College basketball Power Rankings, Feb. 16: Beware, Duke is coming
There is no one foolproof method for determining which conference is the best in college basketball. There is no one metric, no one methodology, and heck, in this case, no one definition of “best.”
There is, however, one sure-fire way to spark discussion, and eventually argument, and that is to suggest that a given conference is indeed superior to all the rest. So that’s what I’ll do to open this week’s Power Rankings, and not just because I’m feeling hot-takey; rather, because I find the case for one conference far more compelling than the rest.
The Big 12 is the best conference in college basketball for a few reasons, but largely due to its strength in depth. It’s the only league with 80 percent of its members inside the KenPom top 40. It could realistically place 70 or 80 percent of its teams in the NCAA tournament.
The defense of the ACC is that those numbers, or the KenPom rankings in general, place too much emphasis on the middle and bottom tiers, and not enough on the top, which is what, the argument goes, we really should care about. The counter to that is twofold.
First, yes, perhaps the heavyweights should hold a bit more weight in the judgment. But a conference’s depth is equally important; that’s what makes a league tough.
And second, the top of the ACC isn’t really that much stronger than the top of the Big 12. That five-team tier that will lead any argument for the ACC comprises 33 percent of the conference; the Big 12’s three-team tier, which features two projected 1-seeds, comprises 30 percent. You can’t penalize the Big 12 for having fewer teams — its teams are still playing the same amount of games. And you can’t throw in Notre Dame (KenPom 25, projected 6/7-seed) on the ACC side without mentioning Oklahoma State (KenPom 20, projected 7/8-seed), Iowa State (KenPom 26, projected 8/9-seed) and Kansas State (KenPom 28, projected 8/9-seed) in the Big 12.
There’s intrigue further down the conference rankings as well, in spots three through six, but no other really challengers for the top spot. The Big East is probably the best of the rest, though its second tier is crumbling before our eyes. The Big Ten leader might be a 6-seed right now, but Maryland, Northwestern and Michigan are giving its top half a bit of depth. The Pac-12 is dragged down by a horrific bottom tier — five of 12 teams rank outside the KenPom top 100 — but its top six keeps it ahead of the SEC, which is a two-and-a-half-team conference that might only sneak four squads into the Big Dance.
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After the top six … Bleh. In past years, the AAC, Atlantic-10, Mountain West or Missouri Valley might have challenged the Pac-12 or SEC. This year, all four are down. That leaves us with a definitive top six, leaves this discussion at a standstill, and leaves you with the rankings you’ve really come here to read.
1. Villanova | 25-2 | KenPom: 2 | Last week: 2
It’s time to start talking about the threat that two Villanova seniors, Josh Hart and Kris Jenkins, pose to the NCAA record book. Hart and Jenkins have won 122 games in their careers. The winningest player in college basketball history, Shane Battier, won 131 at Duke (his teams won 133, but he sat out two games in 1998-99). Hart and Jenkins have a very real shot at eclipsing or equaling that mark.
Villanova, which is 25-2, has four regular season games remaining. Four wins would get the pair of Wildcats to 126. A Big East tournament title would get them to 129. They would then need to advance to the Sweet 16 to tie Battier, and to the Elite Eight to set the record. Likely? Probably not. But possible? Absolutely.
2. Kansas | 23-3 | KenPom: 9 | Last week: 1
Monday was a special night at the Phog. From the ear-splitting noise at the opening tip to the mind-shattering comeback (and the similarly ear-splitting noise that accompanied it), Kansas put on a show like only it can. Never leave a basketball game early until your team’s win probability is 0.00 percent, folks. And especially don’t leave a game early when your backcourt has the most comebackability — yes, the awesomeness of Frank Mason, Devonte’ Graham and Josh Jackson merits the invention of words — of any in the country.
3. Gonzaga | 26-0 | KenPom: 1 | Last week: 3
Gonzaga dispatched St. Mary’s, and looks set to finish the regular season unbeaten, a fact that has prompted probing questions about the Bulldogs’ vulnerabilities. No team on Gonzaga’s schedule has fully exposed a weakness. So what type of team can?
One thought is that high-powered pick-and-roll teams can take advantage of Przemek Karnowski’s immobility by hitting him with high ball screen after high ball screen. It’s going to take a specific type of team to exploit this piece of Karnowski’s game, though. Any team whose personnel allows Karnowski to zone up on ball screens — to sag into the paint while an on-ball guard chases the ball-handler over the screen — isn’t going to derive much advantage. St. Mary’s tried to attack Gonzaga in these situations, and didn’t have all that much success.
(via WatchESPN)
So what type of team can give Gonzaga trouble? It’s mostly about the bigs. If pick-and-pop is an option — it isn’t for St. Mary’s — Karnowski can’t sit in the paint. Or if a team has a guard-big man pair that can both attack downhill at high speeds and take the trailing on-ball defender out of the play, essentially creating a mini 2-on-1, Gonzaga could get itself in trouble. Iowa State is one such team, though not the best example, and when the Bulldogs beat the Cyclones 73-71 in late November, they were forced to go to a 2-3 zone with Karnowski patrolling the paint because the big Pole couldn’t track Iowa State’s mobile big men.
Mark Few is an outstanding coach, and will adjust to whatever an opponent throws at him, but there are some teams — West Virginia immediately comes to mind as an example — that could give Gonzaga more trouble than others.
4. Louisville | 21-5 | KenPom: 5 | Last week: 5
Louisville actually got a big result Wednesday night despite not even taking the floor. Duke’s win at Virginia had implications beyond those two foes. The ACC title race is coming down to the wire, and while Louisville would have lost any tiebreaker with the Cavaliers, the Cardinals hold a Jan. 14 win, and therefore a tie-breaking trump card, over the Blue Devils.
5. Duke | 21-5 | KenPom: 12 | Last week: 11
Jayson Tatum was undoubtedly Duke’s MVP against Virginia, but a close second was a player who scored just five points. That player is Matt Jones, who put in one of the best 36-minute defensive shifts of any player in college basketball this season. Watch and marvel at how Jones dogged London Perrantes (and Virginia’s other guards) all night:
(via WatchESPN)
Duke has improved on both ends of the floor since its January swoon, but the most noticeable improvement Wednesday was on defense. Jones’ ability to smother an opponent’s lead ball handler makes everything easier for the teammates behind him, no matter how shaky Duke’s rim protection might be.
6. North Carolina | 22-5 | KenPom: 10 | Last week: 6
Last Thursday’s Duke-Carolina showdown was a really well played basketball game. There is no one reason that the Blue Devils won, no one reason that the Tar Heels lost. But the one area where the game really deviated from pregame expectations was on the glass. North Carolina came in as the No. 1 offensive rebounding team in the nation, and in the four prior Duke-Carolina games in 2016 and 2015, its average offensive board percentage was 43.6 — above its Division I-best average this season. But the Tar Heels pulled down just 22.6 percent of their missed shots at Cameron this time around, and were actually outrebounded by the Blue Devils. Duke won the game on the backboards.
7. West Virginia | 20-6 | KenPom: 4 | Last week: 10
Next time you watch Press Virginia, watch Nathan Adrian, a senior who was recruited by Bob Huggins before the implementation of the press. The Mountaineers can’t execute their system without the ability of the on-ball defenders, but Adrian is arguably just as important. He’s almost like the quarterback of the scheme. He often matches up with the inbounder, even if the inbounder is an uber-athletic wing like Josh Jackson, and must make split-second decisions about when to trap, when to bluff at a trap, and when to recover to his man. He’s deceptively quick for a 6-foot-9 forward who looks like he should be a bruiser. He’s also a great example of how Huggins has not only recruited to suit his system, but how he’s developed the players he already had and enabled them to acclimatize themselves to it.
8. Oregon | 22-4 | KenPom: 17 | Last week: 9
Why does Oregon have its second-best defense under Dana Altman, and best since 2013? Shot blockers. Multiple shot blockers. The Ducks lead the country in block percentage by a decently wide margin at 18.3 percent, and have three players — Chris Boucher, Jordan Bell and Kavell Bigby-Williams — with individual block percentages over 8 percent. As a result, opponents shoot just a hair over 50 percent at the rim against Oregon, the lowest such opponent percentage of any major conference team. Part of what makes the defense so effective is that roughly half of Altman’s lineups include two of those three bigs, and all three are athletic enough to guard small-ball fours or switch onto guards. It’s tough, therefore, to fully pull that shot-blocking presence away from the hoop, and tough to take advantage of the big men on the perimeter.
9. Baylor | 22-4 | KenPom: 8 | Last week: 7
Some possibly flavorless but intriguing food for thought: Baylor’s win over TCU on Saturday was its first win by more than 10 points since December. Its average scoring margin in January and February? Plus-2.15. For comparison’s sake, West Virginia, despite a worse record, is plus-6.15.
10. Kentucky | 21-5 | KenPom: 7 | Last week: 13
Kentucky is gradually learning that a team with great individual offensive talent doesn’t necessarily have to play individual offense. The Wildcats went through a three-week stretch where the ball didn’t move all that much on offense, but seemed to take strides in the right direction in an 83-58 dissection of Tennessee. They tallied 17 assists, their most since an impressive Jan. 21 win over South Carolina, in which they also had 17. The ball movement was a big reason Kentucky shot 44 percent (11 for 25) from 3.
11. UCLA | 23-3 | KenPom: 18 | Last week: 15
UCLA beat Oregon because of Lonzo Ball, but not just because of his offensive heroics. Steve Alford switched Ball onto Dillon Brooks down the stretch, and Ball’s and the Bruins’ defense allowed them to spring back into the game. So did UCLA find a permanent plug for its porous defense? Probably not. This was more of a short-term fix. The Bruins’ pick-and-roll defense, which has ranged from spotty to terrible this year, still must improve.
12. Virginia | 18-7 | KenPom: 3 | Last week: 4
The Cavaliers have lost four of six, and they’ve done so because of some downright ugly first half/second half splits. In the four losses, Virginia has outscored opponents by 39 points in first halves, but has been outscored by 55 points in second halves. Is there something to this? Are the collapses a real reason to be worried about Virginia?
Let’s dig a little deeper. First of all, 84 percent of the drop-off in second halves is explained by a downtick in defense; 16 percent is explained by offense. In other words, Virginia has been 94 points worse in the four second halves because it has given up a combined 79 points more in those second halves than it had in the first. It only scored 15 points fewer in the second halves than it had in the first.
Here’s a look at the first- and second-half margins in the four games, along with points, opponent points, and opponent 3-point shooting.
Sometimes teams get hot. They just do. Statistically, 3-point percentage is largely out of a defense’s control. Some of Virginia’s poor second-half performances, therefore, have been bad luck. That’s not to say the ‘Hoos haven’t played at a significantly lower level after halftime, though; they have, and Tony Bennett has some work to do.
13. Florida State | 21-5 | KenPom: 14 | Last week: 8
Florida State’s performance over the last seven weeks presents an interesting question: Did our eyes deceive us when they told us the Seminoles were Final Four good? Or was Leonard Hamilton’s team actually playing at a Final Four level? I tend to lean more toward the latter, and toward the fact that Leonard Hamilton teams always seem to be somewhat erratic. The ‘Noles can play at a Final Four level. They just don’t always — and more recently don’t often — do.
14. Arizona | 23-3| KenPom: 21 | Last week: 14
The Wildcats lead the Pac-12, but don’t exactly look like the best of the three contenders. Jeff Eisenberg did a nice job of breaking down the battle for more than just regular season conference supremacy.
15. Florida | 21-5 | KenPom: 6 | Last week: 16
Just when the Florida hype was getting too tantalizing to resist, the Gators lost starting center John Egbunu for the season to a torn ACL. It’s not a crippling blow, but it’s a significant one for a team that, in Mike White’s second season, has grown into one of the best units in the country. Egbunu, who at 6-foot-11 is both well-built and athletic, was the team’s top shot blocker and rebounder. Sophomore Kevarrius Hayes should receive the biggest minutes bump in Egbunu’s absence.
16. Purdue | 21-5 | KenPom: 11 | Last week: 19
Purdue has suffered three really strange losses in Big Ten play. But perhaps we’ve overreacted to their strangeness? The Boilermakers have won four in a row, should extend the streak to six by this time next week, and while they might not win the Big Ten, they’re probably the conference’s best team right now.
17. SMU | 23-4 | KenPom: 16 | Last week: NR
18. Cincinnati | 23-3 | KenPom: 22 | Last week: 17
SMU makes its Power Rankings debut after knocking off the Bearcats in Dallas on Sunday. This isn’t an overreaction to one game, though. The Mustangs have lost just once since November, and that loss was by two points at Cincinnati. The AAC is a two-team league, but those two teams both have the potential to make runs in March.
19. Notre Dame | 20-7 | KenPom: 25 | Last week: 20
Bonzie Colson, Notre Dame’s center, is 6-foot-5. Terrance Mann, Florida State’s shooting guard and the second-shortest player in the Seminoles’ starting lineup, is 6-foot-6. Colson put up 33 points and 13 rebounds against the second-tallest team in the nation, and likely pulled into the lead for ACC Player of the Year.
20. Wisconsin | 21-4 | KenPom: 15 | Last week: 12
The Badgers’ offense was stifled by Northwestern Sunday in a 66-59 loss, and might even have been exposed. The Wildcats ran hard double teams at Ethan Happ every time he caught the ball in the post, and when they did, three things happened:
1. Happ had a poor game and struggled to accurately pass out of the doubles.
2. Northwestern closed out hard on shooters, put its best defender on Bronson Koenig, and limited the Badgers to 6-of-18 from deep before a meaningless second-half buzzer-beater.
3. Wisconsin doesn’t have guards who can attack off the bounce; they therefore couldn’t take advantage of a defense scrambling to rotate and recover.
Every coach preparing for Wisconsin will study that Northwestern tape from here on out.
Five more to keep an eye (or two) on: Maryland, Oklahoma State, Miami, Wichita State, Butler
Best of the mids: St. Mary’s, Illinois State, Dayton, VCU, Middle Tennessee State
Previous rankings: Jan. 5 | Jan. 12 | Jan. 19 | Jan. 26 | Feb. 2 | Feb. 9
