Ugh. This is rough.
College Basketball Is Uniquely Prone to Getting All Fucked Up by Covid
College football went really, really well. I think maybe only one FBS game all year got postponed because of Covid. It was a great season. It remains a great season. The playoff might get funky, and you know someone at Michigan is beating their chest about pandemic protocols and someone else is saying, “You idiot, we need to get on the field for this game,” but generally, college football got away with it. The NFL will also, it seems, get away with it, ripping the band-aid off and ceasing tests of vaccinated, asymptomatic players. The NBA will get through it, albeit with strike-like rosters in place for a lot of teams in the immediate future. College basketball, though…
Last season was fun. We had good teams. Two historically great teams met in the national championship. March Madness was a liberating blast over which covid cast a relatively light shadow. I suspect we’ll get back there. The road there, though, is likely to be rough. Games are getting canceled left and right. Preseason protocols regarding forfeiture look likely to change, presumably back to last year’s conference standing hellscape system, in which regular season titles are confusing and warped and dependent upon bizarre tiebreaker rules for teams who played schedules not only uneven in difficulty but games apart in size (I see no better option).
Again, for casual fans, this is probably fine. Tune into March Madness and, aside from a team or two positive-testing its way out of the field, you’ll have a good time. But for fans of teams grappling for seeding and spots on and off the bubble and conference titles…it’s looking like it’s going to be a mess again. There isn’t enough time and there aren’t enough resources to make games up. Rosters are too small to fill in gaps effectively. Travel is a huge part of the sport, as is being indoors with a lot of other people, as is each game being pretty damn significant because there are only 31 of them or whatever the number is. The best hope is that this spike passes quickly and conference play isn’t too terribly affected, but given how it’s going right now, that isn’t looking promising, and like the hypothetical Michigan chest-pounder, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are voices in places like the Ivy League advocating for pauses or cancelations.
It sounds like omicron, though clearly vastly more infective than previous variants (and more vaccine-evasive, it seems, at least on the infection side), isn’t causing as serious of illness, especially in vaccinated people, but the data is rather new and uncertain. It leans hopeful, but it’s far from confidence-inspiring, and with college basketball players largely unpaid and largely 18-22 years old, there’s a natural, reasonable urge to protect them from unnecessary risk. There also seem to be questions about how common asymptomatic spread is, still—maybe I’ve missed answers on that side, but that’s a big question in my own life at the moment—and that’s a massively important question for determining testing and contact tracing protocols. Add in the fact that schools are largely on their own for how to handle this, and it’s looking likely we’re going to keep seeing loads of games canceled, at least over the coming weeks. If this spike is over by the beginning of February, maybe some stability will return. But the hopes for a normal season are dashed. They’re gone. Normalcy has not yet fully returned to college basketball.
Who’s Good? How Good? What Else Matters?
Nothing too noteworthy over the weekend, except that Kentucky smoked UNC, renewing questions about UNC and giving Kentucky, who’s getting uncomfortably comfortable with not being a tournament lock year-over-year, some relief. Louisville lost to Western Kentucky on the road. Baylor struggled a little at Oregon but won out in the end. Arkansas got upset by Hofstra, and if Hofstra sounds familiar from causing other problems, they took Houston to overtime but lost to Stony Brook badly, so they’re clearly capable of these things but they aren’t some sneaky-good mid-major. They would be among the worst teams in the SEC, and the SEC has a few awful teams this year.
With a lot of big games getting canceled, we’re kind of in a waiting period on the season. The bulk of the big nonconference action is over (Arizona’s trip to Tennessee tomorrow ends it, I believe), but conference races have yet to take shape. We’re about to head into the Christmas break. It’s not a dead zone for college basketball, but it’s certainly a dull time. So, we’re asking the same question we keep asking, which is which teams are good, and we’re adding one to it, which is what else matters.
For the first question—which teams are good—there are two ways to answer it. The first is to look at who’s expected to be good going forward: KenPom is our best friend for this, and the answers it gives are Gonzaga and Baylor, then a little gap, then Purdue and Kansas and Houston, then another gap, then Duke and Arizona and UCLA and Tennessee and LSU and so on down into the guts of the nation. For who’s played well so far, the AP Poll isn’t the worst option, and its answer goes, in order: Baylor, Duke, Purdue, Gonzaga, UCLA, Arizona, Kansas, USC, Iowa State, Alabama. The two have seven teams in common, so for a short answer to who the teams to watch are right now, let’s list those seven:
- Baylor
- Arizona
- Duke
- Gonzaga
- UCLA
- Purdue
- Kansas
I’ve listed those in a rough estimate of where each one lies in the pecking order. Baylor and Arizona are undefeated. Duke’s only loss was at Ohio State, and the Blue Devils beat Gonzaga. Gonzaga’s lost to Duke and Alabama, but they smoked Texas and UCLA and Texas Tech, and I’d guess they’d be favorites against anyone but Baylor on a neutral floor, including probably Duke in a hypothetical rematch. UCLA’s best win came at home against Villanova, and they haven’t beaten any other likely tournament teams, but they handled Colorado at home and handled Marquette after flying in the day of the game due to storms, which I found impressive. Purdue, like UCLA, beat Villanova in a tight one, and has a solid pack of wins behind it—UNC, Florida State, Iowa. Still, the Boilermakers have an ugly loss at Rutgers on their résumé, and they almost took an even worse one, by eventual likely quadrants, to NC State. Finally, there’s Kansas, who has a win over Michigan State and a loss to Dayton to their credit. We know they’re probably pretty good, but we aren’t scheduled to really see them tested until January 8th, when they go to Lubbock. In the meantime, they could well take another one on the chin. So, personally, if asked by a casual fan which teams have been the powers so far, I’d go with the first six in this list.
In terms of what else matters…I’d say conference title races matter, but they’re too nebulous right now to dive into. The same is true, again, of the bubble. So, at the moment, the race to be the last undefeated team is the other big thing, and we have a pretty clear pecking order in that race (in terms of who’s good—not who’s likeliest to stay undefeated the longest). Baylor and Arizona are among the nation’s premier programs. LSU is a great team waiting to play a tournament team (they’ve smoked respectable Belmont and Wake Forest, but haven’t played anyone better than those guys), and once they do, they’ll probably join that list above. USC isn’t highly thought of by KenPom but hasn’t been in terrible trouble yet and has a better-than-it-looks win at Washington State to its name. Colorado State has a ridiculously effective offense but is in the midst of what’s currently scheduled to be a 17-day break before Mountain West play starts, and their best wins are all over bubbly teams—Creighton, Saint Mary’s, Mississippi State. Iowa State has a shockingly good defense and three or four wins over tournament teams, but could also easily go 2-7 in January, when their schedule heats up.
Anyway, I’d offer that as an overview of the sport, and if it feels like we’re doing one or more of those a week to catch up, I’m with you. Just no clear single narrative, which is good and bad.
One More Appetizer for Iowa State
Speaking of the Cyclones, we’ve got Chicago State tonight after handling Southeastern Louisiana on Sunday. One last time to take care of business before the conference gauntlet begins. If you’re looking for a thing to watch, the most important area for the Cyclones to improve is probably protecting the basketball, so keep an eye on that number. That and the test results ahead of the New Year’s Day game against Baylor. I’d like to get really excited for that game, but I’m struggling at the moment to trust that it’ll happen, or that pretty much anything in college basketball’s immediate future will happen.
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Viewing schedule for tonight. All times Eastern:
7:00 PM: Xavier @ Villanova – FS1
Big East battle between two of the league favorites. Villanova’s trying to bounce back from a terrible loss on Friday (twenty points!) at Creighton. Xavier’s trying to win their toughest remaining game, get to 12-1 overall, and head into Christmas with a share of the league lead (Creighton and Providence are also 2-0 in the league, but each has a forfeiture for one of those wins).
9:00 PM: Kansas @ Colorado – ESPN2
Colorado’s the second-best team Kansas has played, and playing them on the road is a medium-sized test. If Kansas can win effortlessly, it’s a good sign that the Dayton loss a few weeks ago was a fluke. If they win but it takes a lot of effort, it isn’t a bad sign, but it does keep some questions around. If they lose, it’ll be hard to earnestly include them in the group of the season’s powers so far.
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Safe travels to all who are traveling. Best wishes to all who are ill. Please, if you aren’t vaccinated or haven’t gotten your booster yet, get vaccinated or get your booster. We aren’t epidemiology experts, but we work a lot with data, and we’d be happy to send you the data that gives us confidence in the vaccines’ efficacy and safety if that might sway you, so if interested, email me at joestunardi@gmail.com.
