Conference play creating chaos, like always
It was a wild weekend in college basketball. Since our last bracket breakdown a week ago, 12 of the top 16 seeds lost games. Naturally, this has created quite a shake-up amongst those seed lines, but not for the one seeds, at least from our pre-weekend bracket we rolled out on X:
Bracketology and bubble update before the weekend games tip off tonight: 1-5 seeds are narrow as it gets, and with Gonzaga’s loss last night, the 5 and 6 seed lines are extremely tight. pic.twitter.com/hqkhL5XOHw
— RockyTopTalk (@RockyTopTalk) January 17, 2025
Here is the up to date bracket:
Vols stumble on road, again
It was a rough weekend in Nashville for all of Tennessee basketball. Yes, Tennessee is clinging onto the final one-seed slot, but that should be the last thing on anyone’s mind when watching this team. As it turns out, Chaz Lanier is not Dalton Knecht, and he’s not capable of carrying this team through its droughts similar to how Knecht did a season ago, and it has resurrected the brutal scoreless stretches that create extremely tough holes to climb out of. Even through all of that, Tennessee had four starters score 16 or more points against Vandy, so at least the offense is capably there, but with Mississippi State at home and a road game at Auburn on the horizon in the coming week, life certainly won’t get easier, so they have to figure it out ASAP.
Purdue is boiling hot
Zach Edey is gone, Mason Gillis is gone. Purdue endured growing pains, suffering back to back Q1A losses to Texas A&M and Auburn before Christmas. However, they’ve now won seven in a row, picking up a big Quad 1A win at Oregon on Saturday, and have vaulted themselves up to the second 2-seed. Guard Braden Smith is playing tremendous basketball, notching three double-doubles during this win streak, including 34 and 12 against Toledo and 16 and 14 at Rutgers, but Trey Kaufman-Renn’s ascension has arguably been even more important. With his minutes substantially up, he’s fit his role with heavier usage like a glove. Kaufman-Renn scored 23 points at Oregon and grabbed 11 rebounds. Up next comes a tougher stretch of games for the Boilermakers, but they’ll get three of them in a row at home against Ohio State (Q2), Michigan (Q1A), and Indiana (Q2).
Mid-seed mayhem
The overall score differential between Auburn and Duke as the top two 1-seeds in the bracket is greater than the difference between Kentucky as the final 2-seed and Houston as the final 4-seed. It is an absolute mess in the meat of the top 16 seeds during the infant stages of conference play. Of this group, the teams I expect to break through this glass ceiling are Marquette, Houston, and Michigan State.
NET vs. Résumé Team of the Week: Texas Tech
Last week’s team — before I settled on a name for this — was Houston. This week, it’s the Red Raiders, who clocked in as the second 9-seed a week ago despite being a top 20 team in the NET and on KenPom. This was largely because they simply had two Q1 wins at Utah and BYU, and the Utah win is a borderline Q1 win as it stands. Tech was the ideal ‘blow out bad teams to “fool” the metrics’ team early on as they tallied multiple 30+ point wins against bottom feeder teams. In fact, Tech has five 30+ point wins against teams outside KenPom’s top 200 prior to the start of conference play. Add in a close win against a bad Syracuse team and losses to the only two teams inside KenPom’s top 100 that were on their non-conference schedule (Saint Joseph’s and Texas A&M), and the narrative was building itself.
Since then, however, the Red Raiders proved the metrics correct, nabbing Q1 wins at Utah (93-65) and BYU (72-67) and at home against Arizona (70-54). JT Toppin has been a massive portal addition for Grant McCasland’s squad, and Darrion Williams is elevating himself as one of the better playmakers in the Big 12. They’ve now worked themselves into the top 6-seed, and will look to continue to climb.
DePaul Watch
For those unfamiliar with this, it used to be Utah Watch, but 2024 DePaul usurped the 2012 Utah squad for the worst KenPom finish by a power conference team ever at 304, thus the name change. Below are the worst teams by power conference:
- ACC — Boston College: 204
- Big East — Seton Hall: 168
- Big 12 — Oklahoma State: 105
- Big Ten — Minnesota: 101
- SEC — South Carolina: 84
As it stands, I strongly doubt we get a team this year that comes close. We will keep this updated throughout the year. The Holtmann hire for DePaul has elevated them in a major way as they’ve gone from 304 all the way to 104.