The 2025 NCAA Tournament field could be the strongest in modern history

Two months out from Selection Sunday, the numbers are pointing to something we've never seen before

In years past I’ve done these sort-of widespread check-ins of the future 2025 NCAA Tournament field at large. In 2023 I noticed ahead of time we were heading towards potentially the wildest NCAA Tournament we’d ever seen; we more or less ended up with that exact thing. Last year, the numbers leaned more towards a ‘normal’ NCAA Tournament. By the time the Tournament actually arrived and the field was decimated by the worst conference championship week in decades, it went about as the numbers suggested: largely upset-free, minus our lovable exception in NC State.

This year, I get the feeling that a lot of people have a lot of plausible, very diverse narratives. On December 5, noted FOX commentator and/or Field of 68 podcaster John Fanta said “nobody in the sport is overwhelmingly great.” (Bart Torvik predicted this not even 24 hours prior.) After all, earlier this year, we had the lowest first-place vote total we’ve had for any #1 team since mid-January 2023, the last time we had No Great Teams.

Then again, Seth Davis said on Tuesday that Auburn is ranked #1 and may still be underrated. Sean Paul (not the musician) claims it’s Iowa State. Houston is #1 at Torvik with what would be the highest end-of-season Barthag rating since 2014-15 Kentucky. Duke sits at a +36.60 Net Rating on KenPom, the highest since Gonzaga (+38.82) on April 3, 2021, and they’re not even the site’s #1 team. All the while, we’ve had Auburn (60 of 62 possible first-place votes) and Tennessee (58 of 62) take turns as more or less unanimous top teams.

The “no great teams” discourse belies the actual ‘problem’, if you can call it that, with the 2024-25 college basketball season: we might actually have too many great teams. It’s a problem that, as far as I can find, we haven’t really faced before in the modern era of college basketball.

With an average Net Rating of +34.11, this current group of top five teams (Auburn, Duke, Houston, Iowa State, Tennessee) blows any other I can find on record out of the water. The same almost goes for 6-10, with an average Net Rating of +27.45, the highest at this point of the season since 1999. As a whole, the top 50 averages a Net Rating of +22.01, which smokes the previous February 1-or-earlier record of +20.49 in 2009. At face value, we are trending towards the highest-quality, toughest NCAA Tournament in at least 30 years.

Jan. 17, 2025 vs. Jan. 17, 2024

It’s unprecedented. It’s massive. And…no one seems to be talking about it? For better or for worse, I tried to figure out how this may be so, worked to bust some myths a la Hyneman/Savage, and find which previous years 2025 correlates most strongly with.

BEHIND THE WALL ($): Basketball excellence, everywhere

First, there’s the obvious question: do teams run up their Net Rating more now than ever, thanks to the growing importance of metrics and the effect of overall efficiency on the NET?

My answer: uh, not really. The NET formerly took into account scoring margin as an explicit category, but the NCAA removed that in 2020. It now focuses on adjusted net efficiency, which is the same thing with a fancier name and actually adjusted for how good your opponents are. When I adjusted each team’s 2024-25 numbers by removing garbage time (i.e., any time a team hits 100% win expectancy), around 75% of the top 50’s Net Ratings actually improved. Considering that garbage time is generally when your walk-ons and other weaker elements of your roster get PT, this makes sense.

The other aspect here: Bart Torvik’s own site doesn’t weigh garbage time data heavily at all. By his numbers, the class of 2025 is the strongest from 1-50 in site history. It’s the strongest top 5 and top 10 ever, along with a top 25 that’s only equaled by 2009 and 2017. The only years that come somewhat close for the high end of the sport are 2015 (extremely strong top 5, as you recall) and 2013 (very deep top 10).

Even further back (Torvik’s database dates to the ‘07-08 season), nothing really compares. 2008-09 came somewhat close, but not as close as the top-end strength of 2013/2015 or the overall field strength of 2017. Still, there are two additional takeaways here worth taking in:

1. This is not the strongest top 50 (teams 26-50, anyway) on record, per Torvik. That honor actually goes to 2010, which had the third smallest gap between the back 25 and the top 5 behind 2016 and 2023.

2. The two Tournaments Torvik’s numbers correlate most strongly to are 2015 and 2021. Which are the same that KenPom’s 2012-2024 mid-January numbers would say, too.

The last point’s pretty interesting for me. Those Final Fours featured two things: one completely baffling, random entrant, but also three heavies (five 1 seeds and a 2). They also had completely different paths to get there. 2015 was a pretty boring Tournament early on with few upsets and saved all its goods for the Elite Eight or deeper; 2021 had the most insane Round of 64 we may ever see and a 15 seed in the Sweet Sixteen/12 seed in the Elite Eight. After that, though, it was business as usual.

The other major question that gets asked a lot: is the entire world like the Big 12? We’re referring to last year’s meme that went around, the one in which everyone said the Big 12 wasn’t nearly as good as everyone thought because they ran up the score on Quad 4 opponents. Shameless plug:

Is the Big 12 the best conference in basketball?

To figure out if that is or isn’t the case, I filtered out all Quad 4 games from the ratings. The answer: it made no difference at all, because these games are adjusted for level of competition in the first place. Actually, once Quad 4 games were removed, the top end of the field got even stronger.

The same story held here; the only top groups that really came close were 2015 and 2013 once fully combined together. It still remained easily the strongest field we’ve seen in this sample size.

This takes us to Ken’s numbers, which would tell you much the same story of mid-Januarys past that Torvik’s would: the best top-to-bottom top 50 on record, easily the strongest top 5 ever recorded, and the strongest top 10, 25, and 50. With his, no top 5, 10, or even 25 is even in the same stratosphere as 2025. It’s the strongest year of basketball on record.

These are nice numbers, of course. But what do they actually mean? My takeaways are as such.

1. The best teams in the sport really are the best they’ve been in a long, long time. Ken’s database for mid-January numbers only goes back to 2012, but you can date his numbers back to February 1 of any given year through 1997. Even doing that results in the strongest top 5 in history, the second-strongest top 10 (1998-1999), and the strongest top 25. I’ve beaten this into submission publicly, but you are witnessing the most offensively efficient, most well-played version of college basketball the sport has experienced in a very long time. (My personal vote is for 1990-91, though I’m partial to 2018-19 being a tremendous year.)

2. The downside of the top 5 being so good: the gap from them to the back end of the top 50 is the largest since 2019 and the sixth-largest in 29 years. Your need-to-know here is as such: the five years ahead of 2025 resulted in an average of 4.8 Round of 64 upsets (versus the average of 5.6 the last 15 tournaments), and just three teams seeded 7 or lower in an Elite Eight game. These types of Tournaments typically don’t bring the chaos, although in 2001, 15-seed Hampton did take down 2-seed Iowa State.

3. The stronger the field is, the fewer upsets and chaos we generally experience. Consider that the three Tournaments within 1.5 points of 2025, in terms of average 1-50 Net Rating, are 2021, 2017, and 2009. 2021 sort of stands alone in terms of wackiness, but 2017 and 2009 saw seven of a possible eight 1 seeds make the Elite Eight and six of a possible eight 2 seeds make the Sweet Sixteen.

So: with all of that in mind, which years correlate most strongly to 2025, at least through two-plus months of basketball?

1. 2017. This is a little unusual, given that 2017 didn’t have that dominant of a top-end group. However, it also had the third-best top 10, the second-best top 25, and the third-strongest field overall. Stats to know: title game 1 vs. 1 seed; Final Four of 1, 1, 3, 7 seeds; 10 total upsets; zero 13-16 seed upsets.

2. 2019. By a hair, this one finished second. This year had a great top group (+32.94 average top 5, third overall), a very similar gap (+16.95 NetRtg average versus +16.5 this year) from the top 5 to the bottom 25, and the fourth-strongest top 10 on the whole behind 2015, 1999, and 2025. Stats to know: title game 1 vs. 3 seed; Final Four of 1, 2, 3, 5 seeds; 7 total upsets; one 13-16 seed upset (13 over 4); all 1-3 seeds made Sweet Sixteen.

3. 2007. I mean, I hope not. I was 13 when this Tournament happened. 2004 is the first one I really remember investing in, but 2006 is where it felt huge; George Mason making the Final Four was the coolest thing in the world at the time. This, in comparison, was the most boring thing in human history. Despite a relatively weak top group, this had a very strong field on the whole, including a super-strong group from about 11-50. It just didn’t matter. Stats to know: title game 1 vs. 1 seed; Final Four of 1, 1, 2, 2 seeds; 3 total upsets; zero 13-16 seed upsets; Elite Eight games all 1 vs. 2 or 1 vs. 3.

If you’re curious - you made it this far, so you probably are - the three least similar years to 2025 are 2006 (the George Mason year), 2023 (the craziest year in Tournament history), and 2002 (Elite Eight with 10 and 12 seeds, along with 10! R64/R32 upsets).

Given how unprecedented the insane strength of not only the top 50, but the top 5 and 10 seem to be, it’s plausible that the quality of the field may diminish some between now and March 16, Selection Sunday. We’ve never really seen this before, and we certainly haven’t seen it laid out like this across multiple analytical models. From this point of the year to Selection Sunday, historically, the top 5 have dropped off by about half a point and the top 10 by about 0.4 points.

Then again, all that would do is turn the Top 5 into still the greatest we’ve ever seen and the top 10 into still the second-best we’ve ever seen. What we’re witnessing is history; I would personally like college basketball’s various media apparatuses to begin acting like it.