College Basketball Late-Mid-Season Check-In
We are in the depths of a dark age for HOTPO men’s college basketball teams. The Indiana Hoosiers are in a three-way tie for 11th place in the 18-team Big Ten at 14-10 overall and 5-8 in conference play. The Georgetown Hoyas are in a two-way tie for sixth place in the 11-team Big East at 15-9 and 6-7 in conference play.
Both teams are trending downward, as well. Indiana had lost seven of eight and five in a row (prior to upsetting Michigan State Tuesday) with two of those losses by 25 points. Georgetown has dropped seven of their last ten with one unsightly 25-point defeat at the hands of St. John’s.
Even with the teams on the HOTPO beat struggling, the football season is now complete and it is time to lock into the winter sports stretch run. Lower-level Division 1 conferences will begin their conference tournaments in early March and the elite conferences will wrap-up conference tournaments no later than Sunday, March 16. The NCAA tournament selection committee will publish the championship tourney bracket that evening and for the next three weeks we will all be rabid college basketball fans.
The SEC is the Hot Conference
While I have been beating up the SEC for their football regression, the SEC is putting together an excellent basketball season. In a recent Sporting News article, Mike DeCourcy highlighted the 0.889 non-conference game winning percentage of SEC teams and that the conference is projected to achieve seven (if not nine) top-4 seeds in this year’s NCAA tournament. No conference has ever earned more than five teams among the 16 top-4 seeds.
Number of AP Top 25 Teams by Conference (as of Feb. 10)
- SEC – 9 (#1 Auburn, #2 Alabama, #4 Florida, #5 Tennessee, #8 Texas A&M, #15 Kentucky, #19 Ole Miss, #21 Missouri, #22 Mississippi State)
- Big 10 – 5 (#7 Purdue, #11 Michigan State, #16 Wisconsin, #20 Michigan, #25 Maryland)
- Big 12 – 5 (#6 Houston, #10 Iowa State, #12 Texas Tech, #13 Arizona, #17 Kansas)
- Big East – 3 (#9 St. John’s, #18 Marquette, #24 Creighton)
- ACC – 2 (#3 Duke, #23 Clemson)
- American Athletic – 1 (#14 Memphis)
Just take a look at the teams in the AP Top 25 rankings by conference (above). The SEC has a whopping nine teams ranked and four of the top five. Outside the SEC, Arizona, Clemson, Creighton, Maryland and Michigan are the teams on the move as they were not ranked two weeks ago.
So we have established that the basketball punditry sees the SEC as the toughest conference and therefore they are rated accordingly. You haven’t been watching college basketball, so how are you going to make educated guesses when you fill at your bracket in March? The HOTPO got you!
Which Team Will Likely Win the NCAA Tournament
CJ Moore of The Athletic wrote an excellent mid-season primer in late January. Unsurprisingly, he says one of the top three rated teams – Auburn, Alabama and Duke – will win the tournament. Further, he sees other highly ranked teams as contenders – Iowa State, Houston, Florida and Tennessee – although his opinion of Iowa State may have changed in the last two weeks with them dropping from #3 to #10.
Let’s scroll down further in his article where Moore highlights “wildcard” teams. Again this article is two weeks old, but he pointed two Illinois, Kentucky and Michigan as dangerous teams that could “dance” into the late rounds of the tournament. Kentucky has dropped in the rankings the last two weeks, Illinois has dropped out of the rankings and Michigan has moved from unranked to #20 – let’s underline that Wolverine squad as a solid bracket buster with their two 7-footers who make up the “best front court in the country,” according to Moore.
Deep Analytics
Strap in. There is a lot of ground to cover here. I have attempted to be succinct.
Ken Pomeroy is widely viewed as the preeminent expert on college basketball statistical analysis. His ratings often are taken as being more authoritative than any other rankings systems and an excellent compliment to Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology, which serves a different purpose, but is related.
Pomeroy compiles the KenPom ratings. Of note are his “adjusted” offensive and defensive ratings. Which for offense (going to have to go to a Wiki copy & paste), “measures how many points a team is estimated to score per 100 possessions, adjusted for the quality of opponents they have played,” and inversely for defensive rankings.
I can’t fact check his algorithms on a chalk board, but we can by results. According to Reed Wallach of Sports Illustrated, all but two men’s basketball tournament champions since 2002 have been top 20 in both the KenPom adjusted offensive and defensive rankings. Well that feels like an answer key that I never knew before.
Wallach’s article (dated Feb. 10) shows there are seven teams meeting that criteria (team/AdjO/AdjD):
- Auburn - 1 Adjusted Offense/16 Adjusted Defense
- Duke - 5/4
- Houston - 8/3
- Florida - 4/9
- Iowa State - 18/7
- Arizona - 14/18
- Maryland - 20/20
It is interesting that Alabama and Tennessee from CJ Moore’s top title contenders are not included, while Arizona and Maryland, recent ascenders, are included. In the five seasons Nate Oats has coached Alabama, they have made four tournaments, two Sweet Sixteens and one Final Four – I would still bet on Bama. Since Rick Barnes took over at Tennessee beginning the 2016-17 season, they have gone to six tournaments (one of nine cancelled due to COVID, so 6 of 8), two Sweet Sixteens and one Elite Eight – pushing some chips their way, as well.
I don’t know about you guys, but this has been a pretty good exercise for me. We clearly have our KenPom seven (which will change in the next few weeks, but we know where to find updates) plus two others (Alabama and Tennessee) as our teams to focus on prior to the tourney. But we probably should look at the mid-major Cinderella candidates before we close out.
Mid-Major Conference Prospects Look Bad
It is generally predicted that mid-major conferences are not going to get a lot of additional “at-large” bids this year. Last year, was a strong year for mid-majors with eight getting “at-large” bids. This year, Ben Sherman of Sports Illustrated predicts mid-majors will secure only three “at-large” entries.
The Atlantic 10 Conference, one of the stronger mid-majors, will play their conference tournament at Capital One Arena along the Potomac this year. The HOTPO intent is to cover a little of that tournament. So, let’s take a look at those “kind of” home teams.
According to PlayoffStatus.com, George Mason (Fairfax, Virginia) has a 25 percent chance to get an invite, Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, Virginia) is sitting at a 22 percent chance and the University of Dayton (uh, from Dayton, Ohio for non-Midwestern folk) has a bleak 13 percent chance of advancing to the tournament. Right now, Lunardi sees George Mason as the only team making the tournament out of the Atlantic 10, with a #12 seed. That should make for an intense conference tournament for HOTPO coverage.
We actually pulled a full court press on college basketball last weekend by getting the whole staff down to Longwood, Virginia to cover the Radford @ Longwood Big South conference donnybrook. Was an exciting game and the Joan Perry Brock Center on the Longwood campus is an excellent venue. Farmville for a postgame dinner is also nice and within walking distance of the arena.
You are kind of now up to speed. We need to follow those KenPom 7, a couple of others and maybe watch for some mid-major Cinderellas.
I’m out of time. Gotta get this out prior to tonight’s West Potomac High School basketball game which will include a West Potomac Dance Team performance. And by the way, Ken Pomeroy is a 1991 West Potomac HS grad!?!?
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