships each (Duke and Indiana).
What should we expect from Kentucky this year?
Let’s talk about the Wildcats, who went 21-10 overall and 10-8 in SEC games during Mark Pope’s first regular season as the UK coach.
Historically, Kentucky has won eight national championships on the hardwood: 1948, 1949, 1951, 1958, 1978, 1996, 1998 and 2012.
Kentucky won’t be the favorite to bring home banner No. 9 this year, but the Wildcats certainly have a puncher’s chance of doing so. Pope’s club has shown that it can compete with just about anyone: UK set a school record this season with eight regular-season wins over opponents ranked in the top 15 of the AP poll at the time of the game.
UK will be without fifth-year guards Kerr Kriisa and Jaxson Robinson for the NCAA Tournament due to season-ending injuries, but Kentucky still has a veteran team with plenty of college basketball experience.
This includes the aforementioned Lamont Butler, a fifth-year guard who played in the 2023 NCAA title game while at San Diego State. Butler made a buzzer-beating shot in the 2023 Final Four to give San Diego State a win in its national semifinal.
In a similar refrain to John Calipari’s final Kentucky team last season, the knock on UK this season has been that its high-powered offense is outweighed by its porous defense. Kentucky has made strides in recent weeks on defense after it hit rock bottom in a 98-84 loss at Ole Miss on Feb. 4.
Time will tell if Kentucky’s defensive improvements can translate to the national postseason.
There’s also another elephant in the room for the Cats: Pope has never won a game as a head coach in March Madness before, going 0-2 in NCAA Tournament games while the coach at BYU.
Will Louisville be making a return to the men’s NCAA Tournament?
Yes.
In his first season as the Louisville head coach, Pat Kelsey has revitalized the Cardinals and U of L now has plenty of juice entering the postseason.
Louisville went 25-6 in the regular season and finished just one game behind Duke as the runner-up in the ACC standings. Despite battling some major injury issues and taking some heavy nonconference defeats early on, Kelsey’s team hit its stride in conference play.
A big reason for this has been senior guard Chucky Hepburn, a former Wisconsin player who is having a career year in terms of both assists and scoring. Fifth-year guard Terrence Edwards Jr. and senior guard Reyne Smith also provide the Cardinals with plenty of scoring pop, although a right ankle injury is something to monitor with Smith.
Louisville’s résumé might be on the lighter side — the Cardinals had only four wins in Quad 1 games during the regular season — but the Cardinals are dancing for the first time since 2019, and that alone should be a celebrated achievement when compared to the disastrous Kenny Payne coaching era.
How dominant has the SEC been in men’s college hoops this season?
Perhaps the most popular narrative that existed during the regular season was the dominance of the SEC in men’s college hoops. And it’s hard to argue against it.
This came into sharp focus in December, when the SEC went an eye-opening 14-2 against the ACC in the annual challenge pitting schools from the two leagues against each other.
The SEC — in its first season with 16 schools — built on this strength during conference play: All 16 SEC programs finished the regular season ranked in the top 82 of the KenPom metrics and in the top 86 of the NCAA NET rankings.
Of the 16 teams in the SEC, 14 of them were ranked in the AP Top 25 at some point this season. (Sorry to South Carolina and LSU.)
The top of the conference is littered with teams who have a realistic chance at winning an NCAA title, the likes of Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas A&M among them.
Now, it’s time to see if the SEC can pay all of this off by placing multiple schools in the Final Four.
The last time the conference had multiple teams make the national semifinals was 2014, when Florida and Kentucky both made it. The last SEC school to win a national championship in men’s basketball was UK in 2012.
What should I know about Duke freshman star Cooper Flagg?
Flagg — a 6-foot-9 superstar from Maine — is one of the household names that even casual college basketball fans will recognize ahead of the NCAA Tournament.
He was the top high school prospect in the 2024 recruiting class after reclassifying from the 2025 high school recruiting group, and he’s more than lived up to that billing this season. Across 31 regular-season games, all starts, Flagg averaged 19.4 points, 7.6 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 1.5 steals and 1.3 blocks per game. Flagg shot 49.4% from the field and 37.7% on 3-pointers.
That fits the profile of a likely national player of the year honoree.
Flagg scored 42 points in a home win over Notre Dame in January, which set a scoring record for an ACC freshman.
Head coach Jon Scheyer and the Blue Devils are a deep team, and two other Duke players — center Khaman Maluach and guard Kon Knueppel — are projected by ESPN as top-10 talents for this summer’s NBA draft.
But Flagg is the straw that stirs the drink for Duke, and he’s the single-biggest reason why the Blue Devils are a trendy pick to win their first national title since 2015.
Can Rick Pitino win the national title with St. John’s?
One of the best stories in college basketball this season has been Rick Pitino and the St. John’s Red Storm.
The former Kentucky and Louisville head coach has turned the Johnnies into a legitimate national title contender in just his second season at the school. After missing the NCAA Tournament last season, St. John’s dominated the Big East Conference this season.
St. John’s went 27-4 overall in the regular season and 18-2 in Big East games. The Red Storm won the league’s regular-season championship outright (by three games) for the first time since 1985.
Leading the way for St. John’s this season has been Kadary Richmond, a fifth-year guard and New York native who was the top available player in the transfer portal last offseason when he departed Seton Hall. Richmond averaged 12.7 points, 6.1 rebounds and 5.3 assists per game in the regular season for the Red Storm.
Other regular-season standouts include juniors guard RJ Luis Jr. (18.1 points and 7.1 rebounds per game) and forward Zuby Ejiofor (14.1 points and 8.2 rebounds).
Of course, because it’s Pitino, the Red Storm are also a truly elite team on defense.
Now, St. John’s will eye some long-awaited NCAA Tournament success. The Red Storm haven’t won a game in March Madness since 2000. They’ve lost five straight games in the event.
Pitino is now the first head coach in NCAA Division I men’s basketball history to lead six different schools — Boston, Iona, Kentucky, Louisville, Providence and St. John’s — to the Big Dance.
What about former UK coach John Calipari and Arkansas?
Remember him?
John Calipari and the Arkansas Razorbacks were a pretty big disappointment this season, relative to expectations. But Cal and the Hogs will still be in the 68-team NCAA Tournament field.
Arkansas surged late in the regular season to improve its March Madness hopes, winning four of its final five games including ranked wins over Missouri and Mississippi State, a victory over an NCAA Tournament team in Vanderbilt and a bubble-battle win over Texas.
The Hogs also won their first game of the SEC Tournament over lowly South Carolina.
The Razorbacks lost star freshman guard Boogie Fland, a former UK signee, for the season in January due to a right thumb injury, but several other players with Kentucky ties stepped up in his absence to carry the Hogs.
The unquestioned star of this group is junior Adou Thiero, who averaged 15.6 points and 6.0 rebounds per game in the regular season, although Thiero is currently sidelined with a knee injury.
Sophomores guard D.J. Wagner (11.1 points and 3.5 assists per regular-season game) and forward Zvonimir Ivisic (9.8 points and 2.1 blocks) are also familiar names among Arkansas’ top contributors.
A welcomed sight for the Razorbacks has been the improved play down the stretch of fifth-year guard Johnell Davis, who was one of the most-coveted players in the transfer portal last offseason when he elected to go from Florida Atlantic to Arkansas. In Arkansas’ final 11 regular-season games, Davis averaged 14.7 points per contest.
But, buyer beware if you’re considering picking Calipari and the Hogs to make an NCAA Tournament run: Calipari has won only one NCAA Tournament game since 2019.
Sunday
Men’s NCAA Selection Show
When: 6 p.m.
TV: CBS
This story was originally published March 13, 2025 at 6:30 AM with the headline "March Madness is back: Twelve questions (and answers) for the 2025 men’s NCAA Tournament."
