Ranking every team in college basketball from 1-351

John Gasaway, ESPN InsiderNov 2, 2017, 01:10 PM
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- ESPN Insider college basketball contributor
- First began covering college hoops in 2004
- Has written for Basketball Prospectus and the Wall Street Journal
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Congratulations, Arizona. I'm ranking you as my No. 1 team in the nation even though, purely for good and substantial off-the-court reasons, history might mark my selection as an exercise in folly.

We don't know what the near future will bring for Sean Miller and the Wildcats off the court, only that whatever happens there will determine everything that transpires in the future on the court in Tucson. For Arizona as indeed for college basketball as a whole, this is a period of uncertainty the likes of which we have rarely seen in the sport.

Be that as it may, on paper the Wildcats do strike me as the best approximation we have this season of past national champions like Kentucky in 2011-12 and Duke in 2014-15. Those teams blended returning experience with multiple one-and-done freshmen on their way to confetti-filled first Monday nights in April.

Arizona might not turn out to have multiple one-and-done freshmen, but Miller does have a projected top-four pick in Deandre Ayton and a potent cadre of veterans led by Allonzo Trier, a preseason first-team ESPN All-American. This team does not lack for talent.

Then again, that's not the only path to winning a national title. Think for a moment about what we've seen the past two years from North Carolina and Villanova, respectively.

The Tar Heels and the Wildcats won their titles by being older. Roy Williams started three juniors and two seniors, while, in the 2016 tournament, Jay Wright put two seniors, two juniors and a lone non-one-and-done freshman (Jalen Brunson) on the floor for the opening tip. Those were veteran teams whose key contributors had logged a high number of minutes together.

Kind of like Wichita State this season. The Shockers have all five starters back (or will, when they get healthy) from a team that went 31-5 in 2016-17. Doubt the schedule that Gregg Marshall's team played last season if you wish, but also remember that said schedule included Kentucky in the round of 32. That game came down to the 40th minute.

Below Arizona and Wichita State, you'll find plenty of teams way younger than the Wildcats (such as those other Wildcats in Lexington, Kentucky) and even a few rosters with more returning experience than the Shockers (I see you, USC). Before we dive in to all 351 teams, though, here are answers to a few questions that tend to be raised by this 1-to-351 business ...

How are these rankings created?
Halfway between a pure rating system and a pollster's (greatly) expanded top-25 ballot, you'll encounter something like these rankings. They're the product of a lively and occasionally contentious conversation between yours truly and my laptop.

I start by rounding up the usual modeling suspects, namely, how good was the team last season and who's back from that roster. I make due allowance, where applicable, for sensational incoming freshmen. Lastly, I tweak as I see fit, allowing for things like transfers, aberrantly good or bad 3-point luck on offense or defense last season, coaching changes, etc.

Speaking of who's back from last season ...

What does "%RPMs" mean?
This is the percentage of possession-minutes that a roster returns from last season. For example, Bradley is bringing back every player that averaged at least four minutes a game last season, so the Braves' figure there is 100 percent. At the other extreme, not surprisingly, is Kentucky, which returns just 7 percent of last season's possession-minutes. This is a statistical way of saying simply, "Wenyen Gabriel is back, and everyone else is gone."

Here's a forecasting rule of thumb for the vast majority of programs that aren't blessed with sensational incoming freshmen and/or a sensational transfer. The D-I average for returning possession-minutes this season is 56 percent, and the shape of that particular bell curve means any figure below 37 or above 75 percent is statistically extreme. Couch expectations accordingly.

Why is Kentucky so low?
I'm not convinced top 10 is really so low, but see above: UK is the youngest team in the nation. While we think that John Calipari always has young teams (and he kind of does), this Wildcats roster is green even by Cal's standards.

Besides, during the current coach's tenure, UK's NCAA tournament seeds have correlated quite well with returning experience -- with the single and outstanding exception of last season. De'Aaron Fox, Malik Monk & Co. were young (RPMs: 26 percent), but they won an SEC regular-season title outright, earned a No. 2 seed and came within a Luke Maye game-winner of going into overtime with a Final Four berth on the line. Along with Kansas in 2013-14, Kentucky last season set the standard, so far, for how good a team that young can be. But, again, this season's Wildcats roster is significantly younger than what we saw in Lexington in 2016-17.

Now, with all possible questions answered (right?), here are my rankings for 2017-18. Enjoy.