4 Takeaways From the College Basketball Crown Bracket Reveal

The College Basketball Crown is back. After debuting with a 16-team format in Las Vegas last spring, the sport's newest postseason event will return to the desert in early April as an eight-team showcase. The field for this year's College Basketball Crown was revealed Monday evening, live on FS1. This year's participants are Oklahoma, Colorado, Baylor, Minnesota, Stanford, West Virginia, Rutgers and Creighton. First-round games will be played on April 1-2. Semifinal matchups will be held on April 4. And the championship game is slated for April 5. Here are my takeaways from the bracket reveal: 1. Oklahoma had a case to be in the NCAA Tournament Given that the Sooners lost nine consecutive games from Jan. 7 through Feb. 4, it's almost inconceivable to believe they had a legitimate claim for an at-large berth in the Big Dance. And yet, that's how strong certain parts of Oklahoma's resume really were. Head coach Porter Moser and his team now enter the postseason with five wins over teams included in this year's NCAA Tournament: Vanderbilt, Georgia, Missouri, Texas and Texas A&M. They also notched a victory against Auburn, another team that landed squarely on the bubble, and suffered narrow defeats to Nebraska (105-99), Alabama (83-81), Missouri (88-87 in OT) and Arkansas (82-79) -all of whom are now participating in March Madness. Oklahoma's analytical profile is also quite strong. The Sooners are ranked No. 40 on KenPom, No. 39 on Torvik and No. 33 by EvanMiya. They finished among the top 50 in both the NET Rankings and the Wins Above Bubble metric. Moser's offense ranks 18th nationally in efficiency, according to KenPom, and the team's overall strength of schedule is 25th. The Sooners were probably the best team left out of the NCAA Tournament. 2. Several NBA-caliber talents worth watching The teams included in the College Basketball Crown are home to a handful of high-level prospects who are expected to figure prominently in this year's NBA Draft: Cameron Carr, SG/SF, Baylor -The 6-foot-5 redshirt sophomore, who spent his previous two seasons at Tennessee, enjoyed a breakout campaign for the Bears by averaging 19.2 points and 5.5 rebounds. He shot better than 50% from the field on more than a dozen field goal attempts per game and connected on 39.4% of his attempts from beyond the arc. He scored at least 20 points on 15 occasions this season. Tounde Yessoufou, SG/SF, Baylor -Yessoufou is a five-star freshman from the county of Benin in West Africa. He ranks second on the Bears in scoring at 17.8 points per game and third in rebounding at 5.8 per game. At 6-foot-5 and 215 pounds, he has good size and stoutness for the next level, but he'll need to make strides as a perimeter shooter. Yessoufou only shot 30.2% from beyond the arc on more than five attempts per game. Ebuka Okorie, PG, Stanford -Okorie was a four-star prospect and the No. 100 overall player in the 2025 recruiting class but quickly outperformed that ranking with the Cardinal during an incredible freshman campaign. His scoring average of 22.8 points per game ranked seventh nationally during the regular season, headlined by seven 30-point efforts and one 40-point outing against Georgia Tech. Okorie was a shoo-in to earn first-team All-ACC honors after scoring at least 10 points in 28 of 30 appearances. 3. Plenty of teams with marquee wins on their resumes In addition to the aforementioned, high-profile victories amassed by Oklahoma, there are several other teams in this year's field that showed -on any given night -they can hang with some of the better teams in the sport: -Minnesota, which finished 15-17 overall and 8-12 in the Big Ten, scored wins over then-No. 19 Iowa, then-No. 10 Michigan State and UCLA to finish comfortably in the middle of the conference pack. -Stanford, which finished 20-12 overall and 9-9 in the ACC, knocked off then-No. 16 Louisville, then-No. 14 North Carolina, SMU and NC State to finish .500 or better in league play for a second consecutive season. -Creighton, which finished 15-17 overall and 9-11 in the Big East, defeated Villanova and trounced then-No. 2 UConn in one of the most stunning results of the conference season. 4. A chance for young talent to develop Rutgers finished 14-19 overall and only won six conference games this season, but there is one stat that shouldn't be ignored when thinking about what Steve Pikell's team might develop into by next season: Out of 18 teams in the Big Ten, there was only one -Penn State -with less Division I experience on the roster than the Scarlet Knights, according to KenPom. Rutgers ranked 17th in the conference and 205th overall with an average of just 1.36 years of experience per player. Why does that matter? In an era when roster retention is harder than it's ever been before thanks to both NIL inducements and the transfer portal, the Scarlet Knights are in position to be one of the most cohesive teams in the Big Ten next season if Pikiell can hang onto key pieces. None of Rutgers' seven leading scorers from the 2025-26 campaign were seniors, meaning all of them could return. And four of those players were sophomores or younger. A nucleus built around junior guard Tariq Francis (16.9 points), sophomore forward Dylan Grant (9.8 points), junior guard Darren Buchanan Jr. (8.4 points) and junior guard Jamichael Davis (7.2 points) should give fans plenty to be excited about in the coming months. The experience those young players will gain in a tournament format at the College Basketball Crown can be highly valuable. 4. What's next? Three teams who participated in the inaugural event last spring catapulted themselves from Las Vegas into this year's NCAA Tournament. Nebraska, which won the College Basketball Crown, went on to enjoy the best regular season in school history and earned a No. 4 seed in the Big Dance. The Cornhuskers are now chasing the program's first-ever NCAA Tournament win. UCF, which fell to Nebraska in the championship game, was among the more pleasant surprises in college basketball this season by starting 17-4 and racking up 21 wins overall. The Knights exceeded 20 victories for the first time since the 2018-19 season. They're now a 10-seed in the NCAA Tournament. And Villanova, which reached the semifinals, identified Maryland head coach Kevin Willard as the right successor to Kyle Neptune, who was fired after the 2024-25 campaign, and amassed 24 wins while finishing third in the Big East. The Wildcats, now an 8-seed, are back in the Big Dance for the first time in four years.