Look all around you this week and you'll find all sorts of ways to determine this year's national champion. This exists all year long, and I've written more than enough about how much I dislike those who twist KenPom to their liking to 'explain' the future champion, but something about Final Four Week rekindles my love for opinions. Takes. Thoughts. The IMOs, JMOs, and TIFWIWs of the world all coalesce around three remaining games in the college basketball season.

This week, you can hear from our staff on who wins the NCAA Tournament. You can hear from CBS, ESPN, USA Today, The Athletic, The Athletic again, The Athletic a third time, coaches (yes, count it), a cat, a dog, a knob, and the fact Illinois has never lost a game played at exactly 6:09 PM Eastern. You can read some, or all, of what I linked. Some of it is even good, particularly the parts Isaac Trotter and Jim Root had a hand in!

Now, the problem: no one is going to be exactly right. It's worth hearing every opinion. Why not hear from the first and only person I've ever met to marry astrology and basketball?

Over the last 4-5 years, an anonymous Twitter account called The Zodiac GM has used an unusual approach to determine team synergy, fit, and success. He's entirely an NBA guy, and some of his shot calls over recent years have been remarkably spot-on:

Now, do I follow what Mr. Zodiac is talking about? Not really. I have never read an astrology report and I had to Google what my sign is. (Scorpio.) But for a few years now, this anonymous man originally from Texas has used his research to be ahead of the game on the Paul/Harden Rockets, the late 2010s Denver Nuggets, and as mentioned above, the Dame/Giannis Bucks. He's garnered a large following, profiles on ESPN and GQ, and, yes, contact from multiple NBA franchises interested in what he's doing.

I reached out to the Zodiac GM this week to get his thoughts on the 2026 men's Final Four. He watches a very small amount of college basketball, largely centered around major draft prospects he needs to know about (he's posted about Cam Boozer a few times this year), and has never gone to KenPom before. (When I mentioned to him Illinois was fourth at the site, he was pleasantly surprised. "I just saw the 3 seed and figured they were the least of the teams left.")

This site is for people who are really into college basketball, but there are times both in-season and out of season that I wonder if I miss the forest for the trees. Do I watch and read so much that I lose understanding of the bigger picture? Do I simply forget to weigh in things like synergy and fit, two things that I know exist on the court but struggle to quantify off the court? And Jesus, am I missing the forest for the trees on the Illini?

The anonymous astrologist agreed to a Zoom interview with three requirements: it would be audio-only, it would be behind an anonymous account titled The Zodiac GM, and I couldn't ask which NBA teams had reached out. (I did ask if any had, and he said "yes" with proof provided. I'll leave it to the imagination.) Respecting his anonymity, we continued on. Below is a summary of our discussion, along with some excerpts from the interview where necessary.

How he became interested in astrology...

"30+ years ago, back when you still got physical newspapers, I would get the newspaper and pull out the daily horoscopes. This was around age 9-10, so a pretty young age. That raised my interest and it led me to our local library, where I did more research and made my own personal booklet of signs. I was so fascinated by everything I was reading, and I was able to learn about the synergy of different signs." [WW: In other interviews, Zodiac has credited this research with helping him learn to communicate with his brother, who is non-verbal.]

...and basketball, along with which came first

"Astrology actually came first, and basketball came afterwards in my teens. I first got into it because of the Houston Rockets [WW: Zodiac is from Texas. Lining up this with the timeline provided suggests he became a fan right as the Rockets went on their back-to-back title run in the mid-1990s.], but I never thought to combine the two until around 2015. I was still very interested in astrology then, and I thought to myself “hey what if there’s some correlation between successful teams and their signs?”

I made an Excel spreadsheet, made it of every team’s signs and their respective players, and looked for links between the signs. I was open to learning anything inside of it. I researched every stat I could find, and in my research nothing correlated stronger than Zodiac signs. I didn’t begin putting this out on social media until a few years later just so I could backtest further.

During this time, my best friend and I would watch games together. We both knew the signs, but the challenge was seeing if the combination of energies he'd say out loud matched up with the quality of the play on the court. More often than not it would correlate.

The first time that the marriage of astrology and basketball really stood out to me was Chris Paul going to the Rockets. I was a fan, and I saw a lot of people say that Paul and James Harden wouldn't be a good fit together. But I knew [based on their signs] that they would have great synergy and fit together, and their energies would match one another's. Chris Paul himself said it was maybe the best team he’d ever played on and it speaks volumes to the synergy of that team."

Explaining his methodologies to a non-astrological audience

"The best way to look at it is energies have a certain understanding of languages that they speak. Based on the research I’ve done, there was a strong correlation between the elements and the quality of play/communication on the court. With backtesting, this is a good understanding of fit. [WW: In his interview with ESPN, Zodiac pointed to Jordan/Pippen, Malone/Stockton, Curry/Green, and Tatum/Brown as especially strong pairings from his research.]

There are four key elements in the Zodiac: Water, Fire, Earth, and Air. There are three signs within each, which gives you the 12 signs everyone knows about if they know star signs. If you drill down, you can see some trends for each: Gemini has the most adaptable energy, and they are traditionally the quick thinkers. Libras are leaders, and we see they lead by ideas. [WW: Zodiac's example: Kevin Durant.] Aquarius are stubborn but in a good way, they’re the ones that you can’t break. [WW: Your key examples here are players like Caitlin Clark.] They are VERY good at accountability.

[It's about] understanding the balance between all of these different languages from these different elements. If you think of it in a team sense with the psychology of it, they can click. These energies can naturally connect as if you’ve known each other for years. Those are compatible energies. On the other hand, you can have connections where you can barely complete a sentence and you can’t figure out why. That would be an incompatible energy. It’s all about simplifying. In other words, [I find that] team chemistry is all about elemental alignment."

On Illinois and their surprisingly strong team chemistry

"I took a step back and analyzed each of the four teams. Illinois stood out to me because of the combination of Fire dominance with Brad Underwood, a Sagittarius, and their starting lineup (Ivisic, Stojakovic, Wagler, Boswell) all being highly compatible based on their signs. Mirkovic is a Capricorn, but it works, because he can still lead and fit in just fine when 80% of the starters are all on the same side.

Essentially, they will all have a strong understanding of what Underwood wants. I believe Underwood in particular has a strong connection with Boswell, because Sagittarius and Aries have shown up as the strongest compatibility routinely. Almost the entire rotation has energies that are compatible with each other.

I'm going to admit I haven’t watched any of their games, but just looking at their signs, I feel this is a very strong team. This is a team that will be very dangerous, but it’s a one-game thing. The type of team that would beat them is one who is very strong defensively and can stop their offensive synergies and flow."

On the remaining three teams in the Final Four

"Arizona is a close second to Illinois in terms of team-wide synergy. If the Illini are an A, Arizona is an A- across the board, from coach to starters to the bench. The interesting thing that stood out to me from my research is that four of Arizona's starters are compatible amongst themselves, but opposite energy-wise from their head coach, Tommy Lloyd. The bench is all compatible with Lloyd, however, which would suggest to me that within a game Lloyd is happy to give his bench more chances than most.

From what little I know, because Arizona is the higher seed and the better team with roughly equal synergy and fit to Illinois, they are going to have a strong, strong shot to win it all, in my opinion. Everything has to align well, but if it does, I would say they have the best shot. This would be the best example of an 'opposites attract' pairing of the teams left."

"Michigan doesn't have the same team-wide synergy and chemistry based on my research. The rotational synergy is a solid B+, but the coach to player synergy is a B-. [WW: I'll obviously disagree here, but this is why we like having alternative opinions.] Their offensive synergy should be more neutral than their defensive synergy, and I haven't found a great way to calculate defensive synergy just yet. [After being informed Michigan has a top-3 defense] Well, there you go. If they're a good defensive team, that would be their chance to win if anything. I would be surprised if they win it all with offense, but these are single-game samples."

"UConn is really interesting to me. They have C+ starter synergy, and the synergy from Dan Hurley to the starters and bench is about a B-. College is different from the NBA because of the talent gap, but if I knew nothing about the talent and assumed it was relatively equal like I do with the NBA, I would have assumed this was more of a middling team.

However, experience can overrule all, and Hurley's Capricorn energy is results-oriented and extremely ambitious. They're going to get it done no matter what. The only player among the starters that has a strong energy connection with Hurley, though, would be Alex Karaban. [WW: Zodiac had no idea Karaban is known as 'Captain Connecticut' and that he is beloved by Hurley. When informed of this, it was like being told of a new invention.]

The Zodiac GM's Final Four picks

"If I was to pick, I’d go Illinois over UConn, Arizona over Michigan, and then in the title game I would go Arizona over Illinois because of greater rotational balance and equal-ish synergy. With Illinois, their offense has to be really clicking, and knowing that Arizona has the elite defense you mentioned makes me believe Arizona would have the edge. It’s already great, but if they can go supernova they would be my champ."

Without knowing much of anything about college basketball - Zodiac didn't seem to be aware of who Dusty May or Yaxel Lendeborg are - our mystery man arrived at the same prediction as a good number of media members will. I find this very funny and oddly reassuring. Perhaps in our endless quest to get everything right this week, we can always look elsewhere for inspiration. Some of us can, and will, dive as deep into the data as possible to find every little edge we can.

Then again, perhaps we are missing the forest for the trees. Zooming out to a line of logic you've never thought of using before could end up being quite valuable. This week, the Zodiac's method might be as good a method as any.

You can follow the Zodiac GM here.