Tag: Basketball

Nine of the teams ranked third through 14th on my last ballot lost this week. That made it tough to sort this week’s Top 25, but it’s not hard up top. There is a clear top three, and No. 1 isn’t a difficult decision either.

Auburn continues to perform at an elite level in a league that’s viewed as head and shoulders above everyone else.

Ken Pomeroy has a trusty tool for comparing the strength of conferences across seasons: the adjusted efficiency margin of a team that would be expected to go .500 in conference play in that league. Currently, this year’s SEC has the best rating in the database, which dates back to 1997. And that got me to thinking it’s possible Auburn is doing something historically awesome, considering the Tigers are undefeated in this stacked league.

Let’s compare Auburn’s start to the eventual champions of the seven leagues with the eight adjusted efficiency margins higher than 18 since 1997. The first record in the second and third columns is where each champions was eight conference games in, and the second is how it finished.

The best comps for Auburn seem to be 2004 Duke and 2010 Kansas, which both were both undefeated in the best conference in college basketball that year through eight games. Both entered the NCAA Tournament ranked as the top team at KenPom (Auburn is currently No. 1), and neither won the NCAA Tournament.

I’m betting the SEC and Auburn perform very well in this year’s NCAA Tournament, but neither team nor league success is a sure thing. The ACC flamed out in the 1997 NCAA Tournament despite being loaded with talent that year: Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison at UNC, Tim Duncan at Wake Forest. Duke didn’t have its usual handful of future NBA stars but did have Trajan Langdon, who was a great college player. Five of the league’s nine teams finished in the top 12 at KenPom. This was a very, very good league. But the ACC went 8-6 in the NCAA Tournament.

That, plus a dominant Kansas team from 2010 getting Farokhmaneshed in the second round by Northern Iowa is a reminder that you should not always judge a team and/or league by what happens in the NCAA Tournament.

Reminder: Below my Top 25, I give nuggets on an unspecified number of teams each week. So when a team appears in the table but not in the text below, that’s why. Scroll on for notes on Duke, Alabama, Purdue, Texas Tech, Michigan State, Missouri, Arizona and UCLA

2. Duke

Duke’s length can make you feel claustrophobic in the half court, and North Carolina struggled to get quality shots early on in Saturday’s runaway win for the Blue Devils. It’s been written about ad nauseam that every player in Duke’s rotation is 6-5 or taller, but it’s not just the length that makes Duke’s switching scheme work. Combine the strength and physicality of guards Sion James and Kon Knueppel with the lateral quickness of Khaman Maluach and Maliq Brown, plus Cooper Flagg’s ability to play safety and cover a ton of ground, and you’re cooking with gasoline. But James and Knueppel are the two who play an underappreciated role in making it all work.

To understand why the length/physicality combo matters for the guards, watch what happened when either James or Knueppel switched onto a center against the Tar Heels.

When Jalen Washington rolled on this early trip, Flagg was tasked as the tag to help against the roller. Elliot Cadeau was reading Flagg and assumed that he was going to creep into the paint, which meant Cadeau could hit Seth Trimble with a skip pass for a wide-open 3.

Flagg got the steal because he knew he could stay more in the gap as soon as he saw that James was in position and didn’t need any help. The trust that James could fend for himself freed up Flagg for the interception.

Later in the half, when Knueppel switched onto Ven-Allen Lubin, the automatic read was to go to the post against a guard. That’s what UNC did. But does this look like a mismatch?

When James and Knueppel are both off the floor, Duke’s defense allows 99.2 points per 100 possessions, compared to 87.1 when both are on the floor, per CBB Analytics. And when you put them with Flagg and Maluach, that grouping is plus-115 in 196 minutes and holding opponents to 84.8 points per 100 possessions. I wrote earlier this season about the impact of coach Jon Scheyer’s move to put James into the starting point guard role, and the numbers and film continue to justify that decision.

3. Alabama

One thing that makes Alabama’s offense so good: Nate Oats will find a play that works against an opponent and keep going back to it. That approach helped the Crimson Tide win at Mississippi State on Wednesday.

The play was a pick-and-roll with Mark Sears and Grant Nelson, combined with an exit screen on the left side of the floor for a shooter and Chris Youngblood spotted up on the right side of the floor. Alabama ran it early, and Nelson got an easy dunk:

Coming out of a timeout on the last possession of the half, Oats went to it again and got the same result:

Now fast-forward to the last minute of the game, with Alabama again coming out of a timeout, ahead by just one:

Nelson ended up missing those free throws, leaving the door open for the Bulldogs, but this is why the Crimson Tide are so hard to guard. Their shooters make you focus so much on defending the 3  that a roller can slip to the basket and get to the rim three times on the same play. After two games in a row finishing over 40 percent from 3, the Crimson Tide are now shooting 36.9 percent from deep after a cold start in nonconference play. They’ve been the most efficient offense in SEC play, are up to No. 2 in adjusted efficiency nationally and just seem to be hitting their rhythm with Youngblood finally finding his place — he made seven 3s in Starkville.

8. Purdue

Braden Smith is having one of the most impressive seasons for a point guard in recent memory. Smith currently leads college basketball in assist rate (46.5), which is assists divided by the field goals made by the player’s teammates while he’s on the floor. KenPom tracks assist rate leaders going back to 2004, and if Smith were to finish with his current rate, he’d rank sixth in that time among high-major point guards.

And when you measure him against those other five using other categories, you could argue Smith is impacting winning more than anyone above him.

Smith got a first-team nod on The Athletic’s midseason All-America squads last week, and if he keeps this up or anything close to it, he’d be a lock to make the Associated Press first team at the end of the season, which would lead to a cool accomplishment for the Boilermakers. Purdue would become just the 12th school to produce an AP first-team All-American in three straight seasons without it being the same player for all three years. Adding to the unlikelihood of the feat for Purdue: Both Zach Edey and Smith were three-star, sub-top-150 recruits coming out of high school.

10. Texas Tech

Not only did Texas Tech break Houston’s nation-leading 32-game home winning streak and do it without leading scorer JT Toppin and coach Grant McCasland — both of whom were ejected three minutes, 50 seconds in after Toppin accidentally kicked Joseph Tugler in the groin — the Red Raiders adjusted their game plan to do something you just don’t do against Houston: going at the Cougars in isolation.

Prior to Saturday, Houston was allowing 0.584 points per possession in isolation this season, according to Synergy. Only once in the last two seasons had anyone scored in double digits in iso plays against the Cougars, and that was Texas Tech, with 10 points on isos last season. No team this year had scored more than seven.

The Red Raiders scored 17 points on 12 isolation plays for a 1.42 points per possession success rate. They picked out matchups they liked, spread the floor and went at the Cougars. Look at the intentional spacing here with three shooters off the ball:

Texas Tech’s offense excels in transition and pick-and-roll, but without Toppin and going against an elite defense, this why-would-you-try-it-against-Houston strategy ended up winning the game. Texas Tech went a perfect 4 for 4 in overtime, scoring nine points on iso plays, including six points for Chance McMillian. And get this: The senior guard had scored only five points on iso plays all season.

13. Michigan State

Michigan State’s 13-game winning streak ended on Saturday at USC, and while the run was impressive, it was somewhat aided by the schedule. Since losing to Memphis at the Maui Invitational, Michigan State has played only two top-40 teams in KenPom net rating, and its only win all season against a team currently in my top 25 was against Illinois at home.

Over the final 10 games of the regular season, the Spartans play eight top-40 teams, including seven teams currently in my top 25. No need to apologize for winning, but we should get a much clearer picture of how good the Spartans are over the next five weeks.

14. Missouri

Mizzou is winning by leaning heavily on the 3-ball in conference play, with an SEC-high 3-point rate of 46.2 percent and an average of 10.2 3s per game in conference games. It has helped that Caleb Grill has turned into a modern-day Reggie Miller. Grill is shooting 49 percent from 3 on the year and has made 21 of his 40 shots from deep over the last five games.

Grill is so hard to guard because he can shoot on the move and gets it off quickly:

And when he’s spotted up, he’s been automatic, making 8 of those 9 attempts over the last five games — doesn’t matter the distance:

The key for someone with this kind of range and ability to sprint into shots is leg strength. Grill was a high jumper in high school and won the state title, clearing 6-8.

Grill has been on one heck of a journey. I met him six years ago when he was a senior in high school who had suddenly become a coveted recruit after T.J. Otzelberger left South Dakota State, where Grill was committed, for UNLV. Grill went from Iowa State to UNLV to play for Otzelberger, back to Iowa State to follow Otzelberger, then was kicked off the team in 2023 and landed at Mizzou, where he fractured his wrist last season and was granted a medical redshirt for a sixth year. Now he’s one of the most feared shooters in college basketball coming off the bench for the Tigers. That much player movement can leave some skittish, but his college career’s story is getting quite the ending.

18. Arizona

Arizona has become the team everyone thought it would be in the preseason. The Wildcats have cut down on their fouling, and they’ve started shooting and making more 3s with the insertion of Anthony Dell’Orso into the starting lineup. Using Bart Torvik’s sorting tool, here’s a look at the data:

In addition, 6-foot-8 freshman wing Carter Bryant and sophomore 7-footer Henri Veesaar have seen their minutes go up. The offense is thriving, but it feels like the defense could go to another level, especially with Bryant and Veesaar on the floor. Using on-off numbers, they’ve been the Wildcats’ two best defenders.

25. UCLA

This week posed one of the season’s more challenging decisions on who should be No. 25. Let’s do a blind resume test to show my work.

Torvik has a handy tool that gives an average for resume-based metrics (KPI, strength of record and wins above bubble) and then an average for metrics that measure quality (BPI, KenPom and Torvik). I’ve also included the teams’ Quad 1 record and a stat of my creation, which is the wins over teams currently in my top 25. Let’s take a look at the teams in contention this week:

Usually I lean more on the quality metric than the resume, but Team I is in my Top 25 because of its Quad 1 record and its wins over current Top 25 teams. Does Team G deserve the same treatment?

What if I were to tell you that Team C just swept Team G, winning the latest matchup by 26, and has won five in a row? And if Team G were in, that would bump Team C’s WOT25 up to four? Justification for Team C, right?

That’s the conclusion I came to, and why UCLA got the final spot this week.

Here’s who was who: Louisville (Team A), Clemson (B), UCLA (C), Creighton (D), Baylor (E), UConn (F), Oregon (G), Saint Mary’s (H) and Memphis (I).

Dropped out: Oregon, Louisville, Clemson.

Keeping an eye on: Creighton, Baylor, UConn, Saint Mary’s, Drake.

(Photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)