NCAA Basketball Thread 2024-2025
Quick OP here just to get us up and running
Things to watch for this year:
1. Can UConn 3-peat? Hurley won back to back championships with Clingan, Tristen Newton, and company. Can he make it a third with only one returning starter?
2. Who will be this years national player of the year? Zach Edey was the best player I've seen play college basketball in my lifetime. People throw the term generational talent around alot and Edey was truly a generational talent winning back to back national player of the year awards. But, now he's gone. So who can win the award?
- the 5th year guards in Mark Sears(Alabama) and RJ Davis(UNC) are a good spot to start. Both elite shooters and engines of an offense, they should lead two really good teams.
- the 5th year centers in Hunter Dickinson(Kansas) and Ryan Kallbrenner(Creighton) are also viable options. They'll be the anchors to what should be two really good teams.
- The phenoms: Cooper Flagg(Duke), Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper(Rutgers), VJ Edgecombe(Baylor), and Tre Johnson(Texas) lead a loaded freshman class.
3. Who are the contenders?
Spoiler
Lettuce college basketball
Tennessee has opened the game by going 1 for 11 from the field. I assume that you understand what I was talking about when I said that Tennessee couldn't shoot the ball.
Yup, appreciated the timely info. Even took a parlay on Duke and Houston the two numbers I liked least. What's the O/U on Tenn points here at half sitting on 15? Still about 50.
0.53
is that good?
I didn't even watch the second half. I watched the old 1974 UCLA/NC State Final 4 game instead. A lot I forgot about that epic, dynasty ending (sort of) game. It's a real piece of history. NC State coming off an undefeated year the season before, but on probation. Now they challenge UCLA in the Final 4, a test everyone had failed since UCLA started going to Final 4s 10 years before.
UCLA led by 11 at two different junctures of the 2nd half. Then they led by 7 in double OT, and started missing FTs and turning the ball over. A minute long interview with Walton below, reminiscing about it. At the end he said, "It could have been perfect" ... meaning it could have been a perfect career, 90-0 career with 3 titles, but for the late season "collapse" his senior year.
For my money, it doesn't get any more heady in sports.
What the hell is going on out there??
I don't mind the tournament necessarily going all 1 seeds, but every damn game is non competitive which is crazy.
What could possibly make this WOAT tournament even better? How about one of the best players in CBB going down with a gruesome injury.
Came back out mouthing, "I'm ok." One tough sunuvabitch playing with one arm!
eta: Maybe one and a half!
Came back out mouthing, "I'm ok." One tough sunuvabitch playing with one arm!
eta: Maybe one and a half!
The teams that do well against Auburn are teams that can defend Broome without doubling him relentlessly. Michigan State very clearly is not one of those teams. They tried to defend Broome without doubling in the first half and he just abused MSU's bigs.
Florida definitely can defend Broome without doubling.
That 3 was almost a wedgie and popped out and in.
You can't compare Kenpom between seasons.
You can if you want to!
NetRtg is scaled relative to the "average" team only in the given year. There's nothing linking an average team in year Yi to year Yj that would allow meaningful direct comparisons between teams in different seasons. That's significantly more difficult to model for a variety of reasons.
Regarding 2025 specifically, there's reason to believe that good teams are getting better at the expense of average teams largely because of portal and NIL poaching. The degree to which that's true would be difficult to model since it's an endogeneity problem caused by simultaneity (ΔY -> ΔX, but ΔX -> ΔY). The reason one might do this is because the effects aren't necessarily additive. By that, I mean a middling mid major losing their best player is likely more catastrophic to efficiency than the gain realized by, say, Duke or Houston adding that player as a role player. In other words, it could be that "average team getting worse" accounts for more of the effect than "good team getting better." And there are possibly other unique factors such as this being the final covid exemption year to estimate as well. Big project to tackle at the modern scientific standard.
Instead I think we can probably just look at the data and draw reasonable conclusions. It's true that there are four teams from the 2025 season among the top 10 all-time in Kenpom NetRtg. It's also true that there are 32 teams with NetRtg > 20, which is six more than any other season in the public Kenpom data from 2002 to present (average ~ 20 such teams). Furthermore, the gap between #1 and #30 isn't an outlier. It's currently 18.72, which isn't statistically different from last year's margin of 18.88, and neither of those are the largest 1-30 spread (e.g., 2015 = 20.64). I chose 30 arbitrarily, but I think it's more meaningful than comparing the top teams to the "average" team in the 160-170 range.
Here's another peculiarity. Last season, Alabama had the highest SOS ever in 7,914 Kenpom team-seasons at 14.71. This season, there are currently 19 such teams that have exceeded that mark with more than a few shattering it.
To be clear, I'm not saying that the best teams this year aren't among the best ever. It's certainly possible given that the funded programs can quickly and easily address their deficiencies by poaching top talent from inferior competition. It's never been easier to build a super team than it is today. But it's also not clear to me how much of the NetRtg effect is from top teams getting better as opposed to average teams getting worse.
I would also guess that as overall efficiency increases (I think Ken said this was the most efficient year he's ever charted in terms of teams Points Per Possession scoring) that the margin will widen for the best teams. I'd assume this is a smaller effect than what was posted above but might be a factor.
[QUOTE=Lawnmower Man]...By that, I mean a middling mid major losing their best player is likely more catastrophic to efficiency than the gain realized by, say, Duke or Houston adding that player as a role player... [/QUOTE]
At Drake's games the other week, my friend and I were discussing this very problem. NIL is going to make the mid-majors' life very difficult. However, it also seems as if the poaching can go the other way.
If a mid-major team can pick up a good bench player from a big-time program, it's often a huge bump to their team, but the big-time school doesn't really notice.
Elliot Cadeau to Michigan.
read ILP's post above ... didn't know UM had a serious TO% issue ... thought it can't be that bad being they were a top-notch team this season ... check their TO% on kenpom ... ILP's story checks out
It's amazing what this team accomplished this year despite their flaws (rebounding/TO issues). Big Ten tournament champions/Sweet 16. It truly was a magical year. Will remember these guys forever. Up 9 points on the overall #1 seed with 12ish minutes left....sigh.
