The least consequential teams of the first month of the 2023-24 season
Congratulations! You did nothing
I’ll level with you: I’m still coming down from the flu and therefore do not feel 100%. Plans to do more detailed articles have been shoved to future weeks when I am not feeling tired all the time. I have not spent much of the last week in a great mood, even after the football result of my father’s dreams on Saturday. So! In that spirit, it is time to be a Hater. Sort of.
Now that it is December 1, there is presumably going to be a mini-rush of content wrapping up the first month of the season. Some of it will call it the wildest first month we have ever seen. (To each their own?) Some of it will go over the teams who improved their March stock the most. Some of it will go over teams that have highly consequential Decembers ahead of them. You might even get the November Player of the Year rankings without the author realizing the conundrum of a November Player of the Year ranking. The Field of 68 YouTube channel will release a video stating that Maryland’s season is OVER mere hours before they defeat Indiana.
As far as I can tell, there is only one newsletter either dumb enough or poisoned by Tamiflu enough to engage with the real topic on everyone’s minds. If I did not watch a single game of November basketball and simply checked KenPom at the end of the month, what team would I learn the very least about? What team did I watch this month and felt precisely whelmed by? What team showed up, got a check, and went home?
The criteria here is intentionally murky, because technically, all of the 362 teams in D-1 basketball mean something to somebody. However, for me, their November was so remarkably unremarkable that it was worth remarking on. For a variety of possible reasons, the below five teams have ended up on this list.
TCU
CRIME: Played the single worst non-conference schedule I think I have ever seen.
On one hand, I think that some teams simply overdo it with their non-conference schedules. Tennessee probably did this year, which I’ve gone over in other posts. You can go a little too hard and wear yourself down before playing in a tough conference. If a Big 12 team wants to take it relatively easy before touching Big 12 play, hey, no shame from me. Just get a few tests in to make sure you’re ready and I think it’s fine.
But this…this is a stunner. I am unsure I’ve seen something like it in a while from a supposed NCAA Tournament team.
That is TCU’s month of November, which featured a grand total of zero teams in the KenPom top 250. You can’t even “but the preseason polls” about any of these teams minus Alcorn State, the literal only team to be projected inside the top six of their respective conference. In modern memory, I have never seen a more pathetic November slate for any team actually trying to be good at basketball.
The great news, of course, is that December is barely any better.
TCU begins December by playing a zombie Georgetown program that lost at home to Holy Cross and will nonetheless easily be their toughest test so far. They play Clemson - the only NCAA Tournament team they will play before January - in Toronto for some reason. Then they play the dumbest Hurley, a buy game, and a holiday tournament in Hawaii with zero NCAA Tournament teams in it.
I’m officially coming out as a TCU hater. I do not want these guys in the NCAA Tournament, sorry. If you're in a Big Six league, schedule like it. You might even get me to root for Bobby Hurley…well, you won’t, because that’s not something I do. But I pondered it!
PUNISHMENT: Plays in Big 12. Will also be swarmed by locusts, a la the finale of Righteous Gemstones or alternately Joel 1:4.
Eastern Kentucky
CRIME: No team in D-1 has played fewer games against D-1 competition than EKU’s three.
This is of great disappointment to me. I like EKU a lot; I think A.W. Hamilton is quite the coach and has done a great job at getting that program to a place it’s very rarely been. I also think this November scheduling strategy was either cowardice or incompetence and I am uncertain which is which.
That is five games. Three (3) were against Division I competition. None exited the friendly confines of their home arena. What, exactly, does putting up 241 points against two NAIA schools do for you? It doesn’t count for wins on one’s resume. They don’t count for losses, either, because as long as you and I have been alive the NCAA has refused to bring non-D1 results into discussion for March purposes. They are effectively as useful as an October exhibition.
That’s what this is: a schedule with an extended preseason with games that don’t count. You decided to not start your season until November 17, a full week after everyone else had at least played one game of even mild consequence. Then you lost both of the two home games you scheduled, possibly because you had not played a single soul. The better news is that they have elected to make their Christmas as miserable as possible.
What the hell are you doing? Get it together. I want you in the Tournament, after all.
PUNISHMENT: May have already received it. Will definitely receive it on December 23 and 29. Will likely receive it by eventually missing the NCAA Tournament in a peak roster year.
Eastern Washington
CRIME: Why would you play a schedule like this if you didn’t have to?
This one is short. I like David Riley a ton and think he’s a coaching star in the making. What he’s done at EWU in a very short time is remarkable. I think he could use some lessons in not killing his team before the only thing that matters (Big Sky play) to the bottom line begins.
I’m not sure I have any commentary, really. I can respect the idea of battle-testing one’s team to a certain point. This almost feels like trying to prove a point that doesn’t exist. Eastern Washington is not at the point of its history where it needs to play a Texas Southern-style schedule. Last year’s schedule was difficult, too, but they played multiple home games against D-1 opponents and spent a lot of November/December at neutral sites.
That scheduling strategy is fairly understandable. This one is just kinda cruel to everyone involved. They’re literally not going to play a home game against a D-1 opponent until Big Sky play begins. I understand EWU is likely in the unenviable position of being too good to get certain teams to come play them, but, like…you couldn’t get UC Davis or whoever to swing by for a quick two hours?
PUNISHMENT: Has already happened. Enjoy the ice bath, fellas.
Mississippi Valley State
CRIME: Is possibly the worst basketball team I have ever seen.
Punching down is not something enjoyable for anybody, but sometimes, it’s so un-notable that it’s kind of notable. Well:
That is seven games, six of which ended with 30+ point losses to far more talented teams. Impressively, this was not the worst November even by this program over the last 14 years.
What exactly was useful about this for anyone involved? It was probably useful for Pacific, who can accordingly push their expectations down a bit. But for everyone else, did you learn anything? Did LSU learn anything meaningful by demolishing a far worse team? Oklahoma? UConn? TCU? No, they did not. These were two-hour exhibitions that serve the same purpose as watching an F-150 drive over an ant.
PUNISHMENT: I feel like they live it out every day. Poor guys.
Duke
CRIME: For all the bluster and artifice, only Pepperdine moved less in KenPom’s Adjusted Efficiency Margin in the month of November.
Here’s the controversial pick, I guess. I mentioned Field of 68’s YouTube channel earlier. I like their writing a good bit, and The Almanac from this offseason was easily worth the $20 I spent on it. I think what they do has value. I just think that this stuff helps nobody at all.
No, they probably do not. They lost to a team you people had in your top 15 two weeks ago!
Is it ever anyone’s title to lose? I thought that was the point of an NCAA Tournament that keeps producing weird winners.
Is there a person on earth who would rank Jon Scheyer, In-Game Basketball Coach above Bill Self, In-Game Basketball Coach?
Have you guys looked into, like, italics? Or bold? Maybe a strikethrough from time to time? I don’t upload to YouTube ever, so I’m unaware of if you can even do that, so maybe not an issue.
No. Or yes. No one knows!
Anyway, that gives you an eye into the drastic over-seriousness this team and program are treated with on a nightly basis. Which is why it gives me great, deep joy in my heart to provide you with a list of teams that moved the least in Ken Pomeroy’s numbers in the month of November, at least by Adjusted Efficiency Margin.
Pepperdine (-1.26 AdjEM to -1.27)
Duke (+22.57 AdjEM to +22.51)
These are the SICKENING and HORRIFYING and ALL CAPS results that caused such a shift!
Wow! They…uh…lost to a top-5 team at home, beat a top-20 on a neutral, and lost at the arena I consider the single nastiest place to play in CBB. None of the other games were useful data points. Okay then.
Can we call for a moratorium on overreacting to every little thing these guys do? I get it’s great for headlines; I’m not stupid. But my God, it’s a 30+ game season for a reason. They did nothing that notable in November. They didn’t do much notable last November and then won the ACC. I think I am good on overreactions for a while. Time for Tylenol and a coffee.
PUNISHMENT: Players will be forced to read every article written about them by writers at legacy media outlets, upon which they will create the second successful players’ union because of the brain damage given to them.