There was a lot of “first time since…” talk last night on ESPN during and after Miami’s blowout of Duke. The language was dramatic, but it wasn’t exaggerating the situation much. Jon Scheyer’s team is historically bad.
Going by KenPom—and I know we use KenPom a lot here, but there’s a reason for that, it’s the best objective measure available of how good a basketball team is entering any given game—this Duke team is 37th-best in the country right now. The 2021 team that went 13-11 and missed the tournament? It finished ranked 36th. Its low point found it ranked 41st for a three-day stretch between losing the regular season finale in Chapel Hill and whomping Boston College to open the ACC Tournament.
In other words, Duke right now is about as bad as Duke was in 2021, and Duke in 2021 was the worst it had been since the mid-90s. KenPom doesn’t go back to 1996 (the year following Pete Gaudet’s martyrdom), but from 1999 through 2020, Duke never finished a season ranked worse than 19th by the site, and for the ultimately 19th-ranked team (2012, the year they lost to Lehigh), 19th was the low point.
There are a few explanations for this.
The first is that Jon Scheyer is simply a first-year head coach. The talent on this team isn’t otherworldly, but it’s very good. The team should be better than it is. It’s possible some of its mediocrity stems from Scheyer simply needing time to grow. Duke is 2-5 in road games, and the wins within those only came against Georgia Tech and Boston College, each of whom would be challenging for the title of worst power conference team in the country did Louisville not exist. Is that the product of a young coach? Maybe. Is that an area where coaches can grow? It makes intuitive sense. I don’t know beyond that.
The second is that Jon Scheyer is not a very good head coach. This is possibly valid, but it’s so early that it’s hard to tell. So long as the season doesn’t turn into an out and out disaster, it looks a lot like a first-year head coach experiencing growing pains. Others who’ve watched Duke more frequently than I have can opine about this, but I’ll leave it as a possibility. Most of us won’t know the answer for a few more seasons.
The third is that Duke is missing shots. It’s kind of a joke because of cause vs. effect, but it’s the ultimate issue, and it might just be the original issue in and of itself. This team’s three-point shooting percentage is worse than the Division I average for only the second time in the KenPom era (the first time was 2019, when RJ Barrett and Cam Reddish shot a combined 13 threes per game and made only 4 of those but the team more than made up for it elsewhere). Some of this comes back to Scheyer, but some of it might just be bad luck as far as he’s concerned. This is a weirdly bad shooting team. The best reaction to this directs us back to the first or second explanation, but if an NBA team shot like shit for 24 games and then turned it on, we probably wouldn’t make a huge story out of it. Maybe there’s a sample-size thing, or maybe Scheyer got a little unlucky with recruits not panning out.
The fourth is that Jeremy Roach’s on-and-off toe injury is handcuffing Roach, and in turn handcuffing the team, and that these guys really miss Dariq Whitehead, who remains out with a leg injury. I’m suspicious of this—Roach’s efficiency hasn’t dropped much this season even as his usage rate has skyrocketed, his defensive rating on EvanMiya is about the same as last year’s, and Duke’s only losses without Whitehead have come in blowouts or to Kansas so it’s hard to speculate he’d have made the difference—but the team’s only returning contributor missing four games and three in the thick of the conference slate isn’t great, and Whitehead’s been a good player when healthy. It’s a possible explanation, but everybody deals with injuries. This team should still be better than it is.
The fifth is that Duke is, in the absence of Mike Krzyzewski, a difficult place to coach. This might be true. Duke’s brand could fade and without its figurehead, it could become an echo of a power rather than a power itself. Unfortunately for those of us who wouldn’t mind this coming to pass, it’s something that should take a long time, and it should bear itself out more in the form of middling recruiting than through underperformance. Maybe you could get a Texas football argument going that the place is too distracting and that Krzyzewski had a special talent for keeping players focused, but the argument that Duke is just fading to the natural place for a small elite school in North Carolina is a few years away from holding much weight.
Where does that leave things, then? Maybe there’s a hint of the fifth explanation, and maybe the third and fourth hold some truth. But we’re probably left with the first or the second. Duke isn’t having a terrible season. Duke will probably make the tournament. But Duke is having a bad season by Duke’s standards and relative to Duke’s reasonable expectations for this team. That probably comes back to Scheyer.
Duke’s Bubble Situation
Duke may be 37th in KenPom, but they’re 29th in NET, and KPI/BPI/SOR/Sagarin are all on the NET side of KenPom if not even higher than the NCAA’s organizing metric. Duke’s average rating projects it somewhere in 8 or 9-seed territory at the moment, and all seven of its losses sitting in Q1 (that’s the nice thing about losing on the road) probably pushes it up. Our “lite” model had Duke projected to finish as a 7-seed entering last night, and I’d guess our full model would have Duke in an even better position. It was a bad loss because of its margin and its appearance, but Duke’s median result right now probably puts it at about a 7-seed.
If the wheels don’t fall off, the team will make the tournament, and the remaining schedule sets them up such that their median record from here is probably 5-4 or 6-3, meaning they have room for losses to Virginia, UNC, and Syracuse (all on the road) plus an ACC tournament loss without even dropping from that 7-line if everyone else behaves. On the back of the envelope, I’d take that to mean that they’d need to either lose those games badly, finish 2-6 (beating only Notre Dame and Louisville), or drop a very bad one to become a bubble team. They aren’t a lock, but they’re pretty darn safe, and that’s without even getting into the question of what the committee does with big brands (it lets them in).
The State of the Big 12 Race
We wrote Iowa State off in the Big 12 race after the collapse in Lubbock, but I must begrudgingly admit that they’re still in it (begrudgingly because it makes the loss hurt worse; if they’d just held on by a hair they might be the favorites right now). Here’s how KenPom projects the final standings after Kansas held off Texas last night in Lawrence:
- Texas: 12-6
- Iowa State: 11-7
- Kansas: 11-7
- Baylor: 10-8
- TCU: 10-8
- Kansas State: 10-8
- Oklahoma State: 9-9
- West Virginia: 7-11
- Oklahoma: 5-13
- Texas Tech: 4-14
That doesn’t account for tiebreakers, but it shows about the same projection for every team aside from OU and Tech from here: Texas should go 4-3. Kansas should go 4-3. The other six should go 4-4. It’s comical in its simplicity, but that’s the Big 12, right? It’s good and it’s deep but it doesn’t have a great top tier.
Eliminating Oklahoma State and West Virginia for our brains’ sakes, that leaves us with six schools. Between the six, the only completed season series are Iowa State/Kansas (split), Texas/Kansas State (split), and Kansas/Kansas State (split). Iowa State has the misfortune of still having to play West Virginia twice (West Virginia has gotten back on track), while TCU has finished that series. For relevant road wins in unfinished series, Kansas/Baylor/Texas have all survived Morgantown, Texas survived Stillwater, Iowa State won in Fort Worth, TCU and Kansas State won in Waco, TCU won in Lawrence, and Texas and Kansas State did the reverse split where each won on the road but that really doesn’t matter. The summary of all this is that if everybody “holds serve,” winning home games against the top eight in the league and home or road games against the bottom two, the final standings will look as follows:
- Texas: 13-5
- TCU: 12-6
- Kansas State: 12-6
- Iowa State: 11-7
- Kansas: 11-7
- Baylor: 10-8
- Oklahoma State: 10-8
- West Virginia: 7-11
- Oklahoma: 3-15
- Texas Tech: 1-17
Texas, then, retains the best path, and while TCU and K-State’s paths are good they’re starting from tougher territory, both in terms of their place in the standings and their health (TCU) and ability (Kansas State). Iowa State and Kansas will have to win on the road, get help, or both. But you know who still has to go to Austin? Kansas. And they do it on March 4th, the last day of the regular season. With the bench playing so much better last night, it would be among the least surprising scenarios if Texas and Kansas entered the season finale at 12-5 and 11-6 and everyone else eliminated. There’s a long way to go, but that looks like where this is headed.
(If TCU grabs another win tonight up in Manhattan, K-State is done and the top of the league should look the hell out.)
What’s the Deal With UConn?
Even with UConn losing six of its last ten games, even with UConn dropping a game at home to NIT bubbler St. John’s, even with UConn struggling to put away Georgetown on Saturday on the road…
The Huskies are sixth in KenPom.
We say often that KenPom is the best measure available of how good a team is on any given day. We’ve mentioned it in every section today, I think. Is it right on UConn, though?
The safe answer is “yes,” and that this is scheduling, and that UConn will finish fifth in the Big East but only because of two bad losses, but something to remember is that KenPom is calibrated to change at the optimum average pace. If something changes within a team, their real shift in ability can outpace KenPom’s estimation of said shift.
Tonight, when Marquette comes to Storrs, is yet another huge test. If the Huskies are as mediocre as they’ve been playing, their drop will at some point accelerate, partially from reaching tighter packs on their way down. Lose tonight, and this could be the moment that happens. Win, though, and we may have another underappreciated top team alongside Creighton in the Big East. Win, and the Big East Tournament favorite might ultimately come from the 4/5 matchup on the second day.
**
What’s happening tonight:
College Basketball (the big one)
- 6:30 PM EST: Marquette @ UConn (FS1)
College Basketball (the good ones)
- 6:30 PM EST: Rutgers @ Indiana (BTN)
- 7:00 PM EST: Auburn @ Texas A&M (ESPN2)
- 9:00 PM EST: TCU @ Kansas State (ESPNU)
- 9:00 PM EST: Arkansas @ Kentucky (ESPN)
- 9:00 PM EST: Maryland @ Michigan State (ESPN2)
- 10:30 PM EST: Nevada @ New Mexico (FS1)
College Basketball (others of interest)
- 7:00 PM EST: North Carolina @ Wake Forest (ESPN)
- 9:00 PM EST: N.C. State @ Virginia (ACCN)
NBA (best game, which is the Bulls!)
- 8:00 PM EST: Bulls @ Memphis (League Pass)
NHL (best game)
- 7:00 PM EST: Colorado @ Pittsburgh (ESPN+)
