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The McDonald’s All-American Game annually creates an exciting showcase for the nation’s best high school senior basketball stars. It’s also a surprisingly accurate indicator of future college national champions.

Since the McDonald’s All-American Game’s inception in 1978, all but four NCAA Tournament winners on the men’s side have had a player on their roster who played in the game. While it’s easy to get lost in the glow of upsets and Cinderella runs during March, elite talent is still king when it comes to winning the tournament.

It doesn’t feel any different entering this season’s March Madness. Most of the tournament’s projected top seeds feature at least one high school All-American playing an important role, many of them from perhaps the best freshman class of this century. In Sam Vecenie’s latest NBA mock draft, 10 of the first 12 picks are former McDonald’s All-Americans, most of them on national title contenders.

Approximately 30 percent of the field will have a former McDonald’s All-American in the 2026 tournament. Depending on the ebbs and flows of the bubble during championship week — and potential bid thieves — 22 teams fit this distinction.

Unsurprisingly, many of the projected top seeds feature a McDonald’s All-American. All eight projected No. 1 and No. 2 seeds — Arizona, Connecticut, Duke, Florida, Houston, Illinois, Michigan and Michigan State — have a Burger Boy on the roster. So do contenders like Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, St. John’s and Tennessee.

Some lower projected seeds like BYU, Louisville, Kentucky and UCLA are also worth monitoring, thanks in part to five-star talent. And although North Carolina lost freshman stud Caleb Wilson to a season-ending injury, the Tar Heels are still dangerous.

It’s not a given that the 2026 national champion will carry a McDonald’s All-American, but nine of the top 10 contenders in DraftKings’ and BetMGM’s national championship winner odds have at least one.

Perhaps it’s more interesting to look at the teams that »å´Ç²Ô’t have a McDonald’s All-American, and thus would be fighting history to cut down the nets in Indianapolis.

Ten teams in the latest AP Top 25 are without a high school All-American. The top-ranked team of the bunch is No. 7 Iowa State, but Virginia, Nebraska and Gonzaga could also conceivably otherwise be picked to win it all in some brackets.

Ranked teams without a McDonald’s All-American

• No. 7 Iowa State

• No. 10 Virginia

• No. 11 Nebraska

• No. 12 Gonzaga

• No. 16 Texas Tech

• No. 18 Purdue

• No. 20 Miami Ohio

• No. 21 Saint Mary’s

• No. 22 Vanderbilt

• No. 23 Wisconsin

The four champions that didn’t have a McDonald’s All-American were Maryland (2002), UConn (2014), Baylor (2021) and UConn again (2023). It’s rare to see a modern college national champion without an acclaimed high school star, but the four outlier national champions carried a key ingredient: a future NBA first-round draft pick.

All four non-McDonald’s champions had at least one player shaking hands with the NBA’s commissioner only months after cutting down the nets at the Final Four. Maryland’s legendary 2002 team had multiple first-round picks in big man Chris Wilcox and Tournament MOP Juan Dixon. Lonny Baxter and Steve Blake were also second-round draft picks with extended NBA careers.

UConn’s surprise 2014 title run as a No. 7 seed was fueled by a red-hot run from point guard Shabazz Napier. Playing at a high level during March vaulted Napier into the first round months later.

Davion Mitchell turned into a lottery pick during Baylor’s 2021 title season as one of the nation’s most dynamic two-way guards in an elite backcourt.

UConn used multiple future pros to dominate the field in 2023. Sharpshooter Jordan Hawkins was selected in the first round, while dynamic wing Andre Jackson went early in the second. Center Donovan Clingan was also the No. 7 overall pick the following year after helping the Huskies secure their second straight title.

The Cyclones (+2200) are the only team in the top 10 of the betting odds without a McDonald’s All-American. They do, however, have a pair of borderline first-round picks in Joshua Jefferson and Tamin Lipsey — both currently high second-round selections in Vecenie’s latest mock draft. Iowa (Bennett Stirtz), Texas Tech (Christian Anderson Jr.), Texas (Dailyn Swain) and Vanderbilt (Tyler Tanner) also qualify as teams without a McDonald’s All-American who still carry NBA talent.

Winning a national championship without a McDonald’s All-American isn’t common. But if it’s going to happen in 2026, then NBA-caliber talent is still likely to do the heavy lifting.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.