Kenpom published quite a few of his Conference Tourney Odds on his substack. In total, 26 of 31 are out there. I’ve included those Conf Prob % numbers in the data below. But first some light exposition. NBK-eligible teams are in Bold.

SUNDAY RECAP

(1 seed) High Point smoked (2) Winthrop in the Big South final 91-76. Cam’Ron Fletcher came off the bench to bag 15 points and 17 boards and lead the Panthers back to the Big Dance for the second straight year. Fletcher has be the only player in the country this year with 6 KenPom Game MVPs as a reserve, but I have no way of proving that.

(5) Illinois Chicago fell 84-69 to (6) Northern Iowa in the MVC Arch Madness final, despite getting 28 points from Elijah Crawford.

(1) UNC Wilmington were dumped by (9) Campbell 85-70 in the Coastal quarterfinals as they went 2-18 from three.

(3) Hofstra pounded both (6) William & Mary in the Coastal quarterfinal 92-61 behind Cruz Davis and his 30 points. With (1) UNC Wilmington and (2) Charleston eliminated in the quarters, Hofstra are suddenly the favorite.

(3) Santa Clara toyed with (6) Pacific in the West Coast quarterfinal, surviving and advancing to the tune of 76-68. They’ll take on long-time nemesis (2) Saint Mary’s in the semifinal.

South Florida smoked Charlotte 83-60 to close out the American regular season and win the conference by two games.

Nebraska beat Iowa 84-75 in OT to snag the 2-seed in the Big Ten tourney. The Huskers blew a ten point lead with five minutes left but recovered in the extra period to send the Senior Day crowd home happy.

COMING UP….

MONDAY

• (3) Santa Clara (40% chance of winning per KenPom) vs (2) Saint Mary’s in the WCC semifinal
• (3) Hofstra (69%) vs (7) Towson in the Coastal semifinal

Data courtesy Kenpom.com , ESPN Bracketology, ESPN Bubble Watch and Ken Pomeroy’s Substack

Did you ever Fall Back when you were supposed to Spring Forward? Yeah, me neither 🙂

SATURDAY RESULTS

St Thomas were stunned by North Dakota 67-66 in the Summit League semifinal.

SLU completely fell apart, losing by 29 (!) at George Mason. The Billikens’ minor struggles down the stretch have now metastasized into major problems portending total collapse. Robbie Avila had 2 points and 1 rebound and sat most of the second half (foul trouble, garbage time) in the worst game of his college career.

Big stumble for Hawaii as they lost a head-scratcher at home to Long Beach St and first year Gavin Sykes’ 34 points. Coming off a 39 point effort, Sykes is one to watch in the Big West Tournament.

SMU also failed to improve their resume, falling 91-78 at Florida St. The Mustangs’ Boopie Miller went for a career high 32 points but FSU shot 16-34 from long range to prevail. SMU go into the ACC Tournament on a four-game losing skid.

Utah St beat New Mexico 94-90. Utah Valley won a 20T thriller over Utah Tech 104-101. That wraps up our Utah update section.

Boise St with a nice 78-67 road win over Colorado St as both head to their Mountain West tournament openers on Wednesday.

TCU took care of business at home, beating Cincinnati 73-63. That makes 11 conference wins for the Horned Frogs, their most since joining the league in 2013.

Yale pulled away in the second half to beat Princeton handily 78-53. Nick Townshend led the way for the Ivy League champs with 17 points and 7 rebounds and leads the the Ivy KenPom Player of the Year (KPOY) standings going into the Ivy Tournament.

High Point rode a double-double from Senior Terry Anderson to a relatively comfortable 75-71 win over UNC Ashville in the Big South semifinal. They will take on Winthrop in the final on Sunday.

Liberty held off Sam Houston St 79-72 behind CUSA KPOY leader’s near-triple-double: 19 points, 9 rebounds, 9 assists.

SUNDAY SLATE

• High Point (66% chance of winning per KenPom) vs Winthrop in the Big South FINAL – they split the regular season matchups
• Illinois Chicago (40%) vs Northern Iowa in the Arch Madness FINAL – first-ever MVC final for the Flames
• Santa Clara (80%) vs Pacific in the West Coast quarterfinal
• Hofstra (64%) vs William & Mary in the Colonial quarterfinal
• South Florida (90%) host Charlotte to close out the American regular season
• Nebraska (71%) host Iowa to close out the Big Ten regular season

Data courtesy Kenpom.com , ESPN Bracketology, ESPN Bubble Watch and Ken Pomeroy’s Substack

As noted Friday night, (1) Belmont was a victim of Arch Madness, upended by (9) Drake in the quarterfinal. Later (3) Illinois St fell to (6) Northern Iowa. And with that our top two MVC hopefuls — (2) Bradley survived in OT but they made the Sweet Sixteen back in 1986 — are out.

UCF was trounced by West Virginia 77-62 and slump into the Big XII tournament losers of three straight, with the shine of conference wins over Kansas, Texas Tech & BYU starting to fade a bit.

Data courtesy Kenpom.com and ESPN Bracketology and ESPN Bubble Watch and Ken’s Substack

FRIDAY – Roughly half the conference tournaments are underway, and the other half of the country finishes out the regular season this weekend, and we check back in with the schools looking to make the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament first expanded to 64. Here are the biggest games of the weekend for this pack of puckered peppers:

Utah St hosts New Mexico on Saturday in a game the Aggies can probably afford to lose and the Lobos probably cannot. Everyone in the Mountain West Conference office will be pulling for New Mexico. As it stands now, Joey Brackets has them both IN.

Staying in the Mountain West — official conference sponsor of the NBK — Boise St visits Colorado St as they sit tied for fifth with identical 11-5 conference records. Both are off the bubble at the moment so need all the positioning they can get heading into the MWC Tourney. CSU has won seven straight; Boise St four in a row.

As I sit here and type, #1 Belmont falls in the Arch Madness quarterfinal, upset 100-81 by #9 Drake. The Bruins look unlikely to grab an at-large bid, and March Madness will be denied the nation’s #1 Effective Field Goal % Offense per KenPom. We’ll switch horses and pull for Illinois St to grab the MVC auto-bid.

Red hot TCU hosts white-hot Cincinnati to close out the Big XII schedule. SMU needs to hold serve at home vs Florida St to avoid finishing with a losing record in the ACC.

The top two in Conference USA square off when Liberty – who has already clinched the regular season title – hosts Sam Houston St.

Data courtesy Kenpom.com and ESPN Bracketology and ESPN Bubble Watch

The major conferences are in the last week of their regular seasons, while most of the other leagues have already wrapped their regular seasons and are prepping for the conference tournament. As KenPom sends out his Log5 predictions for conference tournament victory odds this week, we’ll update our NBK – Never Been Kissed – standings as often as time allows.

Meanwhile, the biggest movers in the past couple of weeks have been:

Hofstra – Speedy Claxton’s Pride have won 7 of 8 to move into third-place in the CAA with the highest KenPom rating in the league. The CAA tournament should be a good three-way battle among Hofstra, UNC Wilmington, and Charleston.

St Thomas – the Tommies (not kidding) closed hard to grab the #2 seed in the Summit League tournament. They split with conference champ North Dakota State, losing a close one on the road and winning decisively at home more recently.

What in the Sam Houston St is happening in Conference USA? The Bearkats – led by Po’Boigh King – go into the final week of the regular season winning 12 of 13 and a date looms with conference leader Liberty to close it out.

On the downside, Illinois St lost to fellow MVC contenders Illinois Chicago and Bradley down the stretch, and have not won three straight since New Year’s Day. They are in a jumbled group that head to Arch Madness in the second tier below leaders Belmont.

McNeese keeps winning — they finished 19-3 in the Southland — but a few squeakers down the stretch saw them dip in the KenPom ratings even without a loss. The Southland tournament seems almost certain to be a showdown between the Cowboys and Stephen F. Austin.

Data courtesy Kenpom.com and ESPN Bracketology and ESPN Bubble Watch

With SLU 24-1 and inching closer to Lock status — the latest ESPN Bubble Watch says they are already there, but we are more cautious at NBK HQ — let’s take our First Look this year at the programs who have not made the second weekend of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament since it first expanded to 64 schools in 1985; in all these Sweet Sixteens they’ve Never Been Kissed.

Nebraska, Saint Louis & Utah State are all in power positions with decent amounts of cushion. Locks? We’ll see. SMU returns to the ranks of the NBK after a couple of years away. Santa Clara got waxed by Gonzaga last night but remain in contention for an at-large bid.

As usual the Mountain West conference is the NBKest, with five schools making our rankings. New Mexico & TCU embody the spirit of the NBK with their “First Four Out” and “Work to do” statuses. And farther down the list, Liberty lead the CUSA and retain the faintest “Long shot” hope of not even needing the conference auto-bid to get in.

ESPN Bubble Watch is the next layer deeper than ESPN Bracketology., where teams beyond Joey Brackets purview are still jockeying all the way through to Selection Sunday. We’ll see how many of the Long shots can withstand losing their conference tournament and still get an at-large.

Data courtesy Kenpom.com

With longtime captain Kevin De Bruyne on the back nine of his career, mildly exiled from world beaters Manchester City to Serie A champions Napoli, the All Ginger XI seeks a new arm to place the captain’s band for the first time in nearly a decade. We are running a 4-3-3 and need strong leadership from the backline, and with only one member of the starting unit serving as captain for both club and country, the choice is obvious: Glódís Perla Viggósdóttir is the newest captain of the All Ginger XI. Lead us!

GK – Jordan Pickford – England (#1) & Everton (#1)
D – Glódís Perla Viggósdóttir (c) – Iceland (#4) & Bayern Munich (#4)
D – Molly Bartrip – Tottenham (#5)
D – Stine Ballisager Pedersen – Denmark (#3) & Bayern Munich (#3)
D – Tim Ream – USA (#13) & Charlotte (#3)
MF – Kim Little – Arsenal (#10)
MF – Hal Hershfelt – Washington Spirit (#17)
MF – James McClean – Wrexham (#7)
F – Sjoeke Nüsken – Germany (#15) & Chelsea (#6)
F – Frenkie De Jong – Netherlands (#21) & Barcelona (#21)
F – Josh Sargent – USA (#24) & Norwich City (#9)

Manager – Ronald Koeman – Netherlands men
Announcer – Mike Watts
Podcaster – Sam Mewis

Before the first round we did a WAB-style Draft Preview, and here’s the order our picks were selected:

1. Cooper Flagg – Duke – Selected #1 by Dallas
2. Dylan Harper – Rutgers – Selected #2 by San Antonio
3. Collin Murray-Boyles – South Carolina – Selected #9 by Toronto
4. Jeremiah Frears – Oklahoma – Selected #7 by New Orleans
5. Tre Johnson – Texas – Selected #6 by Washington
6. Derik Queen – Maryland – Selected #13 by New Orleans, who traded up to get him
7. Ace Bailey – Rutgers – Selected #5 by Utah

We’ll see how these picks pan out.

For Round Two, we are not attempting to do a projection. Instead, as the picks are announced we will generate and publish our favored dot-and-line plots with Game Scores per 40. D1 college players only. See the full list below.

31 – Rasheer Fleming – Saint Joseph’s – selected by Minnesota

32 – Noah Penda – France – selected by Orlando

33 – Sion James – Duke – selected by Charlotte

34 – Ryan Kalkbrenner – Creighton – selected by Charlotte

35 – Johni Broome – Auburn – selected by Philadelphia

36 – Adou Thieru – Arkansas – selected by Brooklyn

37 – Chaz Lanier – Tennessee – selected by Detroit

38 – Kameron Jones – Marquette – selected by San Antonio

39 – Alijah Martin – Florida – selected by Toronto

40 – Micah Peavy – Georgetown – selected by Washington

41 – Koby Brea – Kentucky – selected by Golden State

42 – Maxime Raynaud – Stanford – selected by Sacramento

43 – Jamir Watkins – Florida State – selected by Utah

44 – Brooks Barnhizer – Northwestern – selected by Oklahoma City

45 – Rocco Zikarsky – Australia – selected by Chicago

46 – Amari Williams – Kentucky – selected by Orlando

47 – Bogoljub Marković – Serbia – selected by Milwaukee

48 – Javon Small – West Virginia – selected by Memphis

49 – Tyrese Proctor – Duke – selected by Cleveland

50 – Kobe Sanders – Nevada – selected by New York

51 – Mohamed Diawara – France – selected by LA Clippers
52 – Alex Toohey – Australia – selected by Phoenix

53 – John Tonje – Wisconsin – selected by Utah

54 – Taelon Peter – Liberty – selected by Indiana

55 – Lachlan Olbrich – Australia – selected by LA Lakers

56 – Will Richard – Florida – selected by Memphis

57 – Max Shulga – VCU – selected by Orlando

58 – Saliou Niang – Italy – selected by Cleveland

59 – Jahmai Mashack – Tennessee – selected by Houston

Data courtesy Basketball Reference
Game Score metric created by John Hollinger detailed here
Plot format by Aaron Baggett
Inspiration from Ken Pomeroy
Inspiration from Rock M Nation

Team colors courtesy:
Benjamin S. Baumer and Gregory J. Matthews (2020). teamcolors: Color Palettes for Pro Sports Teams. R package version 0.0.4

This is our semi-occasional tradition of taking a What’s a Billiken look at the draft prospects for this year’s NBA draft. The 2025 edition is a WAB-friendly one, with NCAA Division I stars expected in most of the top picks, and potentially filling the entire lottery for the first time since…checks ChatGPT…2000. Last year the top two picks — and four of the first six — were not from D1. And as much as we love all these avenues to the pros and salute Zaccharie Richaser and Ron Holland and the like, we don’t have any data for those players thus can’t compare them in the WAB way we prefer – in the context of their college team using Game Score Per 40 Minutes.

We are not looking at every player — and we are not watching any tape — in preparation for these rankings. We have seen some of these players play, so the Eye Test is certain to inform and lightly skew despite our best efforts. These rankings are not intended to be predictive of who goes where. We are listing them in the order of expected career success, in other words who we like best. Behold! The WAB Draft Rankings for 2025. Enjoy the draft.

1 – Cooper Flagg – Duke

2 – Dylan Harper – Rutgers

3 – Collin Murray-Boyles – South Carolina

4 – Jeremiah Frears – Oklahoma

5 – Tre Johnson – Texas

6 – Derik Queen – Maryland

7 – Ace Bailey – Rutgers

<See Dylan Harper chart above>
I just learned that Ace’s given name is “Airious”. That is a cool name. Ace is a cooler name. Well done, Ace.

Also considered:

Kon Knueppel & Khaman Maluach – Duke – So difficult to choose who will be better that we ended up dropping both. If we were going to bet on it, we’d say Knueppel has a better rookie year and in five years time Maluach ends up ahead.

VJ Edgecombe – Baylor – Omier was decidedly better, and if VJ is supposed to make his teammates better, by this chart he didn’t

Carter Bryant – Arizona – Not understanding this one at all. Caleb Love and many many other teammates were way way better. Maybe he’s so selfless it’s completely unmeasurable? The anti-VJ? The JV?

Jase Richardson – Michigan State – good season and good player but not enough separation from the Adreian Payne and Gary Harris tier to project success

Kasparas Jakucionis – Illinois – significant jump from him up to Terrence Shannon

Cedric Coward – Washington State – smallest sample size since Michael Porter Jr

Liam McNeeley – Connecticut – miles away from Donovan Clingan, Kemba Walker, and even Cam Spencer

Congrats to the winners, condolences to the non-winners, and apologies for the tempo bias.

For fun, see how many guys who just played in the NBA Finals you can spot in these charts. For even more fun, see how many guys appear on multiple of these charts.

Data courtesy Basketball Reference
Game Score metric created by John Hollinger detailed here
Plot format by Aaron Baggett
Inspiration from Ken Pomeroy
Inspiration from Rock M Nation

Team colors courtesy:
Benjamin S. Baumer and Gregory J. Matthews (2020). teamcolors: Color Palettes for Pro Sports Teams. R package version 0.0.4

If Wooden Award winner and soon to be #1 pick in the NBA Draft Cooper Flagg is as competitive as people say, he is never ever going to forget how his Duke team lost to Houston in their epic Final Four battle Saturday night.

Houston (51%) vs Florida – 7:50 PM CDT on CBS

No time for a comprehensive write-up today — work — so let’s talk for a minute about depth. Teams with lots of veterans and/or lots of talented players can bring in substitutes and get some production off of their bench. Teams like Duke & Houston would both be considered relatively deep. But a very good defense will severely limit that depth, exploiting the inadequacy of the replacements and/or convincing the coach through their own Eye Test results to cut short their minutes and rely more on the starters.

The chart below illustrates how this phenomenon played out in Houston-Duke. Generally solid substitutes Mylik Wilson & Terrance Arceneaux — who usually perform right around average for a Houston Cougar — were rendered entirely unproductive by the Blue Devils defense. Emanuel Sharp is simply a rock of consistency so he did what he was going to do anyway. And LJ Cryer broke out for another great game — his third of this tournament. He and the defense carried them to the comeback win.

We don’t have the Duke chart, but it tells a similar story in reverse: Houston severely limited contributions beyond Cooper Flagg, and coach Jon Scheyer could not get anything out of big men tandem Khaman Maluach & Patrick Ngongba. What appeared to be a pretty deep team was pruned down to Flagg, Kon Kneuppel and a bit of Maliq Brown by the swarming Houston defense.

Florida also seems like a deep team, with a higher quality of depth. Their top seven contribute at a higher level than a typical Gator squad — with Tempo Bias certainly contributing. Florida particularly benefits from rotating four productive bigs – starters 6’11” Alex Condon & 6’10” Rueben Chinyelu backed by subs 6’9″ Thomas Haugh & 7’1″ Micah Handlogten. Will Houston be able to trim all these trees and force Florida to ask more of Denzel Aberdeen?

Data courtesy Kenpom.com and Basketball Reference
Game Score metric created by John Hollinger detailed here
Plot format by Aaron Baggett
Inspiration from Ken Pomeroy
Inspiration from Rock M Nation

Team colors courtesy:
Benjamin S. Baumer and Gregory J. Matthews (2020). teamcolors: Color Palettes for Pro Sports Teams. R package version 0.0.4