Why don’t we trust Arizona to reach Arizona?
Come on, admit it. Unless your clothes are all stitched out of cardinal and navy with very large “A” attached prominently, you aren’t buying that Arizona is headed up Interstate 10 to greater Phoenix for the 2024 NCAA Final Four.
Houston has believers. UConn has even more. Purdue has Zach Edey, and certainly there are those who won’t let the Boilers forget their morbid March Madness recent history, but did we mention they have Zach Edey?
Arizona has Caleb Love. Not as inspiring. And it has a Quad 3 loss. Of the teams in the NET top 15, no one has a higher average defeat – meaning the teams that beat the Wildcats have the worst average NET ranking of any top team’s conquerors. Stanford and Oregon State have a combined Pac-12 record of 11-26, and yet somehow two of the victories in that dreadful record were achieved against what the locals call U of A. The Wildcats also were swept by the only other high-quality team in their conference, Washington State.
All this does not keep them from a position in DeCourcy’s Dozen, but it does make it really hard to be enthusiastic about the Arizona Wildcats relative to the NCAAs. And it doesn’t help that they’ve performed poorly in their two NCAA Tournaments under Tommy Lloyd, falling in the Sweet 16 as a No. 1 seed to No. 5 Houston in 2022, then falling victim as a No. 2 seed in a rare first-round upset against No. 15 seed Princeton.
The metrics and the Quad system mostly flatter the Wildcats. They are No. 4 in three of the key ratings on the “team sheets” – a fancy name for resume – and their 8-3 record against Quad 1 opponents is the best for those teams not named Houston, UConn or Purdue.
For now, they are not a hard team to seed, because there are four No. 1 seeds available. If they endure a a loss or two, a replacement will be easily found – in Tennessee or North Carolina, most likely. But top seeds lose, too, or Purdue would not have spent the past year trying to move beyond its first-round debacle.
So Arizona needs to gain some consistency, or instead of that short bus ride for the tournament’s final weekend they’ll be coping with another short stay in March.
Here’s this week’s edition of DeCourcy’s Dozen:
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1. Purdue (26-3)
KenPom rank: 3
NET rank: 2
Next up: Illinois, March 5
Overview: The Boilers’ conference-clinching victory Michigan State was not pristine, and the trip coming this week to sizzling Illinois will be even more challenging. But that win over the Spartans had great utility for Purdue.
During the recent five-game stretch that included a loss at Ohio State, shooting guard Fletcher Loyer stopped shooting. He was 1-of-7 from 3-point range, and it was the seven that was more disappointing than the one. Purdue needs him to be aggressive from the perimeter to keep defenses from swarming All-American Zach Edey even more than they already do. He shot 1-of-5 on the final Sunday of February, which was a step forward. Then came 4-of-6 against the Spartans.
That Fletcher Loyer takes Purdue to the next level.
2. Connecticut (24-2)
KenPom rank: 2
NET rank: 3
Next up: at Marquette, March 6
Overview: Since Feb. 25, All-America point guard candidate Tristen Newton and the Huskies have won five of six games, not at all surprising for a team universally regarded as one of the very best in the 2023-24 season. What’s truly impressive is that not one of those victories was decided by fewer than 24 points.
Georgetown and DePaul by a combined 61 points? Sure. But how about Marquette, Villanova and Seton Hall by an average margin of 27 points? All of this at last moved the Huskies to No. 2 in the KenPom power rankings that have become so influential in college basketball.
3. Houston (26-3)
KenPom rank: 1
NET rank: 1
Next up: at UCF, March 6
Overview: Kansas has lost four times since the afternoon of Feb. 3, when the Jayhawks blew Houston out of Allen Fieldhouse, and those results have taken KU entirely out of the Big 12 Conference race. And still Saturday’s game at UH still feels like a showdown. Coach Kelvin Sampson and the Cougars should not need it to affirm their No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed. But they need it.
4. Tennessee (17-6)
KenPom rank: 5
NET rank: 5
Next up: at South Carolina, March 6
Overview: Few teams this season have encountered a stretch quite so daunting as the one the Vols will finish Saturday at home against Kentucky. Dalton Knecht launched it by firing 21 shots and scoring 33 in a home win against Auburn last Wednesday. Then came a rugged road trip to Alabama in which star point guard Zakai Ziegler led a comeback win. Next up is a visit to Columbia to play the Gamecocks, and the regular season ends with that UK game. That’s four consecutive opponents with a combined .820 winning percentage. Phew. And the Vols are unscathed halfway through.
5. Arizona (20-5)
KenPom rank: 4
NET rank: 4
Next up: at UCLA, March 7
Overview: What had become one of college basketball’s fiercest rivalries will not end in grand style this week. These two have dominated the Pac-12 for as long as I’ve covered college basketball – literally, my first game on the Duquesne Dukes beat in 1987 was a 133-78 thrashing by the Final Four-bound Wildcats at the Great Alaska Shootout – but the final season of the conference as a major sporting entity will close with the Bruins at far from their best.
6. North Carolina (23-6)
KenPom rank: 9
NET rank: 9
Next up: Notre Dame, March 5
Overview: The latest edition of the greatest rivalry in American sports arrives for Armando Bacot and the Tar Heels on Saturday evening at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Blue Devils will be a lot better equipped for this one than a month earlier, when Duke still was in search of its identity. Then again, the Heels weren’t as advanced as they are now, either.
7. Marquette (22-7)
KenPom rank: 14
NET rank: 14
Next up: Connecticut, March 6
Overview: The Golden Eagles were fiercely competitive in a tough road game at Creighton without their two best players: point guard Tyler Kolek, who has an oblique muscle injury, and big man Oso Ighodaro, who was ill. Kolek will be out for at least the final two regular season games, which is less than ideal.
8. Iowa State (23-6)
KenPom rank: 9
NET rank: 8
Next up: BYU, March 6
Overview: It does feel a bit icky to rank the Cyclones ahead of Kansas given the differing paths they traveled. Iowa State did not play a single out-of-conference opponent that will make the NCAA Tournament as an at-large entry. Their toughest non-Big 12 game? NET No. 58 Virginia Tech at the ESPN Events Invitational near Orlando in November.
9. Kansas (21-8)
KenPom rank: 17
NET rank: 18
Next up: Kansas State, March 5
Overview: Even the man many consider to be the best active coach in college basketball has his limitations, and Bill Self has discovered it ain’t easy to win big with fewer than five capable players. This team isn’t ideally constructed in many ways, but the absence of a suitable bench has been problematic for the entire year – and especially of late, when star Kevin McCullar was injured and either unavailable or limited. KU is a .500 team since Feb. 1.
10. Creighton (22-8)
KenPom rank: 11
NET rank: 11
Next up: at Villanova, March 9
Overview: After a bit of a rugged start as he transitioned to running the Creighton attack, point guard Steven Ashworth has hit .382 from 3-point range since Jan. 27. That’s the elite shooter the Bluejays were hoping to add to their potent offense when he transferred in from Utah State. He’s still prone to the slightly-too-frequent 1-of-7 performance from deep like the one in a weekend win over Marquette. But he’s also good for a 6-of-7, as in an early February game against Providence.
11. Duke (23-6)
KenPom rank: 7
NET rank: 10
Next up: at NC State, March 4
Overview: I’m not sure how many outside the Duke locker room would have anticipated the Blue Devils somehow being fashioned into a top-20 defense. They still don’t block opponents’ shots much or take away the ball, but Virginia found out what the Duke D can be while scoring only 48 points in a game UVa very much could have used to reach the NCAA Tournament.
12. Baylor (18-5)
KenPom rank: 14
NET rank: 13
Next up: Texas, March 4
Overview: It’s become hip to hammer the Big 12 over members’ non-conference schedules, but the Bears did their part to defend the league’s honor. They defeated NCAA Tournament contenders Auburn, Florida, Seton Hall and, to stretch the point just a smidge, Cornell before entering the Big 12. And in the past month of Big 12 play, they’re 6-3 with wins over Kansas, TCU, Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Iowa State. Can’t have a Dozen without that team.