? Are most college basketball teams just barely above average??

[Xavier2005]

Speaking in generalities because it is too complex to explain all the stats. But, after all the games were played on Saturday 2-5-2022: 8 of the top 25 lost Saturday. If you review the top 25 college teams that are ranked, a significant number of those top ranked teams either lost or barely won by a few points. Several of the top ranked teams lost to unranked teams or bottom feeders in their conference. There are just a few teams now with 1 or 2 or 3 losses in all of Division 1 college basketball. Most of the now ranked top 25 have 4 to 7 losses. Many top 25 teams now have 6 to 7 losses and are losing almost 30% of the games they have played so far. General conclusion: out of 358 Division 1 men's basketball teams, there are just a few teams playing great Most teams are just playing barely above average based on win lost records. There are 358 Division One Men's College Basketball teams and less than half (179) have a winning record and and 68 of that 179 teams make THE Dance. Xavier's current RPI just fell from about 12 spots to 24 by losing to DePaul. Thus their current seed is now around a 6 or 7 at most. Many teams at the 179 half way point have losing records. Less than 20% make the Dance....80% do not make the Dance, so not making the Dance means a team is somewhere in the bottom 80%.

[muskieman]

I believe it is the product of the super senior and transfer portal. OH, you have the teams like Duke and Kentucky with 3+ NBA players but some of the teams of the ACC like North Carolina are not so dominant anymore because of the dispersion of talent. I think it will be more evident when Coach K is gone and Duke comes back to the fold. Same with the Big Ten and Pac 12 teams. Look at UCLA losing to a 7-13 Arizona State yesterday

[tacitus]

Speaking in generalities because it is too complex to explain all the stats. But, after all the games were played on Saturday 2-5-2022: 8 of the top 25 lost Saturday. If you review the top 25 college teams that are ranked, a significant number of those top ranked teams either lost or barely won by a few points. Several of the top ranked teams lost to unranked teams or bottom feeders in their conference. There are just a few teams now with 1 or 2 or 3 losses in all of Division 1 college basketball. Most of the now ranked top 25 have 4 to 7 losses. Many top 25 teams now have 6 to 7 losses and are losing almost 30% of the games they have played so far. General conclusion: out of 358 Division 1 men's basketball teams, there are just a few teams playing great Most teams are just playing barely above average based on win lost records. There are 358 Division One Men's College Basketball teams and less than half (179) have a winning record and and 68 of that 179 teams make THE Dance. Xavier's current RPI just fell from about 12 spots to 24 by losing to DePaul. Thus their current seed is now around a 6 or 7 at most. Many teams at the 179 half way point have losing records. Less than 20% make the Dance....80% do not make the Dance, so not making the Dance means a team is somewhere in the bottom 80%.

First of all, we have to bear in mind that "average" is a relative term. Anyone who has ever played in a serious game with or against a D-1 scholarship player knows this. The "average" D-1 starter can earn an honest living playing professionally overseas, at least for a few years. But using "average" as a mathematical concept, yes most teams (about 70%) are really close to "average" across metrics, be it win percentage or some more complex measure of performance. To find out whether or not this year is more skewed toward the center, you could compare Saragin or Kenpom ratings from this year with others. There is certainly no 2014-15 Kentucky team this year (who did not win the NC!!), but my guess is that this year is very similar to most years.

Second, while it does seem like there has been more "parity" in basketball the last few years (and no doubt that new transfer rules plays a big part), it is very rare for there to be many teams with fewer than 3 losses by season's end. Excellent reference here, where you can look at pretty much any season historically: https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/se ... tings.html

Finally, As far as I know, the Selection Committee has used the NET ratings over RPI since 2018. This is why most of the live RPI sites have disappeared. But Warren Nolan still calculates it, as do a few others. So we should probably be paying more attention to that metric than the RPI.

[Xavier2005]

Xavier appears to be about the same, whether RPI or NET. X is around 21 in both after the DePaul loss. That might make X a 6 seed? ??

[tacitus]

Xavier appears to be about the same, whether RPI or NET. X is around 21 in both after the DePaul loss. That might make X a 6 seed? ??

Yes, if Selection Sunday were today, we would get a 5, 6 or 7 seed, depending on several other subjective factors. But a lot of games left for us to rise or fall.

I do not want to talk about losing to Depaul at home ever again. But the good news is that it is currently only a quad-3 loss. Could be quad-2 or quad-4 by the end of the month. Let's see how things play out.

[Xavier2005]

5 of the top 25 lost on Tuesday 2-8-2022. Great parity this year. Not many great teams. Many just barely above average teams. Almost any one of the field of 32 could make a run at the FF.

[Xavier2005]

2-9-2022 6 games played with top 25 ranked teams, many against unranked teams. 4 of the top 25 lost in 6 games played. Again, many in the top 25 are just barely above average and just cannot beat everybody they play. Parity continues to show up.

[pdxmuskie]

Parity is fairly normal. Generally, most teams in the tournament with any expectations of winning round 1 have a decent chance at making the sweet 16 as long as they don't have to go through the top 3 to 8 teams. Elite 8 is typically out of reach for most unless they luck into a great matchup.

Final 4 is not wide open this year or most years. Can a random team get hot and benefit from opponents getting cold, sure, but that is true every year.

[XU2011]

I think it follows the "bell shaped curve"

[Xavier2005]

I said 2 weeks ago....that some college basketball teams are just barely above average, most teams (about 80%) are average to well below average. The teams that make the field of 68 for the dance , well a lot of them will have 8 or more losses and not really be of great caliber. IMHO i think the field of 16, the Sweet 16 will not be that strong. Meaning almost any of the Sweet 16 will have a decent shot of winning the National Title. On this week end...of Feb 27, 2022 seven of the top 10 lost their game. It may be a record number of losses. The top 25 teams that are ranked will have many losses, some has much as one third of their games played. Not a great year for most teams.