A few weeks ago, we wrote on this website that the contest to be the best team in college basketball consisted of two teams: UConn and Purdue. As it goes with superspeedway racing, we now have a few contenders catching that lead pack.
Superspeedway stock car racing might be a good metaphor for the college basketball season. If you’re not Daytona-inclined, the premise of superspeedway races is that there’s some benefit to running up front throughout the bulk of the race, but what really counts is the dash to the finish, one marred by stops, starts, and sheet metal* melees in which even far lesser competitors than the best have a real chance to make their dreams come true. Is it a fair way to conduct a competition? Oh gosh. No. Not at all. But it’s entertaining, and often—just as it goes with cars and drivers—some of the best coaches and players do ultimately win. You may not get a true champion, but it’s usually someone believable.
(*Fine, it’s a composite these days.)
For a long time, this worked well for college basketball. The competitive balance was imbalanced enough for titans to exist. It’s not working badly right now, either. UConn as a 4-seed? That was a little silly, the kind of thing you get when subconsciously using an old tool (the AP Poll) on a new material (modern college basketball, with high competitive balance and therefore more shuffling in the minds of dramatic reactors). By the end of the tournament, we believed UConn was the best team in the country, and for most of the year, they were a reasonable answer for “one of the best teams in the country” as well. In college basketball, that’s usually all we ask.
Still, there’s a streak of uselessness in conducting this exercise, in asking who the best teams are in the sport. We can name them all we want, but it only kind of matters. The link between best team and champion is lesser in college basketball than it is in college football, the NFL, and the NBA, and arguably lesser than in the NHL and Major League Baseball as well. Still, we have the clearest pack of best teams we’ve had since 2021. Kenpom agrees. The AP Poll agrees. Casual commentators and earnest commentators alike agree. Let’s enjoy this consensus. The four (or five, or six) categories at the top:
Fine, Not Best: Duke, Baylor, Marquette, Kansas
Would Kansas be ranked as highly as they’re often ranked if they wore Texas Tech’s uniforms or played their home games in Provo? Of course not. There’s a little bit of merit to the practice—we know and trust their studs—but they are not their ceiling. Duke? Talented, but that’s about all you can say. Baylor? A whole lot of fun to watch, and capable of outscoring teams in a raw footrace, but not a complete basketball team. Marquette? A respectable team with a great culture whose talent disadvantages occasionally show, like they did on Saturday when UConn bodied them from start to finish in Hartford. Like these others, Marquette has it in them to beat anybody. But we’re not at the point of expecting it.
Good, Not Best: Iowa State, Illinois, UNC
The consistency is mostly there from Iowa State and Illinois. The issue is more the ceiling for those two. Fun teams to ride in their conference tournaments, and definitely capable of a Final Four, but not teams who fully belong in top-five matchups. Top-ten teams. Which is a great thing to be.
UNC is another sort of team. The consistency isn’t really there, and the ceiling isn’t either, but it almost is? They’re a better version of Kansas with a lower roof.
It’s worth examining the reasons behind that UNC–Kansas comparison, and I’m not sure I understand them fully. What I’d offer, though, is this: Hubert Davis is not as good a coach as Bill Self. The Dean Dome is not as strong an advantage as Allen Fieldhouse (this is not a knock on Chapel Hill—Allen Fieldhouse is on its own plane, and the kenpom numbers back up this comparison). UNC is not as strong defensively as Kansas.
With this last one, the reason for why this lowers the UNC ceiling is this: It’s easy to have a good day on offense. It’s easy to make a ton of shots now and then in college basketball. Maybe I’m off-base here, but my hunch is that defense is more consistent than offense in the college game, especially if you adjust for the energy surrounding each game. Armando Bacot, RJ Davis, and Harrison Ingram are all better offensive players than Hunter Dickinson, Dajuan Harris, and Kevin McCullar. McCullar, Dickinson, and Harris are better than their counterparts on the defensive end. We could get into character accusations here, but to poke a gentler (and more reasonable) bear: Bill Self is an effective disciplinarian, and discipline has a broader definition than “punishment.” There’s a reason Hunter Dickinson keeps his mouth shut in Lawrence. It’s possible that discipline is extending to his defensive effort (Dickinson’s defensive BPR on EvanMiya is almost a full point better than it was last year, and a full point is a lot).
That’s a long way of saying: Kansas’s defense will usually be better than UNC’s. Sometimes, Kansas’s offense can match UNC’s best as well.
The SEC Three: Tennessee, Auburn, Alabama
We thought we’d established some separation here, and then Kentucky beat Auburn in the Jungle. Head-to-head, Tennessee beat Alabama in Knoxville while Bama and Auburn split their home-and-home (Tennessee still has to go to Tuscaloosa; Auburn still has to go to Tennessee), so we still have no answers there.
Alabama is the weirdest of the three—they get a lot of attention for their inconsistent offensive recipe and not a lot for playing atrocious defense compared to other top-ten teams—but all three exist in this in-between space where they are not among the best but at least one of the three is probably better than Iowa State, Illinois, and UNC. We still kind of think it’s Auburn. Dalton Knecht is the most fun player in the league, but Johni Broome is the best (and defense, again, might be a more consistent trait than offense).
The Best: UConn, Houston, Purdue, Arizona
There is minor stratification within this group, which is the reason for our little parenthetical way up above. UConn has earned the right to be called the best. Arizona is certainly the least among these four. We have little concern about Purdue, but as with Houston, there are valid questions there, and unlike with UConn, they’re being asked quite loudly right now.
The deal with Arizona is that we no longer know them very well. We knew them earlier in the year. They played Duke, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Purdue, Alabama, and FAU all before Christmas (going 4–2 in those games). But since then, they’ve been playing late at night and mostly against non-tournament teams. We know Caleb Love. We remember Oumar Ballo and Pelle Larsson and Kylan Boswell from last year. We’re vaguely familiar with Keshad Johnson from his work during San Diego State’s tournament run. But Arizona is not as main a character as these other three programs. Tommy Lloyd is newer to our consciousness than Dan Hurley, Kelvin Sampson, and Matt Painter.
We know Arizona has great guard play. We know they’re strong rebounders. We know their offense is prolific and fast and fun, predicated on ball movement and getting to the rim. We know that what beat Arizona in the bad losses (the ones at Stanford and Oregon State) was outrageously hot shooting. We’re a little worried about perimeter defense. We aren’t sure we trust Caleb Love.
Arizona is a little like Gonzaga in years when the Zags are not preseason championship favorites. We got to know them, but they’ve spent the last two months in training camp, overshadowed by the ACC and Big 12 on ESPN and the Big East and Big Ten on Fridays and the SEC’s biweekly top-of-the-conference clashes in front of boisterous crowds. They never left the front pack on kenpom. They’ve been taking care of the ball better. But not until they swept Utah and Colorado on the road two weekends ago did we realize how good the Wildcats currently are. They’re less of a known quantity. Their identity, as a program, is still in a developmental stage. This is all mostly because UCLA is rebuilding and the other good Pac-12 teams aren’t quite good enough to give us the regular tests we seek.
The deal with Purdue is that Zach Edey is the best college basketball player we’ve seen since Frank Kaminsky, if not someone even further in the past, and that the guard play is enormously better than it was last year, and that Lance Jones adds a take–no–shit element to that guard corps that was and remains desperately needed. The problem with all of this is that when Purdue does lose, confirmation bias rages, and we have seen so many noteworthy Purdue losses these last three years that we readily put this Purdue into those boxes.
The worst part about this pattern is that it might be reasonable. We might be right to box Purdue up like this. We don’t know. Losing to North Texas, Saint Peter’s, and Fairleigh Dickinson is a sample size of three, one which conveniently overlooks how in one of those years, Purdue spent the first tournament weekend beating the best version of Texas we’ve seen since the good Rick Barnes years. But small samples are what ultimately count in college basketball, and the reminders of Purdue’s mortality are present enough for us that we wonder how large they loom in the minds of 20-year-old basketball players like Braden Smith.
To zoom back out: Purdue’s losses came at Northwestern in overtime, at Nebraska by 16, and at Ohio State by a handful. The common thread through the three was Purdue getting outgunned, more specifically due to an absence of forced turnovers. Purdue is great at preventing second chances. It’s great at not allowing free throws. But Purdue gives opponents their shots from the floor. If the opponent makes them, Purdue’s in trouble.
What kind of team beats Purdue? One that plays its best game on a night Purdue isn’t quite its best. A bright side for Purdue is that it looks likely to play its first four tournament games in Indianapolis and Detroit, two places unlikely to become a home court of any sort for their opponents. But the simplicity of the recipe is troubling. They’ve beaten teams’ best games, but they allow them to happen, and they’ll inevitably have to weather Zach Edey foul trouble before this is all said and done.
The deal with Houston is that they might be frontrunners, but that if they are, damn, do they frontrun well. Houston’s lost three games this year, all in conference play, all on the road, twice by four or fewer points. Still, it’s hard to get the image of that third loss—the one at Kansas—out of our heads. It’s hard to get the image of that Miami loss last year out of our heads. It’s hard to get the image of the Villanova loss in 2022 out of our heads. It’s hard to get the image of the Baylor loss in 2021 out of our heads.
Houston’s issue is not so much the offense drying up—though that did doom them in Ames, and it was a problem in the past—as it’s that sometimes, their opponent can deal with their shit. Houston rattles teams. Houston attacks teams. Houston is venomous and violent. Sometimes, teams are unbothered by this sort of behavior. Norchad Omier grabbed ten rebounds on the defensive end alone last March. Tre King stepped into the moment last night and hit a trio of threes to keep Iowa State in the ballgame.
On the aggregate, Houston is the best team in the country. But in a six-straight situation, Houston has enough specific vulnerabilities that they’re vulnerable in total. This is probably an overrated quality of theirs, one born of the constancy of their national presence the last few years (kind of like the NFL thing where we say quarterbacks “can’t win the big one” until they do). But it’s real enough that we can’t not monitor it. Is Houston better than Purdue? Yes. Would we pick Purdue to beat Houston? Yes. This is the deal with Houston.
The deal with UConn is that they’re the reigning national champions, they’ve only lost twice all season, they haven’t lost since Christmas, they’re 14–1 in the second-best conference in America, they’re undefeated on home and neutral courts, and they just beat the everloving shit out of Marquette, a fine–not–best team in its own right. Donovan Clingan is a menace on the offensive glass and one of the most defensively impactful players in the country. Stephon Castle is a one-and-done potential lottery pick who sometimes functions as a pseudo-sixth man. Tristen Newton is a fringe player of the year candidate—a candidate for runner up, we should say—and he grades out on EvanMiya as the third-best player on this team. UConn is good enough that we are past the point of praising Dan Hurley and onto praising Dan Hurley’s staff, a hive of X’s-and-O’s wizardry seemingly content in its assortment of specialist roles.
UConn is good enough that we don’t know if they’re vulnerable. If they are, though, we’ve seen the two ways it can happen, and there’s one other very pertinent possibility.
Kansas beat UConn by playing clean basketball and making shots. The game was in Lawrence, and it was a slow-paced affair, but this was an early Johnny Furphy game headlined by Kansas shooting 9-of-14 from deep, Kevin McCullar and KJ Adams shooting a combined 12-of-15 at the free throw line, and Hunter Dickinson blocking four shots. One way to beat UConn? Put four of the best individual players in the country on the floor and get a good game from all of them (Dajuan Harris didn’t make many shots, but I don’t know that you could call his a bad game overall). UConn’s defense can be great, but great offense can beat it.
Seton Hall beat UConn by pulling down half of the available offensive rebounds. This is a legitimate weakness for UConn. They are a little bit bad on the defensive glass. Thankfully for UConn, it’s not like all three of the other teams on this list are elite offensive rebounding teams or anything…
Finally, the theoretical: While the Big East is a great basketball conference, and I wouldn’t say it’s *not* physical, nobody in the Big East plays like Houston. UConn is not familiar with teams who want to physically kick your ass. They might be fine! Tristen Newton is great with the ball. Samson Johnson is a big, big man. But while Cam Spencer relishes verbal combat, I’m not sure how he’d like getting clubbed across the wrists by Jamal Shead. Houston has its issue. We’re well familiar with Houston’s issue. But while Purdue might beat UConn the Kansas way, Houston might beat UConn the Houston way. We just don’t know how UConn will react if they run into that zealous of an opponent.
Kirk Schulz Sure Loves to Give Interviews
Those who decide such things committed today to a College Football Playoff with five automatic bids and seven at-large bids this season and next. Kirk Schulz told Yahoo all about it.
The quote that’s getting run is Schulz saying, “My commissioner tells me there was an idea floated of a single league getting four [automatic qualifiers] into the playoff,” which—as you hear this from us—is a he-said, he-said, he-said, he-said, he-said situation. Six people here, from whoever allegedly floated this proposal to the commissioner (Kliavkoff?) to Schulz to Yahoo to us to you. Granted, we’re quoting Schulz as Yahoo quoted him, but that still leaves three people saying it before it gets to you. Which is to say: Don’t worry about this.
A thing about Kirk Schulz is that he talks a lot to the press. Why shouldn’t he? He has very few stakeholders. Washington State and Oregon State are basically independents, and they’re very much on the open market. But what happens when someone talks a lot about things we care about and gives a lot of detail in that talking is that they dictate a large share of the narrative. Kirk Schulz is going to play almost no role in the future shape of the College Football Playoff. He was an important vote-caster today. That’s it. Believe things when they come from Greg Sankey or the Big Ten.
(There was a brief report today saying WSU and OSU were going to get some sort of revenue boost from the CFP, though not full P5 money, but it appears to have been retracted and it looks like the bigger revenue distribution discussions will happen tomorrow anyway.)
The Rest
College basketball:
- We talked a lot about college basketball above, but three more things: First, I was excited by how Iowa State hung in there last night and kept answering Houston’s runs. Second, UConn plays at Creighton tonight and that should be one of the environments of the year. Third, we updated our NIT Bracketology yesterday. Here’s the latest on it. Working on automating the process further so we can give you more detail (and so that we can still do Notes on days we update the bracketology without considering becoming drug abusers).
The NBA:
- Was All-Star Weekend worth it for 1) the Tyrese Haliburton moments and 2) our annual celebration of Mac McClung? I say yes.
The NHL:
- I didn’t catch any of the Stadium Series, but in indoor hockey, the Wild’s scoring flurry yesterday was something else, and Jaromir Jagr’s jersey retirement was cool on Sunday. Rangers/Stars tonight at MSG.
NASCAR:
- The Daytona 500 was oddly clean, which set up for a great finish that was then devastatingly curtailed by the caution coming out when it did. No fault to NASCAR, and credit to William Byron, but the Daytona 500 is such a fragile thing, and after 24 hours of waiting we almost got something great.
Chicago, and more Iowa State:
- The Blackhawks beat the Senators on Saturday, breaking the losing streak on a Jason Dickinson goal late in the third period. They then lost to the Hurricanes last night, with Connor Bedard getting into it with Canes goalie Spencer Martin. I do not purport to follow the NHL (or the NBA!) as closely as I follow college basketball and college football, but it seems the Hurricanes always have somebody getting into it with somebody else.
- Nathan Scheelhaase is leaving Ames to become the offensive coordinator for the Rams. The carousel has not yet reached its point of rest.
Apologies if we missed anything important. We’ll have more tomorrow. Jeff Passan reported on MLB expansion today. We’re salivating already.
