2025 March Madness South Region: Cinderella Predictions

2025 March Madness South Region: Cinderella Predictions

The first round of the 2025 March Madness tournament is right around the corner. College basketball fans have waited all season for this magical time of year. People nationwide are filling out their brackets in the hopes of creating the perfect one. Furthermore, to have a successful bracket one has to be able to indefinitely the Cinderella teams. I will be picking a couple of higher-seeded teams in each region and give more information on them as to why they might be this year’s Cinderella team. The first region I will start with for the 2025 NCAA Tournament will be the South.

UC San Diego Tritons 12-Seed

The Tritons are one of my favorite higher-seeded teams in the entire 2025 March Madness tournament. UC San Diego won their Big West Conference Tournament and they are going dancing in their first year of eligibility. Head coach Eric Olen has built a great program and the Tritons, who finished 30-4, have all the ingredients for a team that can make a deep run. They are led by senior guard Aniwaniwa Tait-Jones who averages 19.5 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 3.7 assists. Also, they have a premiere defender in guard Hayden Gray who averages 11.2 points and 3.2 steals.

UC San Diego is ranked 36 according to Kenpom rankings with the 57th-best offense rating and 30th-best defensive rating. Furthermore, this is a great three-point shooting team and the Tritons take a lot of shots from behind the arc. Also, they dominate the turnover battle as this team is in the top ten in turnover percentage on both sides of the ball. I love teams that protect the ball while causing chaos on the defensive end. Also, Tait-Jones leads college basketball in free throws per game which can be the separator come basketball in March. 

They do not have the easiest draw as they face a Michigan team that just won the Big Ten Conference Tournament. However, the Wolverines have been inconsistent at times and they struggle with turnovers and 3PT shooting. I think the Tritons can expose Michigan’s weaknesses on Thursday. Their matchup in the round of 32 would be against Texas A&M, without an upset in the round of 64. I think the Aggies have their own issues scoring the basketball as they struggle from three and are a bad free-throw shooting team. I think UC San Diego has the potential to upset both teams and punch their ticket to the Sweet Sixteen in the 2025 March Madness tournament.

Yale Bulldogs 13-Seed

I am not big on picking seeds higher than 12 to upset in the first round but it happens every year. Yale is my favorite 13-Seed in the 2025 NCAA Tournament to advance to the round of 32. The Bulldogs play a brand of basketball that can cause problems for a lot of teams. They upset No. 4 seed Auburn last year in the tournament. I think head coach James Jones can have the Bulldogs ready to make noise in March Madness again this year. 

Yale is an efficient offensive team that can score at all levels and they do not hurt themselves with bad turnovers. They have an absolute stud in guard John Poulakidas who averages 19.2 points on a 45/40/89 shooting split. He is an absolute bucket that can get hot and will his team to victory. Junior forward Nick Townsend is a solid big man who averages 15.4 points and 7.2 rebounds. They have the offensive firepower to compete with a lot of teams and their defensive scheme forces teams to take a lot of three-pointers. Furthermore, if a team goes cold they can control the game and play a clean brand of basketball to make it hard to get back in the game. 

They have a first-round matchup with Texas A&M in the 2025 March Madness tournament, which as I said earlier is a team that can struggle scoring the ball. I think the Bulldogs can match up well enough in the rebounding department with the Aggies, which the Aggies excel at as one of the best offensive rebounding teams in the country. Yale will need to contain Texas A&M guard Wade Taylor but I can see pulling off a huge upset in the round of 64. Yale will then have a matchup with 12-Seed UC San Diego in my opinion in the round of 32. The path to the Sweet Sixteen is there for the Bulldogs and knocking off a four-seed in back-to-back NCAA tournaments would be something special.

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