2024-25 predictions: What I got right, and what I got very, very wrong

A look back into the Mind Palace

EDITOR’S NOTE: Meant to share this last week, but forgot. If you are a coach or administrator and would like a deeper analytical look at your roster, system, or schedule, let’s talk. I’m happy to consult where needed and add value where possible. Email statsbywill@gmail.com to get in touch.

For the last few years, I’ve enjoyed looking back at preseason predictions, not as a way of actually getting better at them in the future but simply looking at them and saying “that was good” or “that was bad.” I’ve mentioned this before in this series, but I love reading preseason predictions more than I should. What I decidedly don’t love is when media types (and I’ve been guilty of this before) only remember their hits, not their misses.

My take on exclusively focusing on what you get right is that it makes you a worse observer. If you look at a sheet that always gives you a 100/100, what’s the point of striving to do any better? You’re just throwing darts at the wall and always giving yourself an A+, even if one of the darts ended up five feet from the dartboard and the other sent a patron to the hospital.

So, here’s my offer: I review every preseason prediction I put out on this newsletter to see the things I got right and the things I got really wrong. I think it’s the most fun way to possibly measure it. It doesn’t make me more conservative when October rolls around and it’s prediction season; instead, it makes me want to stand out more from the crowd and see what wild thing I can get right with a little luck. Fun! And challenging. I like both of those things.

I have two ways of measuring success:

1. The actual conference-by-conference previews;

2. The 51 predictions series I do for every season.

The conferences aren’t worth going all the way into; just seeing if I got the right champion (along with where the actual champion was in my preseason rankings) is good enough. I get one point for each correct regular season champion, one for each correct conference tournament champion, and a total of +2 if the same team won both. The 51 predictions series…I don’t know, make up the points yourselves. This is a Whose Line Is It Anyway? fan site.

Also, SUBSCRIBE ABOVE. I have a lot of data analysis coming in the next few weeks with the idea of making the offseason work here in a fun way. How deep can we get into the weeds of roster construction? Are there certain archetypes that transfer up better than others? Can I manage to remember what else I scribbled on a notepad during church service yesterday? We shall see.

Conferences

Power Five

• ACC: Projected champion Duke; actual champion (2x) Duke. +2 points. This was very easy to get right. The major, major whiff here was having Miami top four. I was a big believer in the scoring potential of the roster, but in my defense, should I have known the coach was quiet quitting? Okay, maybe.

• Big East: Projected champion UConn; actual champion (2x) St. John’s. I had St. John’s fifth behind Xavier to begin the year. Oof. I also had Seton Hall a bit too high at 8th; that’s one I’d like to take back. Awful team to watch play basketball.

• Big Ten: Projected champion Purdue; actual champion Michigan State (regular season) and Michigan (tournament). I had MSU second and Michigan fourth, both of which were significantly higher than the average media positioning (MSU 5th, Michigan 9th), so honestly, pretty satisfied. Biggest miss by a mile was Maryland 11th.

• Big 12: Projected champion Houston; actual champion (2x) Houston. +2 points. I had Kansas second, so I won’t peacock too much about not falling for it, but honestly pretty satisfied with how I had all of this: West Virginia 11th vs. 13th in the media poll, BYU 7th vs. 9th, Texas Tech 6th vs. 7th, etc.

• SEC: Projected champion Alabama; actual champion Auburn (regular season) and Florida (tournament). I was WAY, way off on Florida, whose roster makeup confused me in the preseason, and I also missed on Ole Miss. But I am absolutely going to take Tournament Vanderbilt with me through the offseason; one of my best shot-calls. (Also, 4th-place Texas A&M was a good shout.)

Next Five

• American: Projected champion UAB; actual champion (2x) Memphis. I fell for the Memphis offseason drama as a means of them not being good in the actual season, though in my defense, they were extraordinarily lucky as it pertained to scoring margin versus results. Still…a whiff.

• Atlantic 10: Projected champion VCU; actual champion (2x) VCU. +2 points. The media poll and I both had VCU tops, but probably the one I was proudest of (if it makes sense) was having St. Joe’s 7th versus the poll having them third. Like, yes, wildly talented and all that…but what about the Billy Lange tenure said they’d live up to third?

• Missouri Valley: Projected champion Bradley; actual champion (2x) Drake. The funny thing is that Bradley really didn’t underachieve. They were pretty much exactly as good as you would’ve guessed preseason and still got whomped by a Drake team who had the best coaching job of anyone in the league. And hey, I DID say “I may regret only having them fourth” about Drake. I did.

• Mountain West: Projected champion Boise State; actual champion New Mexico (regular season) and Colorado State (tournament). I did have UNM second, so I wasn’t too upset by that, and Colorado State was correctly placed as the fifth-best team for much of the season. But I missed on Utah State (better than expected) and Nevada (considerably worse).

• West Coast: Projected champion Gonzaga; actual champion St. Mary’s (regular season) and Gonzaga (tournament). +1 point. I don’t think you really get points for these, because it’s one of the two literally every year.

One-bids

• America East: Projected champion Vermont; actual champion (2x) Bryant. I had Bryant third but so did everyone else.

• Atlantic Sun: Projected champion Lipscomb; actual champion (2x) Lipscomb. +2 points. AND. AND!!!! I had North Alabama second. The media poll had them third. Beat that.

• Big Sky: Projected champion Montana; actual champion Northern Colorado/Montana (regular season) and Montana (tournament). +1.5 points. This was a shared title at 15-3. Here is a team that dramatically underperformed for me: Weber State, who I had third in the preseason and finished 9th.

• Big South: Projected champion High Point; actual champion (2x) High Point. +2 points. Pretty easy to get right because High Point spent 2x or 3x more on their roster than anyone else in this conference. Nothing unexpected really happened in this league.

• Big West: Projected champion UC Irvine; actual champion (2x) UC San Diego. I had UCSD third like the media poll did, and UCI did finish second in both the regular season and tournament. Also, I’m making a stand here: no more UCSB. Joe Pasternack is a great recruiter, but when it comes to his in-game, in-season coaching abilities, I defer to poet laureate Jose Mourinho.

• CAA: Projected champion Towson; actual champions Towson (regular season) and UNC Wilmington (tournament). +1 point. Not bad. I was a little off on UNCW and Hofstra this year but mostly pleased with this league.

• Conference USA: Projected champion Louisiana Tech; actual champion (2x) Liberty. Possibly my biggest whiff this year was Louisiana Tech, a team I thought could finish top-75 in KenPom and had legitimate high-major talent across the roster. Instead, they went 9-9 in CUSA and got smashed like a fly against actual competition. What a disappointment. Liberty is extremely well-coached, though.

• Horizon League: Projected champion Northern Kentucky; actual champion (2x) Robert Morris. In my defense, this was a wide-open league from the start and anyone from the top seven was a reasonable winner. The problem was that I had Robert Morris eighth.

• Ivy League: Projected champion Princeton; actual champion (2x) Yale. I had Yale second, so not that bad, but what was Princeton’s deal this year? After being genuinely awesome to watch for a few years in a row, what should’ve been their most-talented team and likely their best since 2016-17 instead was one of the most unenjoyable, chore-like teams in the entire nation. Baffling.

• MAAC: Projected champion Quinnipiac; actual champions Quinnipiac (regular season) and Mount St. Mary’s (tournament). +1 point. Poor QPac. Once again the best team in the league, once again Madness-free. My wrongest take here was having Fairfield second, but they had multiple season-ending injuries and had to try out nine different starting lineups by mid-January. Forgivable.

• MAC: Projected champion Ohio; actual champion (2x) Akron. Ohio never seriously got off the ground and finished fourth; Akron, who I had third, dominated the league start-to-finish. MAJOR shoutout to Miami (OH), a serious overachiever this year. I called it a little too early on Travis Steele, possibly, though in my defense I never would have guessed Peter Suder being All-MAC.

• MEAC: Projected champion Howard; actual champion (2x) Norfolk State. I had all of Howard, NC Central, and Norfolk roughly equal, so not too offended by this miss, and in Howard’s defense, the player I thought would be a star (Bryce Harris) had his season end after just six games. Still: a team with Blake Harper and Marcus Dockery went 12-20, 7-7 MEAC?

• NEC: Projected champion Wagner; actual champions Central Connecticut (regular season) and Saint Francis (tournament). I had CCSU second preseason but SFPA completely came out of nowhere for me; I had them below Chicago State in October! I had almost nothing right in the NEC.

• Ohio Valley: Projected champion Little Rock; actual champion SEMO (regular season) and SIU Edwardsville (tournament). Not great when you have the champions 5th and 7th.

• Patriot League: Projected champion Colgate; actual champion Bucknell/American (regular season) and American (tournament). Bucknell totally came out of nowhere for me but American was second in the polls pretty consistently. Colgate figured it out long enough to grab a third-place finish but this was pretty easily their least-effective team in nearly a decade.

• SoCon: Projected champion Samford; actual champion Chattanooga (regular season) and Wofford (tournament). Samford had a really weird year and never seemed to figure out what they wanted to be. Chatt was chaotic but really fun, and hey, I did have Wofford third. Just ignore that they finished sixth.

• Southland: Projected champion McNeese; actual champion (2x) McNeese. +2 points. Easiest one on the board.

• SWAC: Projected champion Grambling; actual champions Southern (regular season) and Alabama State (tournament). Grambling had a bizarre year: nearly defeating Ole Miss in their first true game of the year, then losing 13 straight to D1 competition…then pulling off an upset of Southern in the SWAC Tournament to make it to the semifinals despite five of their seven SWAC wins coming over teams ranked 357th or worse. No clue.

• Sun Belt: Projected champion Arkansas State; actual champions Arkansas State/Troy/James Madison/South Alabama (regular season) and Troy (tournament). +0.25 points. There ended up being a four-way tie for first in this wild league, and to my credit, I did predict the correct title game (Arkansas State/Troy), just the wrong winner. Pretty decent.

• Summit League: Projected champion St. Thomas; actual champion (2x) Nebraska Omaha. This one completely came out of left field for basically everyone. On January 1, Omaha was ranked 301st at KenPom, 7th in the 9-team Summit, and was 4-9 against D1 competition. Then they went 16-4 the rest of the way. What a story.

• WAC: Projected champion Grand Canyon; actual champions Utah Valley (regular season) and Grand Canyon (tournament). +1 point. Meh.

The 51 predictions

In order.

1. A preseason AP Top 12 team misses the Tournament. This had happened in 20 of 39 Tournaments before this year. Didn’t come true this time out, but North Carolina (11 seed, First Four) and Baylor (9 seed) cut it pretty close. Considering that just five of the AP Top 12 ended up in the Sweet Sixteen this year it’s worth recalling that next year when you get overly attached to the 8th-best team.

2. At least one team who hasn’t made the tournament this century gets in. Happened! It wasn’t who I expected, but we got Saint Francis (first since 1991) into the field. We can technically count High Point as well, who got their first bid ever after joining D-1 in 1999.

3. A player scores 50 points in regulation for the first time since 2019. In the best year for offensive efficiency ever and the second-best year for average PPG since 1995, it makes sense someone did this: Treysen Eaglestaff, who dumped 51 on South Dakota State in the Summit League conference tournament.

4. Bucking the trend, AP #21 this year makes the Tournament. They WON IT. Like, won the whole thing. It’s just the 22nd time ever the preseason AP #21 team actually made the Tournament (easily the worst ratio of any individual ranking), but Florida didn’t care: they won the whole thing.

5. Most successful first-year coach: Dusty May at Michigan. I think this one was nails. The main contenders here were Mark Pope (Kentucky) and Pat Kelsey (Louisville), but Dusty got a conference tournament title, 27 wins, and a Sweet Sixteen appearance. It edges out Pope for me.

6. Coach with hardest first year: Steve Lutz at Oklahoma State. This award is always restricted to those in the Power Five leagues. Lutz had a good case, but I think you’d have to award this to Chris Holtmann at DePaul, who had a good first season and still only went 14-20. That’s how hard it is at DePaul right now.

7. A program that’s never finished top 10 in KenPom does it this year. Didn’t happen.

8. Kentucky fails to make a ninth-straight Final Four, prolonging the second-longest streak in program history. Did happen. They had a very good first year under Pope, but the streak is the streak.

9. The national leader in made threes is Gabe Dorsey at William & Mary. Dorsey knocked down 94 at a 43.1% clip, but the national leader was Abdi Bashir Jr. at Monmouth, who hit 127. Special shoutout to second-place Honor Huff (124) at Chattanooga.

10. The two hardest-to-figure-out teams of the season are Kansas State and Arkansas. Actually, the first one was bang-on. Kansas State you COULD figure out for a while, then out of nowhere, they became the best team in the sport for exactly three weeks. Then they went back to slop. I have no idea why that middle part happened. No clue. Arkansas was actually fairly easy to figure out, though. they just had a bad half-court offense. The #1 answer here was Illinois. At no point of the entire season did I have a feel for what they would do next. Baffling basketball team. (Honorable mention here: Santa Clara.)

11. NCAAW: South Carolina loses…TWICE. Wrong! They lost four times.

12. NCAAW: FGCU loses just one game in the regular season and goes undefeated in conference play. Alright, in my defense, I did not think their coach would leave after TWO GAMES for a WNBA job. Still quite good, though, and they went undefeated in conference play while going 30-3 pre-tourney.

13. In year one of SEC play, Texas and Oklahoma combine for a sub-.500 record in conference games. Easy enough. Both went 6-12.

14. A team outside of the preseason KenPom top 100 makes the NCAA Tournament as an at-large, that team being Saint Louis. It wasn’t Saint Louis, who dealt with injuries all year long. Actually, for the first time in seven Tournaments, this didn’t happen at all. Vanderbilt (preseason #95) came closest, and it’s plausible that Drake (preseason #133) would’ve been an at-large, but no guarantee.

15. A team ranked 50th or lower in KenPom preseason ends up top 20 nationally, that team being Notre Dame. Not Notre Dame, so that’s a whiff, but Missouri went from #52 to #19, so this streak still lives on.

16. Chris Beard misses the Tournament. Rodney Terry makes it. Both made it. Never mind.

17. One of Kentucky/Arkansas misses the NCAA Tournament. This was a REALLY fun swing for the fences that nearly worked out. Kentucky was fine all year, but Arkansas had to have a late run just to get into the Tournament at all.

18. At least two of Kansas, Alabama, and UConn fail to make the 2025 Elite Eight. Make it 11 out of 13 years that at least two of the preseason AP Top 3 don’t make the Elite Eight. Kansas (zero wins) and UConn (one) both whiffed. Alabama did get there, though.

19. Duke is the #1 overall seed thanks to Big 12 vote-splitting. Didn’t happen. They did get the #2 overall, though.

20. Mike Woodson gets Indiana to the NCAA Tournament…as an 8 seed. lol

21. NCAAW: 2024-25 Tennessee WBB = a version of 2005-06 Tennessee MBB. Bang-on. People LOVED this Tennessee team locally, and Lady Vols crowds were the best they’ve been in ages. My only miss was having them as a 4 seed; they were a 5.

22. NCAAW: Iowa will be fine. I had them as a 6 seed, exiting in the Round of 32. They did exactly that.

23. NCAAW: Paige Bueckers is National Player of the Year, but the surprise second-place finisher is Ayoka Lee of Kansas State. The first was easy. Lee was actually on target to be inside the top-five before ANOTHER season-limiting injury that killed her hopes.

24. The national leading scorer for MBB is Robert McCray V at Jacksonville. Ol’ Bobby McCray had a good year (16.2 PPG) but didn’t even finish top five in the ASun. The scoring leader was Eric Dixon at Villanova, who was the literal NCAA scoring leader and still couldn’t drag a husk of a Villanova roster to the Tournament. I feel for him.

25. We get a new AP #1 on November 18 after Kansas loses to Michigan State on a neutral court on the 12th in controversial fashion. Unfortunately didn’t happen, but we got a new AP #1 fairly quickly and never saw Kansas at the top again.

26. Multiple times, AP #1 loses to an unranked opponent and people are somehow surprised. Hilariously, this ended up happening, just by exactly one team in a four-day span. Kansas’s run as AP #1 crash-landed hard in December after losing to two unranked teams in a week: Creighton and Mizzou. Now, both ended up in the NCAA Tournament (and Mizzou ended up being significantly better than we would’ve guessed), but it foretold what was going to be a rough season for KU and crew.

27. We get an opening week upset where the winner had a 2% or lower chance of winning pregame. A crazy and true thing: for the first season since 2021 and the first full season in KenPom’s database, we didn’t have a single upset where the winner had less than a 3% chance of doing it pregame. The biggest upset of the entire year was Columbia over Villanova, a 3.7% chance.

28. Iowa State is this year’s Average Twitter Dork’s Most Hated Team because of their elite defense and just-okay offense. …kinda? But also, probably not. I’m not sure who the answer would be to this because people really loved St. John’s, who fits what we’re looking for here. Maybe Michigan State?

29. There is no Dalton Knecht 2.0 this season, but Saint Thomas of USC comes closest. Jesus, no. There was no Dalton Knecht 2.0. The best somewhat similar transfer in this regard was either John Tonje (Wisconsin) or Chaz Lanier (Tennessee).

30. A team shoots over 50% from three in November. Didn’t happen, but a shoutout to Memphis, who shot 46.9% from deep in November.

31. NCAAW: Tennessee picks off one of their Big Five: LSU (2x), Texas, South Carolina, or UConn. I still cannot believe they beat UConn.

32. NCAAW: The Big 12 once again gets a shock champion in TCU. BANG. Preseason #5 in the media poll, by the way.

33. NCAAW: One of the new interlopers, UCLA or USC, wins the Big Ten. They split the titles, fairly easy.

34. We get a Final Four first-timer. Nope. The longest drought of any Final Four team was all of 11 years. The Elite Eight had some promising teams in this regard, particularly Tennessee (no Final Fours), but it wasn’t meant to be this year.

35. The #1 offense this year is NOT Alabama, but rather Gonzaga. Gonzaga ended up 6th and Alabama 4th. The offensive champion was Duke, followed by Florida and Auburn.

36. This is Tom Izzo’s final season. As far as I can see, this isn’t happening, though the way this year ended up going - Big Ten title, 2 seed, Elite Eight - it would have made a lot of sense.

37. A shock resignation that *isn’t* Tom Izzo happens halfway through the season. Happened in December with Jim Larranaga at Miami. “This feels like the year where a coach cites ‘burnout’ and/or The New Way of Doing Things to get out from a disappointing season.” Uh, yeah.

38. A team’s season is derailed when a key player is suspended for gambling on their own games. This didn’t end up affecting any elite teams, but all of New Orleans, North Carolina A&T, and Fresno State saw multiple starters get suspended for gambling. I doubt it’ll be done there.

39. A player sits out multiple games over an NIL-related dispute, but comes back to the team before the end of the season. If you live in Knoxville, this is quite timely. Anyway, as far as I’m aware, this didn’t happen, but I will note something I have learned from being in the CBB sphere for some time now: these things happen. Quietly. Programs work to resolve them before they actually result in missed games or a departure. I still believe this will happen in a future season.

40. Duke sweeps their two games versus UNC but loses three ACC games elsewhere. They beat UNC three times and only lost once to Clemson. Even better than I could’ve wagered.

41. NCAAW: UConn/Notre Dame on December 12 AND UConn/South Carolina on February 16 produce higher TV ratings than any men’s regular season game. Not quite. UConn/South Carolina on February 16 brought in 1.8 million viewers (the most-watched non-Caitlin Clark regular season game ever) and UConn/Notre Dame about 847,000. Duke/UNC on March 8 got 3 million, and four of the seven most-viewed regular season games (all beating UConn/SoCar) involved Cooper Flagg.

42. NCAAW: After an extremely chalky 2024 Round of 64, the 2025 Round of 64 produces no fewer than four upsets (11 over 6 or greater). It went even chalkier: NO UPSETS. At all. If that had happened on the men’s side we would’ve heard about it on sports radio for the rest of time. Women’s hoops needs a 2023 Tournament bad.

43. NCAAW: A 14 seed upsets a 3 for the first time in modern Tournament history. Dart throw, didn’t happen.

44. NCAAW: Kansas State makes its first Elite Eight since 1982 (!). Got to the Sweet Sixteen, came up just short. Sorry.

45. A preseason top 9 team wins the NCAA Tournament (Kansas, Alabama, UConn, Houston, Iowa State, Gonzaga, Duke, Baylor, UNC). Didn’t happen! How about that. It’s now just 21 of the last 28 seasons that have seen a preseason top-9 team do it, though both Houston and Duke made the Final Four.

46. Four non-P5s get multiple bids: WCC, American, Mountain West, and Atlantic 10. Horrific year in this regard: just seven conferences got in multiple teams. Seven.

47. A 6 seed makes the Final Four…

48. …and a 14 seed makes the Sweet Sixteen. Nope and nope.

49. We get a truly wonky seed vs. seed matchup this year that never happens. Nope. Though I do think 3 vs. 10 deserves some sort of a shout. It’s just the 14th time that’s ever happened and the first since 2012! True story: I lived in nine different residences between 3-10 matchups. Blame college and an inability to find a satisfying post-grad apartment.

50. Your 2024-25 national champion is Houston, defeating Arizona…

51. NCAAW: …and your 2024-25 national champion is South Carolina for the second straight year, defeating UCLA in the final. Not quite. I was pretty happy to get at least one right team in each title game, though. Not easy.