In 2020, Butler was at one point 15-1 and ranked 4th in the nation by KenPom. They finished 22-9, ranked 25th.
In 2021, Tennessee was at one point 7-0 and ranked 6th in the nation by KenPom. They finished 18-9, ranked 28th.
In 2022, Purdue was at one point 12-1 and ranked 3rd in the nation by KenPom. They finished 29-8, ranked 13th.
In 2023, UConn was at one point 12-0 and ranked 1st in the nation by KenPom. Since then, they’ve gone 2-5, though they’re currently still ranked 6th.
Whether UConn is collapsing or finding its level is a matter of fair debate. On one hand, they’ve been pretty thoroughly exposed, and their last two losses have been downright bad. On the other, last night’s came without the program’s top two coaches, and it came by a point on the road against a team on the bubble. Really, there’s just one inexcusable loss on the team sheet right now. UConn is still a Big East contender, even at 4-5 in league play. Either way, collapses by teams like UConn aren’t unusual. They happen all the time.
KenPom is a very accurate measurement of how good every team is at any single moment in time. It is not necessarily the best projection of how good every team will be in two weeks’ time, or in two months’ time, or over the whole of a college basketball season. That isn’t a knock on KenPom, or on Ken Pomeroy: The system is doing what it’s designed to do, predicting individual games in the heat of the moment. But there’s an idea that KenPom is static, and that idea is wrong. There’s an idea that future deviations from current KenPom rankings are entirely random, and that’s probably wrong as well. We’ve talked about this with our simulations before—running them “hot,” with ratings changing in accord with the results of single games, might be overly aggressive, but you should at least run them “lukewarm.” These things aren’t static, and we might even be able to predict how much better or worse teams will get.
So, let’s try to predict. Going through the KenPom top ten, let’s predict where each of these teams will land.
#1: Houston
I may be overweighting Houston’s offensive no-show against Villanova last March, but it’s hard to tell with these guys. They’re definitely the best team in the country right now, but they’re also hot offensively and haven’t played a team who currently has a top-20 defense since they played Alabama. They lost that game. To a bunch of freshman. At home. After leading big with minutes remaining.
Overall, my bet with Houston isn’t that they aren’t good. It’s that they aren’t consistent enough, and that this currently 8th-ranked offense is their high-water mark.
Prediction? They’ll finish 2nd in KenPom but make the Final Four.
#2: Tennessee
Tennessee could be the answer to our titular question. The Vols overperformed initial expectations, but at this point only hold notable wins over Kansas on a neutral court, Maryland on a neutral court, and Mississippi State on the road. That’s a rough list, especially when paired with the road loss to Arizona, the loss to Colorado in Nashville, and the loss to Kentucky at home. What Tennessee did during its rise was suffocate mediocre offenses. Maybe they’ll do that well enough, but maybe they’ll take some shots when five of their last six conference games come against competitive teams.
Prediction? They’ll finish in the KenPom top ten, but not the top five.
#3: UCLA
UCLA may be peaking right now, but what’s so exciting for fans of this team is that there have been no really bad games. They lost by single digits to Illinois and Baylor, two decent-not-great teams. They only beat USC and Washington State by a possession each, but each of those was in their opponent’s home city. Besides those two, their wins have all come by nine or more, and they’re lacking great wins but their veteran core and lack of glaring weaknesses is encouraging. I don’t know that they’ll blow enough teams out to actually take the #1 ranking, but if pushed right now, they’d be my national championship pick, and being so much closer to Houston than Kansas in KenPom’s adjusted efficiency, I guess that’s my prediction: UCLA will get better from here, win the national championship, and finish ranked 1st in every system and every poll.
#4: Alabama
Nate Oats’s teams haven’t been all that inconsistent, which is encouraging for Alabama fans in a big way. Last year’s group faded at the end, but that wasn’t out of line with who they’d been all year. There are some aspects of this team that provoke questions about longevity, but so long as durability or conditioning doesn’t become an issue, the issues—youth and turnovers, mainly—point more towards a single devastating loss than a disintegration. I don’t know that they’ll finish top-five, but top-six seems attainable.
#5: Purdue
Oh, Purdue. The defense is a lot better this year, and the offense is still great. Matt Painter is also a very good coach. They seem like the kind of team Houston would eat alive, and that may be what happens. But they don’t seem to have any serious competition within the Big Ten, and they’ll win some games huge. The defense isn’t good enough yet, but an Elite Eight trip seems reasonable enough, and alongside Houston, UCLA, and one to come, they’re among our picks to end up in the KenPom top five.
#6: UConn
Ok, maybe UConn is the answer to who’s the next UConn. They’re still holding on to a spot comfortably in the top ten, but they’ve slid a long way in rating and now the pack’s catching up to them. They’re favored as of now in every remaining Big East game but one, counting the conference tournament, but they’ve also lost five of six, and the win in there wasn’t the most inspiring performance ever. Has another national contender lost as big a chunk of games as these guys? Even Adama Sanogo’s place in the national conversation is slipping fast. They’re finishing outside the top ten, and the Sweet Sixteen might be their ceiling. Recent trends aren’t necessarily indications of future trends, but this one is.
#7: Kansas
We heavily believe in Kansas. They had a weird start to the year, playing without their head coach and coming off a national championship followed by a lot of turnover. They’re calm, they’re collected, they don’t have too many horrible flaws. Put them in the Final Four, alongside UCLA and Houston and some wildcard who’ll probably materialize because of chaos. We don’t think they’ll win it, but we see them doing enough to finish in the KenPom top five. In order, we’d say it’ll go UCLA, Houston, Kansas, Purdue, a different wildcard (someone like Gonzaga or Texas or Creighton), and then Alabama in the six-hole.
#8: Saint Mary’s
This is another good answer to the question. These guys lost to Washington, New Mexico, and Colorado State—none on the road—and we’re supposed to believe their recent surge is a trend that’ll continue? They’re at the high-water mark, Gonzaga is still winning the WCC, this defense is good but it’s peaking and the offense is likewise peaking at a much worse spot.
#9: Gonzaga
It’s not just the guards on Gonzaga who play poor defense. Drew Timme doesn’t seem to be trying down there. He’s picking up some blocked shots, but Julian Strawther is out-rebounding him by a big number, and remember when Zach Edey dropped 23 points on Timme in Portland? On EvanMiya, Timme grades out as a replacement-level defender within the whole of Division I. Drew Timme is the individual defensive equivalent, numerically, of what Harvard is as a team.
That offense, though. Damn. This is last year Purdue. Virtually any team has a chance to score 100 on them if the game gets fast enough, but good luck outscoring them. Eventually, the shooters will have a bad enough night (or Timme will play someone like Eddie Lampkin and the matchup will look like grown man vs. podcaster, which is literally what it will be), and Gonzaga will go down. If the offense does well enough before that disappointing exit, though? They could get back in the KenPom top five. They could finish there.
#10: Virginia
Virginia is in men’s basketball what Cincinnati was in football in the fall of 2021. They’re a good team playing in a bad league, and they deserve all the plaudits they’ll get, but there isn’t a great reason to believe in them to go all the way. They, like Gonzaga, have a ceiling inside the top five, but it’s hard to believe they’d be good enough to win the national championship without a ton of upsets elsewhere.
This all said, if Reece Beekman had a better game against Houston, UVA might’ve won it. And Tony Bennett can, like everyone on this list besides maybe Dan Hurley, coach. (I view Rick Barnes as a good coach who’s been in some sneakily bad situations.) So maybe we shouldn’t count them out.
Overall, the predictions are these: #1 UCLA, #2 Houston, #3 Kansas, #4 Purdue (but only Elite Eight), #5 Gonzaga (but only Elite Eight), #6 Alabama, #7 Tennessee, #8 Virginia, and then teams currently outside the top ten in the #9 and #10 spots.
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Viewing schedule for the day, second screen rotation in italics:
College Basketball (three-course meal)
- 6:30 PM EST: Rutgers @ Michigan State (FS1)
- 8:30 PM EST: Indiana @ Illinois (FS1)
- 10:30 PM EST: UCLA @ Arizona State (FS1)
College Basketball (snacks)
- 7:00 PM EST: Purdue @ Minnesota (ESPN2)
- 9:00 PM EST: Loyola Marymount @ Gonzaga (WCCN)
- 11:00 PM EST: Saint Mary’s @ Pepperdine (ESPNU)
NBA (best game, plus the Bulls)
- 3:00 PM EST: Bulls vs. Detroit (NBA TV)
- 7:30 PM EST: Golden State @ Boston (TNT)
NHL (best game)
- 7:00 PM EST: Winnipeg @ Toronto (ESPN+)
Premier League
- 3:00 PM EST: Tottenham @ Manchester City (Peacock)
Australian Open
- 7:00 PM EST & Onwards: Intermittent Broadcasts on ESPN+ & ESPN2
