The good and bad of the Stats by Will Preseason Predictions
you win some, you lose many more
We’ll keep this intro short, as I am in Houston and about to go on a nice walk in the humid Texas heat for coffee. Before every season, I do a short list of preseason predictions. Sometimes these get really detailed, but this year, I stayed back and didn’t invest quite as much into them. Still, I think that reviewing one’s preseason work is useful. All we are doing is making educated guesses, but sometimes those guesses go way wrong.
Something I’ve noticed in my time on the College Hoops Internet is that the wrong predictions never get brought up by the people who made them. Instead, everyone celebrates their longshot wins they tweeted months ago. That’s fine, but in my personal opinion, I feel a lot more respect towards those who own both the wins and the losses. That’s what I’m trying to do here: everything I said, both good and very bad, is reviewed. Let’s get into it.
The 10 most interesting teams in each 10 of KenPom
1-10: Virginia. Virginia heavily underachieved this specific ranking this year, finishing in the 30s and bombing out via quite the tragic Round of 64 loss to a 13 seed. I think they made a great case for being the most interesting top 10 team for a while, but by March most had forgotten about them. This honor would instead go to Texas for…obvious reasons.
11-20: San Diego State. For a team that more or less finished exactly where they were projected, it’s hard to state the case for them being *interesting*, but I think they were pretty entertaining in their own right. Still: the most interesting team ranked 11-20 in the preseason ended up being Alabama for, again, reasons.
21-30: Michigan. Yes and no. Michigan’s failure to make the NCAA Tournament is fascinating and affirms they were the right pick here. Michigan, and Juwan Howard, feel like they have to be a top 25 team next year or Juwan’s in Actual Real Trouble with regards to his job. On the other hand, Purdue and UConn were preseason #25/#27.
31-40: St. John’s. I’m not sure anyone remembered a single thing that happened to St. John’s after January, when it was clear they would be firing Mike Anderson. The best answer here, of a middling group, was probably Illinois. Illinois wasn’t very good, but they were fascinating to watch because many a time it looked like everyone openly hated one another in the middle of a game.
41-50: Miami. Perfect, no notes.
51-60: Syracuse. Again, perfect. Happy with these two!
61-70: North Texas. Weird deal where North Texas was really good and pretty interesting but just not on a national level. The most interesting/entertaining story out of this group ended up being Furman, who broke a 43-year streak of no NCAAT appearances.
71-80: Drake. The problem is that Drake was just exactly what everyone expected them to be: interesting but not that interesting. Instead, this is a tie between Marquette (#76) and Kansas State (#77), two of the most exciting stories of the season.
81-90: Toledo. Well, they didn’t break their streak. But a program called Florida Atlantic, preseason #89, did.
91-100: Louisville. Yes. Absolutely the most interesting team of this 10-team group. Maybe of anyone on this list!
Most fun offenses/most terrorizing defenses
Some subjectivity is required here, but generally it’s 90% efficiency + 10% vibes. My preseason picks for each were:
OFFENSE
Gonzaga
North Carolina
Iowa
Arizona
Furman
DEFENSE
San Diego State
Arkansas
Tennessee
Houston
Virginia
Offensively, I think these went 4-for-5. Arizona is a borderline case, but they were top-10 on the season in Adjusted Offensive Efficiency and aside from a couple of very memorable meltdowns could really be electrifying. Gonzaga/Iowa/Furman all feel obvious. UNC’s the one giant miss here, as it just never came together. The best pick here would’ve been Toledo.
Defensively…3-for-5? 3.5-for-5? San Diego State, Tennessee, and Houston were all tremendous on defense. Arkansas was when healthy. Virginia just never fully worked out in the manner I thought they would. UCLA was the best available.
Most interesting mid-majors
Preseason picks, which were just “what is the best available team that’s not Gonzaga”:
San Diego State
Dayton
Saint Louis
UAB
Wyoming
The end-of-year list was:
San Diego State
St. Mary’s (CA)
Florida Atlantic
Utah State
North Texas
SDSU was a win; North Texas were at least an honorable mention. Other than that, woof.
Ten teams I was high on…
Tennessee. I think this ended up good and bad. It looked like a terrific pick for three months and an awful one for 1.5, but in the end, they did make the Sweet Sixteen and were a top-7 KenPom side.
Iowa. Didn’t go so well. I said Iowa should be a yearly top 25 preseason pick at this point; they ended up 40th and sustained one of the biggest upset losses in the sport’s history.
Virginia Tech. Oof. Oft-injured, never seemed to get it together, missed the NCAAT.
St. John’s. Let’s not discuss this one.
Loyola Chicago. Or this one. Jeez.
Utah State. Alright! Nailed one. “It’s insane to me that the MWC media has them 8th in an 11-team conference; they’re 3rd for me.” Even this was a little light, as they were the second-best team in a great year for the MWC.
Wyoming. Well.
North Texas. I think this worked out reasonably well. North Texas is playing for the NIT title. While they didn’t make the NCAA Tournament, they were a Tournament-level team, and it would’ve been nice to see them in there instead of, say, Arizona State or Mississippi State.
South Dakota State. Got ran over by a train named Oral Roberts, but after returning something like 18% of scoring from the year prior, they still managed a solid second-place finish in the Summit.
George Mason. Analytically not the best pick, but Kim English got these guys to 20 wins in his second year as a head coach and used that to springboard into the Providence job. I’ll take it.
…and five teams I was low on
North Carolina. This actually ended up being a miss but because I wasn’t aggressive enough. I couldn’t understand how these guys were the consensus top team in college basketball and thought they were more of like the 7th-10th best, but even that ended up well underselling how much of a disappointment they would be.
Arkansas. Interestingly, Arkansas still managed a top 25 KenPom finish and a Sweet Sixteen run, but this was a team many believed was a serious top 5-10 group and a Final Four contender. I didn’t think they were a top 15 team. Score!
Oregon. Every year now, AP Poll voters rank Oregon in the top 25 out of either some sort of weird Dana Altman love or because they like the colors. The on-court product does not provide a reason to keep doing this. They missed the NCAA Tournament with ease.
Miami FL. Not the best pick. Miami played like a 10 seed during the regular season, but the prevailing thought that they were sandbagging for March actually ended up being real. They genuinely may be the first team to do that.
Florida State. Well, yeah. Easy.
Preseason top 25, hits and misses
This is a speedier section, because I don’t think we necessarily need to go through every pick.
HIT: top 10 Arizona. I really liked their roster in the preseason, and though they had a terrible postseason outcome, they did win the PAC-12 conference tournament and were a 2 seed. I think that works out. I never understood them barely being inside the AP’s top 20.
MISS: top 2 Baylor. I was very, very high on Baylor’s returning cast and their new additions to a quality roster, to go with an excellent coach in Scott Drew. Instead, they opted out of playing defense this year and got smashed in the Round of 32 as a 3 seed.
HIT: borderline top 20 Arkansas. Already covered, but they profiled as an awful shooting roster entering the season and seemingly no one bothered to look into that. What a surprise when the season took place, Arkansas played 35 games, and…they were an awful shooting roster.
MISS: UCLA outside the top 10. I simply figured they weren’t quite as high-end as everyone anticipated, and I was wrong. They were a serious national title contender and near-1 seed until Jaylen Clark’s injury.
HIT: Purdue ranked. I had them 21st; AP voters had them the equivalent of 29th. That said, even 21st was well too low for a 1 seed, despite their hilarious loss to a 16.
MISS: Iowa ranked. Woof.
National title predictions
My proclamation was that your eventual national champion would come from a pile of seven teams: Gonzaga, North Carolina, Houston, Kentucky, Baylor, Kansas, and Tennessee. Exactly zero of them made the Final Four, and only Gonzaga made the Elite Eight. Maybe next year.