Jay Bilas remains confident in his 2023 NCAA men’s tournament championship pick after the first weekend of this year’s Big Dance.
The ESPN analyst chose No. 4-seed UConn to take home the title, which surprised a lot of fans at first. Now, after the Huskies’ dominant wins over Iona and Saint Mary’s in Albany, N.Y., Bilas still thinks UConn can win it all.
“I would say Connecticut did [impress me the most],” Bilas said on Monday’s episode of Get Up. “Connecticut early in the season looked like a Final Four lock, and they hit a bit of a rough patch where they lost five or six in a row—I don’t remember exactly what it was. It put some doubt in your mind—‘Is UConn for real?’ But, they are. They’re exactly the team that we saw at the beginning of the year that was dominant in November and December. They’ve got everything.
“UConn as a four seed I think is a very dangerous threat not only to get to Houston, but they can absolutely win this whole thing.”
On Selection Sunday, Bilas wasn’t the only ESPN analyst to choose the Huskies in his Final Four. All four ESPN college hoops analysts featured on the broadcast—Bilas, Seth Greenberg, Rece Davis and LaPhonso Ellis—picked UConn to make it to Houston.
After the opening weekend, the Huskies have the fourth-best odds, according to SI Sportsbook, to win the national title at 9:1.
Bilas chose his alma mater, Duke, as the national runner-up, but the Blue Devils were eliminated in the second round, losing 65–52 to Tennessee in Orlando, Fla.
