Welcome back to the best damn top 25 ranking in the land. The only teams from my previous ballot that lost last week got beat by other ranked teams: BYU by UConn in Boston, Alabama by Purdue at home, UCLA by Arizona in Inglewood, Kentukcky at Louisville. So this was a chance to do a little metrics scrubbing as we start the steady march toward Feast Week.
As a reminder, I am currently relying on three rankings: KenPom (a predictive metric that includes data from last season), BartTorvik (a predictive metric that only includes games from this season), and BartTorvik’s Wins Above Bubble (which calculates how a team has played compared to an average bubble team). Those rankings are listed in order next to each team. The number in parentheses reflects where that team was ranked on my ballot last week.
Here, then, is the (correct) order of the top 25 teams in men’s college basketball, as filed to the Associated Press on Sunday night:
DROPPED OUT: Texas (25)
ALMOST FAMOUS: Auburn (34-53-71), Wisconsin (17-15-70), USC (19-21-39), NC State (21-19-64), Saint Mary’s (24-5-26), Georgetown (73-65-3), Nebraska (42-40-15), Missouri (29-66-27)
NOTES ON THE VOTES
- UConn moved up three spots by virtue of its 86-84 quasi-home win in Boston over BYU. The Huskies led by 20 with just under 16 minutes to play, but the Cougars stormed back behind the unstoppable scoring machine that is A.J. Dybantsa. The Huskies’ formidable gauntlet continues this week with a home game against Arizona on Wednesday, followed by games coming up against Illinois, Kansas, Florida and Texas the next three weeks.
- I thought about moving Michigan down after its close shave at home against unranked Wake Forest. (The Wolverines pulled out an 85-84 overtime win despite shooting 4 for 25 from three). But that WAB metric convinced me to let the Wolverines hold their spot for another week. Michigan plays Middle Tennessee at home on Wednesday before heading to Las Vegas for the Players Era Festival, where the Wolverines will face San Diego State and Auburn in their first two games.
- Louisville moved up four spots due to its decisive home win over Kentucky. Louisville has a sneaky tough game at Cincinnati on Friday night, and though the Cardinals are not playing in a Thanksgiving week tournament, they travel to Bud Walton Arena to face Arkansas on Dec. 3 in the ACC/SEC Challenge.
- Gonzaga’s metrics are off the charts due to their double-digit wins over Oklahoma (home), Creighton (home) and Arizona State (road). They open with Alabama at the Players Era Festival and will play Kentucky in Nashville on Dec. 5. Let’s see how well they hold up, but if I did my rankings just on the numbers (which I would never do, especially this early in the season), the Zags would be No. 1 this week.
- It’s interesting that two preseason top-five teams, St. John’s and Florida, have terrible WAB rankings. Ditto for Kentucky and Kansas. The Jayhawks have a larger concern as their star freshman point guard Darryn Peterson has missed the last two games with a hamstring issue. It’s unclear if he’ll be available to play Duke on Tuesday night, but hamstrings are tricky, so if Peterson is not fully healed, Bill Self likely won’t let him play.
- UCLA is a good example of why a voter shouldn’t rely too heavily on the metrics readings. You can see that according to the analytics, the Bruins are not a top-25 team, and yet they played a competitive game against Arizona on Friday night in Inglewood before losing, 69-65. UCLA is also not in a Thanksgiving tournament so this team will have a quiet couple of weeks until the start of Big Ten play in December.
- Indiana is still undefeated and has a chance to climb higher the next couple of weeks against soft competition. The Hoosiers’s biggest game of the nonconference season will take place against Louisville on Dec. 6 in Indianapolis.
- I mentioned last week that Vanderbilt was one of the early metrics darlings. The Commodores are 4-0 with one win against a KenPom top 100 team (by 12 points at UCF on Nov. 8). My experience with these matters is that the numbers are telling us something that usually holds up, which is why I moved Vandy into the last place on my ballot and bumped Texas. Four of Vanderbilt’s next eight games are against KenPom top 100 teams, and the Commodores could face a couple more in the Battle 4 Atlantis. This team likely won’t play a ranked team until it hosts Alabama on Jan. 7. Don’t be surprised if Vandy creeps into the rankings between now and then, in which case I’ll be proven to be ahead of the curve as usual.
- I had Auburn at No. 25 on my first AP ballot but dropped it after the Tigers barely survived Bethune-Cookman at home in overtime in their opener. I almost put them back after they nearly knocked off Houston in Birmingham on Sunday, but if you look at their metric rankings next to Vanderbilt’s, there is no comparison. Auburn will have plenty of chances to prove itself at The Players Era (it opens with games against Oregon and Michigan) followed by games against N.C. State, Arizona and Purdue before the start of SEC play.
- As for my Almost Famous list, the two teams I’m eyeing closest are Saint Mary’s and Georgetown. It is remarkable how consistent Randy Bennett’s program has been over the years. The Gaels embarrassed a pretty good North Texas team 80-49 on Friday night. They will not play a ranked team until they travel to Gonzaga on Jan. 31. This is the Zags’ last season in the West Coast Conference before they move on to the refurbished Pac-12 next season.
- As for Georgetown, they are off to a 4-0 start for the first time since 2017. That includes a pair of solid wins over Maryland and Clemson. The Maryland win got even better when the Terps went to Marquette on Saturday and knocked off the Golden Eagles. The Hoyas are playing in the ESPN Events Invitational in Kissimmee, Fla., over Thanksgiving. They open up against Dayton and will play either Miami or BYU in the second game. Ed Cooley deserves a ton of credit for the momentum he is building in his third season at Georgetown. If this team stays healthy, I predict it will play in the NCAA Tournament for just the second time in the last 10 years.
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