-Jim Root

HUGE week of rankings here, folks. Only Florida State (at Virginia last night) and Michigan State (at Indiana last Thursday) lost this week, so not a ton of shuffling in the top 12. The Mid-Major Five has two schools making their season debuts, though…

1. Baylor (1)

How would you like to be this guy/girl?

Sitting on 500/1 odds for what has clearly been the best team in the country to this point sure sounds like a nice place to be. Plenty was made about the two St. Louis Blues fans that won 250/1 bets on their magical Stanley Cup run last summer, but this Bears team at 500/1 – in a six-game single elimination tournament – will be an insane roller coaster (unless, of course, he/she opts for the enormous hedging opportunities that should present themselves).

2. Gonzaga (2)

I don’t have a ton to say about the Zags this week. I watched the entire game against Pacific, and the Zags’ surgical destruction of the Tigers’ defense was terrifying in its (seeming) ease. Against an above average defense, Gonzaga shot 60% from two, 50% from three, turned it over just seven times, and grabbed an impressive 36.7% of their misses. Had the Bulldogs actually made their free throws (just 17/29 from the stripe), 1.5 points per possession was within reach.

And you know what? It felt ho-hum! I mentioned Dribble Handoff’s Shot Quality metric in last week’s Villanova section, and Gonzaga is the prince to Dayton’s king in this category. The Bulldogs are up to 5th in Shot Quality and 3rd in effective field goal percentage, something that was on clear display in the utter demolition of poor Pacific on Saturday night.

3. Kansas (3)

Three weeks ago in this space, I discussed the importance of freshman guard Christian Braun’s emergence as a viable role player for this year’s Kansas team. Well, since that blurb, Braun has exploded, rendering that “role player” label a massive understatement. Braun had a career-high 20 points against Kansas State before Silvio De Sousa and James Love went Royal Rumble, and he’s followed that up with two more strong performances, including 16 points, nine rebounds, and two steals in his first career start at Oklahoma State on Monday. Braun’s impact has been obvious since the calendar flipped to 2020 – per Hoop Lens, the Jayhawks are +23 points per 100 possessions with him on the court, compared to just +3 per 100 without him:

Braun was strangely buried at Texas in a game that KU had to struggle for the entire 40 minutes, but his performances with De Sousa and David McCormack suspended has made it so Bill Self will struggle to keep him off the floor going forward.

4. San Diego State (4)

I hadn’t gotten to see a ton of San Diego State this year, so I took a trip up to Thomas & Mack on Sunday to catch the Aztecs in person. They ended up pulling out a solid win against an incredibly hyped home underdog, taking several punches from UNLV and returning the blows with equal aggression – usually via Malachi Flynn, like these after the Rebels had grabbed second-half leads:

Flynn is definitely the first name worth mentioning for SDSU, considering everything he does for them on the offensive end – hit perimeter shots, get into gaps to get to the rim or put open shots on a platter for his teammates – and he’ll get his fair share of attention for All-American honors as a result.

I was also impressed by Yanni Wetzell, the former Vanderbilt center who has established himself as a legitimate scoring threat for the Aztecs at his third college stop (began at Division II St. Mary’s University). Wetzell had a couple “whoa” spin moves against a strong post defender in Cheikh Mbacke Diong:

Still, though, the upside for the Aztecs is a little concerning. They got their best victories (Iowa, Creighton, at BYU) with Nathan Mensah dominating the paint, and the defensive ceiling is lower without him (even though it’s still ranked first in the MWC right now). Without Mensah and against high-level competition in the NCAA Tournament, I worry about their lack of athletes on the wing and up front (need Aguek Arop back), as well as their ability to generate consistent offense against teams with stout defenses – something for which Iowa, Creighton, and BYU aren’t exactly famous.

5. Louisville (6)

I discussed the emergence of Christian Braun in the Kansas section, and Louisville has seen the benefit of a similar delayed breakout from a freshman. David Johnson is the obvious name worth mentioning there, but Samuell Williamson – the Cardinals’ highest-rated recruit – has carved out a larger role of late, as well.

Williamson is a lanky 6’7 wing that came in with boatloads of hype, to the point that the Weave got ripped in the preseason for not ranking him in our Top 100 (in hindsight, lol). But he’s starting to flash that potential against ACC competition, tallying 14 points against Clemson and earning 17+ minutes in each of the last three games following a stretch of six contests where he played 13 or fewer minutes.

He showed off his offensive arsenal against the Orange Tigers, scoring in a wide variety of ways – a spot up three, a back cut for a dunk, a curl drive, a patient pick-and-roll floater – but none were more impressive than this and-one:

The Cardinals have suffered through a few offensive droughts this year, so more minutes for a natural-born scorer like Williamson gives them more options to solve such issues.

6. Duke (7)

Sorry Duke fans – I’m hijacking your section this week. I need to rip into Brad Davison somewhere, and it only seems appropriate for me to do so in the section of the team that trotted Grayson Allen out there for four years. Both Davison and Allen are hyper-competitive, tremendously emotional players, firebrands for their squads that can swing the momentum with a physical drive or a pesky defensive play. Unfortunately for both, that fire has led to some bush league plays, with Davison taking his second career swing at genitalia on Monday night (Marquette fans surely remember his first testicle tap). When something like this (or Allen tripping people, or Iowa’s Adam Woodbury poking players in the eye) happens more than once, it goes from a “possible coincidence” to a “clear dirty pattern,” and Davison deserves any punishment he receives.

Of course, it’s also fun for college basketball to have a despicable villain who will stoop to new lows to try and gain an advantage. So from that perspective, I guess Davison is a net positive for the sport. But I would be remiss as a Wisconsin fan if I did not call out absolute garbage like this, especially after being an extremely loud critic of Allen’s (it circles back to Duke!).

7. Dayton (8)

There’s almost certainly a mathematical way to measure this, but just speaking anecdotally, the Flyers feel like the most “spurtable” team in the country (by a fairly wide margin). Meaning, the Flyers go on soul-crushing runs where momentum builds like a wave until it crashes down on the opponent in the form of a 15-0 game-ending devastation. Since the start of conference play, the Flyers have put the following runs together:

·        16-2 and 12-0 at Richmond, a possible at-large NCAA Tournament team
·        17-3 against St. Bonaventure
·        11-1 at SLU
·        The pièce de résistance, a 22-0 scorched earther against VCU (possibly the A-10’s second-best team)
·        27-7 to start the game against UMass
·        11-1 at St. Joe’s
·        24-2 at La Salle

I mean, what do you do against that? When the Obi Toppin Train gets rolling down the tracks, there ain’t no stoppin’ it…

8. Seton Hall (10)

The midseason list for the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year surfaced last week, and I’d like to register my OUTRAGE that Seton Hall’s 7’2 shot-swatter Romaro Gill did not qualify. I froze up trying to decide if I should compare Gill to Treebeard or Groot, but the point remains – he is the proverbial “tree” when announcers discuss guards venturing into the paint. He blocks more shots with his armpit than he does with his hands!

And he’s far more than just a shot-blocker, as Gill has vastly improved his mobility this year, blossoming into a (relatively) versatile destroyer who can track drives down the paint:

I should acknowledge that a Pirate did make the list – point guard Quincy McKnight – and he has been outstanding as a shutdown perimeter defender. But there’s an easy argument to make that big men are inherently more valuable to a defense than guards, and Gill has been the foundation on which Kevin Willard has built the country’s 12th-best defense (per KenPom). He’s a human eraser, but I guess if you’d rather have Jacob Gilyard or Fatts Russell to build your defense around, then we just won’t see eye-to-eye on this.

9. Florida State (5)

It feels weird knocking a team for losing at Virginia, but considering South Carolina, Syracuse, and NC State have all successfully left John Paul Jones with a victory, it’s not a great loss for the ‘Noles. It also haunts me that I wrote this just one week ago:

As I mentioned in that blurb, though, it’s perfectly reasonable for FSU to lose a couple of those, so dropping one is by no means catastrophic. Leonard Hamilton will just want to avoid losing too many more, or FSU will end up as a 3-seed with an 11-seed like Xavier lurking in the second round…

10. Villanova (11)

At the beginning of the year, the concern with Villanova was one of offensive creation. Who could actually generate his own shot? Who could break down the defense off the dribble, make two play one, and force the defense to rotate, allowing the Wildcats precise ball movement to pick the defense apart?

We had hoped it would be Brian Antoine, but for the second straight year, Jay Wright is determined nail his prized 5-star guard to the end of the bench. While I might ordinarily question this approach, it’s Jay flippin’ Wright, and Collin Gillespie is now doing this to good defenders:

Gillespie’s development has been something to behold, evolving from a standstill shooter on the 2018 juggernaut to a central creation role on the country’s 10th-ranked offense. The comparisons to Ryan Arcidiacono are endless, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Gillespie is actually starting to make an argument that he’s the better player, though we’ll hold off on that discussion for now…

11. West Virginia (13)

After West Virginia viciously pulverized my Missouri Tigers on Saturday, Mizzou Coach Cuonzo Martin mused about the Mountaineers’ mountainous paint protectors: “I’m not sure there’s another team off the top of my head that functions like that in the country, when you’ve got two guys.” That got me thinking – which other teams really do play that way, with two brutes beating foes to a pulp? Two guys that could not be any less interested in “showing off their shooting range” or leaving the paint for any reason other than to set bone-jarring screens?

Kansas comes to mind, although Silvio De Sousa is in timeout for quite a while, and the Jayhawks have proven to be better with four guards on the court. Gonzaga plays two bigs, but Killian Tillie is more of a smooth operator than a bludgeoner – he’s disqualified for being too skilled. Purdue has almost completely stopped playing Matt Haarms and Trevion Williams together. Here’s who I came up with (from bigger conferences):

·        North Carolina (Armando Bacot and Garrison Brooks)
·        Illinois (Giorgi Bezhanishvili and Kofi Cockburn – although Giorgi shoots too many threes)
·        Houston (Fabian White and Brison Gresham/Chris Harris)
·        Mississippi State (Reggie Perry and Abdul Ado – but Ado shoots threes)
·        Baylor (Mark Vital and Freddie Gillespie – yes, Vital counts, have you seen him?)
·        Indiana (Trayce Jackson-Davis and Joey Brunk)
·        USC (Onyeka Okongwu and Nik Rakocevic)
·        Kentucky (Nick Richards and E.J. Montgomery)

12. Butler (12)

It feels wrong to not write about Kamar Baldwin after he morphed into Superman late in the second half and in overtime against Marquette, but a Butler defensive possession blew me away against Marquette’s offense, so we’re going to look at that instead. Sorry Kamar!

It came later on in the second half against the Golden Eagles, with Butler desperately clawing its way back into the game against a Marquette offense that just kept answer the bell every time the Bulldogs got close. Marquette ran Koby McEwen off a double screen and then Markus Howard off a triple screen immediately after, and the Butler defense guarded every action beautifully. In the first clip, Bryce Nze bluffs quick at McEwen before recovering back to Theo John:

And immediately after, he does the same thing while guarding the last of the three Howard screens. Kamar Baldwin also stunts off the ball to deter Howard from shooting, and when Howard pitches it back to McEwen, Sean McDermott is there to bluff at him before he launches a brick. Just gorgeous defensive coordination:

That’s how you end up a top 10 defense. Getting some stops helped the Bulldogs get close, and Baldwin slammed the door in overtime with clutch bucket after clutch bucket.

Next 10: Michigan State, Kentucky, Oregon, Auburn, Iowa, Rutgers, Houston, Illinois, Maryland, LSU

Mid-Major Five

We wave goodbye to Liberty, who lost at North Florida (eh, okay) and Stetson (*pukes*) while getting 30-14’d in the second half by the Hatters. You don’t come back from that.

1. Yale

Ivy basketball guru Mike James (@ivybball on Twitter, a very worthwhile follow) has been on a months-long crusade touting the idea that this Yale team is at-large caliber, an admirable but probably doomed perspective, as much as I would love it to be true. The Bulldogs, like every other mid-major program in American, are completely hamstrung by the quadrant system and their lack of opportunity to earn quality wins. Yale is currently 56th in the NET (54th KenPom, 39th ESPN Strength of Record), well within the territory necessary for consideration, but the lack of “big wins” (0-1 vs. Quadrant 1, 1-3 vs. Q2) renders the Bulldogs’ chances to essentially zero (0.9%, according to BartTorvik).

James has joined many in the college hoops sphere pushing for more of a “Wins Above Bubble” approach, in which every single game has a value on a +1 to -1 scale, and as wonderful/fair as that might be, the almighty dollar bill will likely prevent that from being a reality any time soon, unfortunately.

Of course, Yale also couldn’t beat UNC without Cole Anthony, something nearly everyone else has done, so perhaps that should be an eliminator.

2. East Tennessee State

This has been an extremely strange 2020 for East Tennessee State, especially considering it’s actually been highly successful. For the first four games of the year, the Buccaneers’ offense completely abandoned them, as ETSU failed to score even 1.0 PPP in any of those contests (went 3-1, though). In the three games since, the offense has exploded, posting performances of 1.26 PPP, 1.23 PPP, and 1.10 PPP. Here’s a better visualization using BartTorvik’s visualization:

Thankfully, the defense has been a constant; the Bucs lead the SoCon in adjusted defensive efficiency, and the wealth of athleticism that Steve Forbes has accumulated has not skipped a beat despite missing power forward Jeromy Rodriguez.

3. Northern Iowa

The Purple Panthers ran in place last week, threatening to drop out of these rankings with a disappointing loss at Southern Illinois on Wednesday night, but they bounced back with a huge win over first-place (at the time) Loyola-Chicago. That put Ben Jacobson’s squad back in the Missouri Valley driver’s seat, and while the road ahead is littered with landmines – UNI is somehow still Illinois State’s only conference win, so the Panthers can lose to anyone – UNI is still very much in control of its tournament destiny – both MVC and NCAA.

4. North Texas

North Texas has been hammering at the door of these rankings for a solid month now, and I’ve resisted adding them after a putrid November (2-5 overall, lost at home to Eastern Michigan), but the Mean Green have finally crashed through the gate and demanded a spot after taking a commanding spot atop C-USA with wins at Louisiana Tech and against UTSA and UTEP (and Rice, but who cares) over the past 10 days.

In the first iteration of his “Three Up, Three Down” column on December 12th, my colleague Ky looked at the surging Mean Green and their improvement in the two week span since the start of December. Well, that improvement is even truer now, as North Texas has skyrocketed up KenPom’s rankings:

As further support of this, if you filter BartTorvik’s T-Rank for only data fro 12/1 through now, North Texas ranks a staggering 33rd in the country – just ahead of such powerhouses as Oregon, Florida St., and Texas Tech. This squad is for real, folks, and Grant McCasland may just be getting started.

5. New Mexico State

Akron lost at home to Buffalo on Wednesday night, and while that’s not a disastrous loss, it allows me to welcome back the Aggies into their rightful place within the Mid-Major Five:

Injuries to Wilfried Likayi, A.J. Harris, Clayton Henry, Terrell Brown, Clayton Henry again, A.J. Harris again, and now Trevelin Queen have torpedoed the highest hopes of this season, but the goal of Total WAC Domination is still very much within reach. NMSU has already won arguably its two most difficult tests (at Seattle, at Cal Baptist), and KenPom gives them at least a 67% chance to win every remaining game. The priorities for NMSU are now as follows: 1) get Queen healthy (out 4-6 weeks) and 2) get Evan Gilyard as many reps at point guard as possible.