History says one of these top 25 teams will miss the NCAA Tournament
okay, more like one of the top 11-25
This is mostly my own work, but I outsourced a good bit of the data here from Andrew Weatherman, who runs the excellent Buckets & Bytes. Please subscribe.
Back in the preseason, I spent a lot of time thinking about preseason Top 25 teams that fail to make the NCAA Tournament. Of course, this was spurred on by the headline case of all headline cases in North Carolina, but it happens every year. But back in the regular season preview, I noted why this was on the mind:
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.
Of course, I think the AP Poll is a bit of an embarrassment these days. My preferred metric of choice is predictably KenPom, which has proven to be more accurate than the dying AP. Like anything, it has some misses of its own right. A few times in the last decade, preseason top-10 teams have gone on to miss the NCAA Tournament, most notably Cole Anthony-era North Carolina in 2019-20. (If the Tournament had happened, anyway.)
But as the season grows older, it’s very rare for Ken’s system to outright miss on a team cracking the field of 68. Per Weatherman’s research, only one team - last year’s Ohio State - made it more than a month into the season as a top-10 team and failed to make the Big Dance.
In thinking about this, it got my brain going: how many top-25 teams on a given date go on to miss the NCAA Tournament? I worked with Weatherman earlier this week to determine as such. Considering yesterday was the 70th day of basketball played this season, we went with 70 days from the start of the season. The answer: 13 teams have done it in the period of time where Ken’s site has rankings archived for full seasons, AKA 2011-12 to present. (We excluded 2019-20 for obvious reasons.)
While the temptation would be to avoid the COVID year of 2020-21 for data, that was one of just three years since 2013 to have all 25 teams in the top 25 in mid-January actually make the NCAA Tournament. 2018-19, one of the least-crazy seasons I can recall, had three teams miss it. Last year, the premier case was Ohio State, but both Rutgers and UNC blew it big time, too. You can either go 13 in 11 (the most accurate) or 13 in 9 (the most social media-ready), but either way, we average about one 70-days-in KenPom Top 25 team missing the field of 68 per year.
I bring this up because of the current KenPom Top 25, on this beautiful -5 degree morning of Wednesday, January 17.
Historically speaking, one of these 25 teams will not play in the 2024 NCAA Tournament. Really, outside of one freak case (2018-19 Nebraska, who went 3-11 after their survey date), you could say one of about 10-15 teams will not play in the 2024 NCAA Tournament. No team who’s been inside the KenPom top 10 at this late a date has missed. Only three (though it is indeed three) in that 11-15 range have done it.
Now, per Bart Torvik’s TourneyCast, you can expect 24.2 of these 25 to get in. It’s weighed down massively by Gonzaga having just 56% odds to make the field of 68, but even removing Gonzaga still gives you a 31% chance that one of the remaining 24 is out.
The one thing people will immediately look to is 10-7 Michigan State because they have more losses than anybody else. That’s fine, but when I checked into it there were no real commonalities for the teams who missed and their at-the-time resumes. Wins Above Bubble ranged from -0.7 (last year’s Ohio State) to +2.5 (2021-22 Xavier). The average was +1.3, which is like having roughly the 30th-best resume at this point of the year. You’re not playing from behind, but if the season ended today you’d be a 7 or 8 seed. On average, at least.
Also helpful for this is Torvik’s historic TourneyCasts. Bart’s tweaked his formula a lot over the years, but most of the teams that missed had a >95% shot to make it on their given date. In the event that this historically-likely event ends up happening for the fifth time in the last six NCAA Tournaments, here’s how I would break down the field by “would be stunning” to “not that stunning.”
Is Inside the Current Top Ten So No: Houston, Purdue, Arizona, Tennessee, Auburn, North Carolina, Alabama, UConn, BYU, Duke. Hasn’t happened to date and is exceedingly unlikely to happen this year. Alabama or BYU likely have the lightest resumes of these ten, but they’d both have to lose 8+ games from here to be in real trouble.
Life-Altering Shockers: Wisconsin, Creighton, Baylor, Kansas. These three teams are essentially at a full 100% to make the field as of today; all have really, really good resumes.
Not Life-Altering, but Still Extremely Shocking: Illinois, Iowa State, Marquette, Kentucky. These four would have to mega-collapse to miss, but that’s sort of the point of this article. It does happen.
Very Surprising, but Not Shocking: Utah, San Diego State, FAU. I’m not sure that people are aware of how good the resumes here are. FAU has some bad losses and some amazing wins, but Utah even with a 1-3 record in their last four still ranks 27th in WAB and plays in a very weak Pac-12. All
The Four Lead Candidates: Oklahoma, Michigan State, TCU, Gonzaga. Oklahoma sits 54th in Shot Quality and plays in a nasty, nasty conference. Michigan State because they’re 10-7. TCU because of a horrendous non-conference run in which they went 0-2 against the two Top 100 teams they played. Gonzaga because…well, I assume you’re aware they aren’t as good this year.
So: who would you pick to miss the field if you had to pick one? My personal pick here is TCU just because I do believe in Gonzaga likely having the fallback option of just winning the WCC, but I’m open to others’ thoughts. And while I’ve got you: which one of these 25 teams makes the field of 68 as an at-large?
We’ve had 11 teams come from the bottom quarter of the KenPom top 100 to make it as an at-large in 11 years, though it’s happened just four times in the last six Tournaments. Who’s your pick? (Pittsburgh or UCF for me.) Call your shot and we’ll see how it goes.