51 predictions for the 2023-24 college basketball season
Fun is around the corner
Finally, FINALLY, actual games that aren’t exhibitions or charity dos are about to be played. FINALLY! We have waited long enough.
In the meantime I thought this would be a fun way to end it. I hate super-serious prediction posts and have made it a goal in years past to review my predictions at season’s end to see what went right/wrong. Most of these are things that I could reasonably see happening; some are ones I just purely want to happen. Up to you to figure out which is which!
Lastly, this was originally 50, but 50 is almost too nice of a round number. How about 50+1, like my favorite European football ownership model, to bring us into the season? This is the most fun way to conclude Preview Month I can think of, so let’s ride.
Four teams from the preseason AP Top 25 miss the NCAA Tournament. I like sprinkling in rational takes with the crazier-sounding ones. I think this one might be both. Per Andrew Weatherman’s research, about 3.7 teams from the preseason Top 25 miss the NCAAT in an average year. Obviously, last year’s big one was #1 North Carolina, but #16 Villanova, #21 Oregon (come on), #22 Michigan, #24 Dayton, and #25 Texas Tech all ended up missing the Tournament. In 2021-22, #13 Oregon, #20 Florida State, #21 Maryland, #23 St. Bonaventure, and #25 Virginia missed it. I think we’ll see a slight regression to the mean with just four and no top 10 teams missing it, but we’ll see teams whose fans believe should get in fail to do it.
Those four teams: Florida Atlantic, Alabama, Miami, and USC. Do I actually believe all four miss? No! But I need four teams and these four make the most sense to me as potentially underwhelming cases. FAU is a reverse Rubber Band Effect candidate; I think they are way overrated based on their Final Four run. Ken Pomeroy’s numbers barely have them inside the top 40. Alabama’s roster is just very uninspiring and almost all of the optimism is based on Nate Oats being a great coach. I think that’s fair, but I’m very down on Grant Nelson and think the goal of rapidly upscaling mid-major talent to the SEC has potential pitfalls. (Their OOC schedule is also absolutely bonkers.) Miami lost their best two players from a team that entered last year’s NCAAT barely inside the KenPom top 40. USC has a roster I actually really like, but they have a lot riding depth-wise on freshmen, one of which has a health issue.
The overall #1 seed is Purdue. I get the skepticism but I’m not gonna overthink it. They have the returning NPOY, four starters, and most depth pieces back from a team that was a 1 seed last year and went 29-5 in regular season play. They are likely going to win a lot of games.
Houston wins at least one of the Big 12 regular season/conference tournament titles. I don’t think there’s going to be some sort of giant adjustment for a team that is 20-10 against top-50 competition since COVID and ranks #4 nationally in efficiency in those games. I’m also edging closer to being fully out on Kansas’s perimeter options and think they’re gonna have to win some sloppy ones.
The first coach fired in-season is Kenny Payne. This might end up happening even before I publish, but any remaining bit of goodwill seems to have gone out the door with an exhibition loss to D-2 Kentucky Wesleyan, their second D-2 loss in as many years. Various rumors are swirling about regarding Payne’s conduct with players as well. He can stave this off for a while as the opening three games really should be wins, but starting with the Empire Classic in New York on November 19 he’s staring down at least four losses in six games if not more. It’s quite realistic that, if still employed, he enters a home game against Kentucky on December 21 at 5-6 with losses to Bellarmine and Arkansas State. Various metrics seem to think they can’t possibly be truly abject two years in a row, but this is a unique case where I think what you see is what you’re getting. They’re going to be horrendous.
A team outside of the preseason KenPom top 100 makes the NCAA Tournament as an at-large, that team being Syracuse. I wasn’t confident enough to pick this in the previews but of the available options, this one makes the most sense to me. Are they one of the ~50 best teams out there? I don’t think so, but they have one of the best guards out there in Judah Mintz and a ton of on-paper talent. Plus it’s not like the ACC is stuffed with serious teams; there is real room for growth in Year One. The other option I would seriously consider here is Cornell, who very quietly has a team with four Big Six-quality starters on it and scores bunches of points.
A team inside the KenPom top 10 fails to finish in the top 25, that team being Alabama. They are the most rational pick of the group, though I really do not like betting against Nate Oats.
The Game of the Year is Cornell vs. Colgate on December 30. Because Evan Miyakawa projects 164 (!) total points in regulation and the line is only Cornell -4.5.
We get a new AP #1 before the end of November. Kansas loses a game in Maui and Duke loses the Michigan State game on November 14. That allows Purdue to close November as the AP #1…before losing at Northwestern on December 1.
St. John’s and Rick Pitino prove to be a media circus at every step of the way. This is sort of the free space, but what will happen is pretty easy to see coming: the Johnnies get an early signature win when they beat Villanova on the road in early January and probably pull off a couple other big wins. They will also lose at least three games to opponents outside of the KenPom top 100, just like Iona did last year. I’ve got an eye on Hofstra on December 30.
This is Dana Altman’s final season at Oregon. Altman has earned his right to step out whenever he wants to at Oregon, but given how pissed he was about fan engagement last year, I don’t think he’s long for it. He’ll be 66 next summer and has four kids, presumably with grandchildren. Does he really want to tag along for a move to the Big Ten?
The best conference is the Big 12, but the most entertaining Big Six conference is the SEC. Not that this conference needs any more ammo to inflate its own ego, but even its least-good teams have something of interest to keep an eye on. There shouldn’t be a single true walkover game on the schedule, and the teams themselves occupy a ranking span of just 8th-82nd on KenPom. It is tight. I would also accept the Big East for this answer.
The best and most entertaining non-Big Six conference is the Mountain West. Exactly the way it should be. God bless these guys, and I hope they get 3+ teams in the field again.
Texas is screwed out of a season-shifting win at Houston on February 17 by way of officiating hijinks. In Oklahoma’s road football loss to Kansas last weekend, Oklahoma was issued 101 yards in penalties, including multiple drive-extending fouls on Kansas’s penultimate touchdown. It was their highest amount in penalty yardage in three full years. That’s the kind of thing we’re looking for in basketball: Texas catching 27 foul calls to the opponent’s 16 in a game that was otherwise a coin-flip.
DePaul nearly goes Defeated in the Big East, squeaking out a win on February 24 against Georgetown to finish 1-19. I originally had Oregon State here but I don’t think they are *quite* as far off of the rest of their conference as these guys are.
The At-Large Chicago State meme is forgotten about before Christmas and the Cougars go 10-19. This still represents a wildly successful season given their school history.
The biggest year-over-year turnaround is California, who jumps from 270th in 2022-23 KenPom to the top 70 this year. I’m a huge, huge believer in Mark Madsen and think he’s capable of finishing 7th or 8th in a competitive conference in Year One.
For at least the first month of the season, every game involving Ole Miss contains a graphics package showing a timeline of Chris Beard’s arrest. I don’t think it will last into SEC play because I’m not sure they’ll be that relevant, but we’ll see.
The leading scorer in the nation is James Bishop IV at George Washington. He gets to around 23-24 PPG, which is generally enough to win the scoring title these days.
Tyler Kolek becomes the first Big East player since Omar Cook in 2000-01 to average 10 PPG/8 APG AND play 1,000 minutes on the season. Is it not kind of insane it’s been that long? 10 & 8 doesn’t seem that wild in my head but it only happens about once a season now.
The national leader in made threes is Reyne Smith at Charleston. Smith made 87 while playing just 24 MPG a year ago and barely ventures inside the 3PT line at all. If he bumps up his efficiency from 34% to 39% or so and plays 30 MPG, I mean.
Stanford finally, blissfully sneaks into the NCAA Tournament…barely. Jerod Haase’s must-win season comes down to the wire, where Stanford skids to a halt by losing seven of their final 10 regular season games…then makes the Pac-12 Tournament championship game. This gets them a First Four bid against - who else? - Clemson.
The two hardest teams to figure out all season long are Texas Tech and Iowa State. Conveniently in the same conference! My play here is this: Tech’s defense is immediately going to rock, but they seem so reliant on guards that they’re going to have a gigantic amount of offensive variance night over night. Iowa State is the inverse. Who is the creative scorer on that roster? A point guard that made five threes last year? A Buffalo transfer? A true freshman? There are going to be games this year where one/both hold top-10 opponents to 54 points and there are going to be games this year where one/both lose to teams by 25.
San Diego State follows up their shock run to the title game with a boring, respectable year of playing like a borderline top 25 team. The Aztecs get a 7 or 8 seed, which is what they always used to do, and more or less sustain a good run of play the year after they brought more attention upon themselves than ever.
The team with the most success in following up their surprise(ish) 2023 NCAA Tournament run is Creighton. The Bluejays spend most of the year as one of the ~6 best teams in the sport and earns a 2 seed for the Tournament.
The most successful first-year head coach: Ryan Odom at VCU. The Rams scrap around for a bit in non-conference play but round into form by January, causing lots of havoc in the A-10 race and winning 21 games on the season. They don’t make the NCAA Tournament but have a solid year.
The coach with the hardest first year: Ed Cooley at Georgetown. It’s a pretty bad roster without any standout players on it, though Jayden Epps comes closest. One player does not make a roster, though, and Georgetown likely shuffles through a year with improvements but something like a 13-18 record.
Long Beach State is the best team in the Big West for the first time since 2012. I already said this in the Big West preview but I haven’t seen another soul go for it with me. They’ve easily got the best frontcourt of anyone in the conference; if they can find a single good guard on the entire roster they’re in serious business. I like these guys a lot.
At least one team’s season is derailed by midseason gambling suspensions. Sorry to be alarmist! But having these apps on super-impressionable kids’ phones, many of whom do not have adults willing to tell them no, is a horrid concept. I’ve got eyes on the states of Kentucky (who started allowing online sports betting in September) and Vermont (who launched in June).
Kentucky fails to make an eighth straight Final Four, creating just the second 9+ season Final Four gap in program history. Not because I think this Kentucky roster is bad or anything; I actually think it’s one of the 20 best. But I would bet against basically any team auto-making the Final Four sight unseen. No one is a guarantee in either direction.
Central Michigan HC Tom Crean. Probably not! But think about it. Tony Barbee is 17-44 at CMU through two seasons and year 3 looks like more of the same. Of the coaches that saw a fourth year at CMU in school history, the only one who had a <37% win% that stuck around was alumnus Leonard Drake. The others got fired or left before year four. Tony has no ties and was a weird fit in the first place. Why not go get a certain guy - our weird little fella - who went to CMU and would love to go home to Mount Pleasant?
There is at least one mention of the Sickos Committee on an NCAA Tournament broadcast. If you like this stuff, congrats, I guess. If you are like me and [REDACTED TO AVOID ANGRY EMAILS AND/OR TWEETS], well, yeah.
A future first-round pick on a roster bound to miss the NCAA Tournament opts out of the conference tournament, setting a new standard. I have zero leads on this but I think it’s bound to happen eventually. This will create an obnoxious week of content.
Arizona State finishes 10th or worse in the Pac-12. They have one decent offensive player and little else. The best player on the team is a point guard with a 99 ORtg. The best forwards all left in the offseason. It’s an awful roster and it blows me away it got ranked SIXTH in the Pac-12. They’re not sniffing March.
Minnesota HC Niko Medved. Minnesota is about to get a boatload of Big Ten TV money, their football HC is fairly stable even if he’s a nutcase, and the state of Minnesota itself has a sizable budget surplus. Unless Ben Johnson shows serious progress after back-to-back 14th-place finishes, I think the Gophers will get antsy given four new teams coming in, three of which have quality programs. Medved is a Minnesota native and is a natural replacement doing a very good job at Colorado State.
A team at 90% or above to make the NCAA Tournament misses the NCAA Tournament. It’s statistically more likely than not that one of these 19 teams will not be in the field of 68. Take your pick. (Mine is FAU, but I’d hear out a case for TCU.)
A preseason top-9 team wins the national championship. Everyone is all jazzed because of UConn going from unranked to champions, but 20 of the last 26 started out 9th or above. Your champion will be one of Kansas, Duke, Purdue, Michigan State, Marquette, UConn, Houston, Creighton, or Tennessee.
Yale enters the AP Top 25 for the first time since 1949. I am a huge, huge believer in Yale this year. Beyond a pair of likely road losses (Gonzaga, Kansas) they’ll be favored in every other game on their schedule. Every year, a team that isn’t actually one of the 25 best ends up in the top 25 because they have a record like 21-3 at some point. This will also shatter the previous record for longest span of time between being ranked at 75 years, which is currently Colorado State at 59.
Saint Mary’s cracks the AP Top 10 for the first time in school history. Why not!
Zach Edey wins National Player of the Year again. I think it’s become really popular to pick against him, which is fair, but the problem is that there’s not a super-obvious secondary candidate. He won’t be a unanimous pick but he’ll still edge out whoever comes out of the pack behind him.
Dillon Jones at Weber State is the mid-major Player of the Year. I think he’s the real deal and a potential first-round Draft pick, meaning he is way ahead of the rest of his league in terms of talent. The Big Sky simply hides talent sometimes!
One of the ten remaining programs that hasn’t finished outside of the KenPom top 100 in 27 seasons falls off the list. The best shot is probably Xavier, who won’t have their two best players for possibly the entire season, but Oklahoma State strikes me as one that could have a stinker of a season.
Leonard Hamilton retires. It’s less about “wants to” retire and more about Florida State politely asking him to step aside after the Noles go 15-16, 8-12 ACC. I’m unsure of FSU’s wishlist, but the boon of this football season gives them a supply of extra money they didn’t previously have.
The state of Tennessee’s basketball programs have multiple new coaches in 2024-25. Vanderbilt HC Jerry Stackhouse finally makes the leap to the NBA, which he’s pretty clearly wanted to do for two years now. Belmont HC Casey Alexander posts a fifth-straight 20+ win season at Belmont (eighth-consecutive for Alexander overall) and bounces into the Vandy job. Tennessee Tech and John Pelphrey separate ways after TTU goes 8-10 in an awful OVC.
Colgate goes undefeated in conference play. I don’t trust them to do much of note in non-conference but they’ll be fully rounded into form come January and have a far superior talent base to anyone else in their conference.
A 6 seed makes the Final Four. I am simply going to keep predicting this until it actually happens. It is bonkers that we have now gone 29 years without a 6 seed in the Final Four.
A 14 seed makes the Sweet Sixteen. This is another thing that is wild we haven’t seen in 26 years. The expected number of 14 seeds in the Sweet Sixteen is something like four in that span of time, not zero. We are beyond overdue to see it happen, might as well put it on the board.
A team makes the field of 68 with a losing record. This used to happen a lot back in the day but has only occurred twice in the last seven Tournaments. We’ll call for an eighth here. The winner of the NEC or SWAC feels right for this award.
Two of the longest NCAA Tournament droughts in history end: Toledo (1980) and Duquesne (1977). For once, Toledo is going to adopt every other MAC team’s strategy of being the third or fourth-best team during the regular season then flooding the gas pedal in the conference tourney. I genuinely believe in Duquesne as no worse than a top-70 team nationally, and those types of teams can win the A-10 Tournament.
FOUR TEAMS make the NCAA Tournament for the first time: Grambling State (SWAC), UMass Lowell (AmEast), Sacred Heart (NEC), and SIU Edwardsville (OVC). It’s all happening! The level of waits each program has had varies, but the first time is always a great time.
I will not make a national champion prediction. Just kidding. It’s Tennessee’s year. Team of destiny. What? It beats being the millionth person to pick Duke, Kansas, or Purdue. Might as well pick a thing I’d actually enjoy seeing in my life. ‘24 is their year, the whole banana…
Bravo!