FTN Final Four Staff Picks

The March Madness brackets are live, and our FTN Staff is already making their picks for the Final Four! Will it be favorites, Cinderellas, or a mixture of both? We asked our entire FTN family to make their Final Four picks, along with their rationale. We certainly received a wide variety of responses.

Here are our FTN Final Four picks for the 2024 NCAA Tournament.  

Marshall Gershon

Picks: UConn, Kentucky, Baylor, Kansas

Last year’s national champion has been the best team in CBB all season. As long as UConn can get past Auburn in the Sweet 16, they should have a relatively easy path to the Final Four. Despite a disappointing loss to Texas A&M in the SEC Tournament, this Kentucky team is loaded with NBA talent and is playing really good basketball the last few weeks. 

Teams with great point guard play usually do well in March, and Baylor has that in RayJ Dennis. Another team loaded with NBA talent, Baylor can make a run in a bracket that feels wide open. The pick of Kansas comes down to health. If Hunter Dickenson and Kevin McCullar are back for the tournament, this team can beat anyone. If not, they could go out in the opening round. 

Matt Josephs

Picks: UConn, Baylor, Houston, Creighton

I have the Huskies defending their national title. Connecticut is by far the best team in the country and will continue to play that way in this year’s tournament.

Adam Young

Picks: UConn, North Carolina, Houston, Tennessee

Boring, I know. I chose these teams as if my life depended on it. I’m not buying Purdue and its “tall,” body down low. Iowa State is a home-court hero and turns into mostly a pumpkin outside of Ames. Kentucky can’t play defense, Caleb Love will shoot 2-for-15 in his “revenge” game against UNC, and I don’t have faith in Marquette or Duke to challenge Houston.

If you came here looking for some bold Final Four predictions from each region, here you go. Watch out for Auburn (East), Nevada (West), Florida (South) and South Carolina (Midwest). They are my dark-horse Final Four crashers to bust brackets.

Mike Cutri

Picks: Purdue, Marquette, Saint Mary’s, Iowa State

Purdue has the easiest path to the Final Four of all No. 1 seeds, with a vastly-improved backcourt behind Braden Smith and Lance Jones. I cannot fail to mention the Boilermakers have the most dominant player in all of college basketball and future two-time Wooden Award-winner Zach Edey. Marquette has the easiest path to the Final Four of all the No. 2 seeds. The health of point guard Tyler Kolek is key, but Kolek, Kam Jones and Oso Ighodaro are as good as any trio in the country. The defensive improvement we saw by the Golden Eagles in the Big East Tournament vastly raises their ceiling. 

Some madness is inevitable in the Midwest Region, and I like the Saint Mary’s Gaels’ chances of sneaking out behind the disciplined coaching of Randy Bennett and strong guard play of Aidan Mahaney and Augustas Marciulionis. In the East, it’s very difficult for Connecticut to repeat as champion, especially with that region holding four Power 6 conference tournament champions. Iowa State certainly has the easier path to the Elite Eight in the East and always proves to be an extremely difficult matchup behind their relentless perimeter defensive pressure and solid guard play.

Walt Waddell

Picks: UConn, Baylor, Wisconsin, Tennessee

The committee made a few errors with the bracket as usual, but it’s a real head-scratcher that they made the East the region of death. Despite having Iowa State, Illinois, Auburn and multiple mid-major darlings in the East, the Huskies will ultimately come out as the winner. Elite guard play, strong depth and a coach embracing the villain role as the defending champs, I’m all in. I’ve earmarked the West as the region most likely to destroy your bracket in Round 1. There are a ton of ways this could end, and almost none of the scenarios would surprise me. With that being said, I lean toward Baylor’s unique blend of veterans and high-upside freshmen with a championship caliber coach in Scott Drew. You’ll see a theme with my picks, as I am going to rely on coaching a lot in a tournament that I expect to have record-breaking parity. 

I know that I’m going against the grain with Wisconsin, especially with them as a victim of a trendy upset in James Madison against the Badgers. Wisconsin finally has an elite scoring guard in AJ Storr and sneaky depth at every position that creates a lot of trouble for opposing teams that slip into foul issues. Houston isn’t healthy, I don’t believe in Marquette, and Kentucky can’t defend. The Badgers shock the world and make a Final Four thanks to an epic string of performances from Storr, Chucky Hepburn and future YMCA star, Max Klesmit. I say I’m done with Rick Barnes every year after he inevitably breaks my heart, but here I am picking them to make a Final Four once again. You’d think the slip-up in the SEC tourney would have knocked some sense into me, but sometimes it can be beneficial to feel what a loss tastes like heading into the Big Dance. There are capable mid-majors in this region such as McNeese State, Samford and Akron that could clear a path for Barnes to reach his first Final Four since 2003, when he was still the head coach at Texas.

Josh Gross

Picks: UConn, UNC, Kentucky, Tennessee

• UConn: All the talk regarding this being the team with the best chance to go back-to-back since Florida in 2006-07. At the very least, I think they get through the gauntlet that is the East Region.
• North Carolina: Surely not biased at all. This is the best UNC team I’ve watched since the 2005 Championship team. Bacot and RJ Davis have a chip on their shoulder from the disaster that was last season. They get back to the Final Four in their last hurrah.
• Kentucky: I know absolutely nothing about this Kentucky team, but I know not to doubt John Calipari in March.
• Tennessee: I really wish Dalton Knecht transferred to UNC. You want to win in March, you best have a dominant guard.

Daniel Kelley

Picks: UConn, Saint Mary’s, Houston, Tennessee

Houston and Connecticut are the two best teams in the country, in some order, and I’ll comfortably take them to make the title game (especially Houston, coming out of the softest region). Meanwhile, Tennessee will recover from consecutive losses to end their season behind Dalton Knecht. Saint Mary’s is the wild card, but they might have finally overtaken Gonzaga this year, and they can carry that momentum into a tourney run.