Giant Killers - Complete upset picks for every region in the 2022 March Madness bracket

Giant Killers is back for our 16th annual metrics-based forecast of big upsets in the 2022 men's NCAA tournament. As always, we're analyzing each Giant vs. Killer game in the first round.

(Quick reminder: A Giant Killer is any team that defeats an opponent seeded at least five lines higher in any round.)

Our statistical model yields an upset probability for each game based on both the BPI of each team and on the stylistic factors that have shown the strongest correlations to tournament upsets in the past. Picks are sorted into four categories based on the likelihood of an upset: best bets, worth a long look, not completely ridiculous and, last and in all probability least, stay away.

Hopefully the titles speak for themselves.

Sound good? Now, let's get to the good stuff. Here are the 2022 upsets in the making.

Jump to: East | West | South | Midwest

Best bets

No. 11 Virginia Tech Hokies vs. No. 6 Texas Longhorns Upset chance: 49%

Here's the simplest way to look at this game.

Texas' BPI rank: 17

Virginia Tech's BPI rank: 19

BPI is the foundation of our Giant Killers model, so it's no wonder that GK sees this game as hardly a David vs. Goliath situation at all.

Virginia Tech's scorching hot finish, which included a conference tournament-winning run with a victory over Duke, somehow earned the Hokies just an 11-seed, which makes them an almost no-brainer upset selection. What's wild is that BPI does not add extra weight to more recent contests — which, if anything, sometimes leads to the model being lower on «hot» teams than consensus. Here, it's at least higher than the committee on the Hokies.

Virginia Tech's overwhelming advantage from beyond the arc — shooting a relatively high 39.3% from 3-point range, per KenPom — is