College basketball places huge emphasis on individual games — showdowns between top-ranked teams, annual rivalry clashes, single-elimination tournaments — but it’s important from time to time to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. The Media Timeout considers how fans and journalists watch, follow and talk about the sport.

For the second time in as many seasons, Duke entered February with five or more losses. Four of those have come in conference play, where Duke sits in the middle of the ACC log jam. What began as a National Title march went way off course over the winter break. First, the Blue Devils lost to Virginia Tech for the first time since 2011, with their best player riding the pine after losing his captaincy. Then they lost head coach Mike Krzyzewski to back surgery and a lengthy recovery. Then they lost access to their own locker room after falling to NC State in Cameron Indoor Stadium for the first time since 1995.

Assistant Jeff Capel presided over a rocky 4-3 stretch in Mike Krzyzewski’s absence (Mark Dolejs/USA TODAY Sports)

It’s safe to say Duke has staunched the bleeding after winning back-to-back ACC road games and escaping last-place Pitsburgh over the weekend with Krzyzewski back on the bench. But with plenty of questions remaining ahead of a date with North Carolina this week, it’s also too early to claim that the Blue Devils have righted the ship. In spite of Duke’s undistinguished resume and erratic play, the preseason #1 team remains a fixture in national headlines and ESPN segments. Why? The obvious answer is Grayson Allen, the embattled preseason Player of the Year pick whose volatile play and widespread criticism has delighted those who can’t stand his petulant and, at times, dangerous behavior on the court. But Allen obviously isn’t the first high-profile college player to behave badly, and the gleeful spectacle around his slow unravelling speaks to greater forces at play. Read the rest of this entry »

This Saturday gave college basketball one of the most chaotic days of the regular season, and no conference felt that impact more than the Big 12. The league’s top three teams were all defeated, with two of those losses coming to unranked foes at home. The chaos started with #4 Kansas having its 54-game home winning streak snapped in a 92-89 overtime loss to Iowa State. At the same time the Jayhawks were losing to the Cyclones, #10 Baylor‘s offense struggled its way to a 56-54 home loss to Kansas State. To conclude the afternoon, #13 West Virginia blew a four-point halftime lead to allow Oklahoma State to leave Morgantown with an 82-75 victory. A host of other top 10 teams also lost on Saturday. There is always going to be that one crazy day in a college basketball season, so it’s worth wondering if Saturday was this year’s or if even more craziness is yet to come. This week’s Quick N’ Dirty Analysis is after the jump.

Quick N’ Dirty Analysis.

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The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee faces a number of difficult decisions while building the field for this year’s NCAA Tournament. After sifting through home and road performances, quality wins, RPI and every other tool currently available, the committee faces one particularly difficult task: evaluating teams that were without the services of a certain player because of injury or suspension. Of the myriad criteria the committee considers, no subject is more nebulous as judging a missing player’s effect on games in which he was not involved. The committee does not ignore those games nor does it consider them victories had the player been in action, but the gray area in between those two extremes is where it gets tricky. The injury bug and suspensions have hit quite a few likely NCAA Tournament teams this year, but four in particular could face some upward or downward seeding movement based on those missing players. Those four teams — Creighton, Xavier, Arizona and Duke — will be evaluated on more than just their wins and losses.

The Loss of Creighton’s Maurice Watson Makes the Bluejays a Tough Decision (USA Today Images)

• Creighton: The Bluejays lost Maurice Watson, the nation’s assist leader and catalyst of Creighton’s high-powered offense, to an ACL injury two weeks ago. In the four-plus games since his season-ending injury, Creighton has been a mixed bag. The next two games were troublesome, with the Bluejays losing a home game to Marquette in which they gave up 102 points, followed by a blowout defeat at Georgetown. Since then, a win over lowly DePaul and an impressive victory over Butler at Hinkle Fieldhouse seems to have steadied the ship. It appears that head coach Greg McDermott is rerouting his team’s trajectory by increasing the offensive load carried by Justin Patton and Marcus Foster. Creighton’s ceiling as a Final Four contender has certainly changed, but its overall resume should be strong enough to place the Bluejays safely in the NCAA Tournament. This team’s performance in its final eight Big East games will heavily impact the committee’s seeding decision, though, especially in crucial games like a February 25 rematch with Villanova.

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Now halfway through the conference season, things are beginning to take shape around the college basketball landscape. As we advance into February, there are a number of overrated and underrated teams in the national polls. This week let’s dive into who some of those teams are and what makes them that way.

Overrated

Baylor Played Kansas Tough But Found an All Too Familiar Result (USA Today Images)

• Baylor, 20-2 (7-2), #2. The Bears earned some #1 votes in the most recent AP Top 25 for a reason — this is a very good team. But can Baylor keep it up for the next five weeks in the rugged Big 12? Wednesday night’s loss to Kansas in Allen Fieldhouse was perhaps expected, but what about upcoming road tests at Iowa State, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech and a home date with West Virginia? Lastly, there’s that pesky issue that Baylor wasn’t ranked in the preseason, which matters more than you’d think. Since 2006, only one team that was unranked in the preseason and ranked in the pre-tournament poll has made the Final Four. That was Shabazz Napier’s 2014 National Championship Connecticut team. These Bears feel more like last year’s Iowa club or the 2014 Syracuse team, though.
• USC, 19-4 (6-4), NR. After a home upset of UCLA, the Trojans climbed up to a #8 seed in Joe Lunardi’s bracketology and sat just outside the Top 25 in this week’s poll (28th). But KenPom only rates the Trojans as the 59th-best team in college basketball and that’s probably closer to reality. USC is an athletically gifted team that maximizes offensive possessions by grabbing rebounds and avoiding turnovers, but its offense isn’t very efficient (52nd nationally) and its defense generally doesn’t pick up the slack (73rd nationally). Moreover, the bottom quarter of the Pac-12 is exceptionally weak this year, inflating win totals and otherwise artificially boosting all the numbers. The Trojans played well in the non-conference with good wins over SMU and Texas A&M, but if they can’t meaningfully separate themselves from the rest of the league over the last five weeks, they may be staring a bubble disaster right in the face on Selection Sunday.

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In what turned out to be perhaps the nuttiest week of college basketball this season, seven of last week’s top 10 RTC25 teams lost at least once. Villanova (at Marquette), Kansas (at West Virginia), Kentucky (Kansas), UCLA (at USC), North Carolina (at Miami), Florida State (at Georgia Tech; at Syracuse) and Oregon (at Colorado) all took defeats last week. With so much chaos among the top tier of the poll, the corresponding result is that not very much actually changed — six of the top seven are still within that range. New #1 Gonzaga is the clear beneficiary, but with a number of teams behind the Bulldogs awaiting a slip-up, the top of the RTC25 might yet have several more residents by the end of the season.

This week’s Quick N’ Dirty Analysis of the RTC25 is after the jump.

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So much of this season’s focus has zeroed in on college basketball’s blue-blooded programs, both those holding true to their stature and those that are floundering. But although their names are not as sexy, this season’s early group of bubble teams features a handful of programs that have little to no recent experience in the NCAA Tournament. For coaches at these schools, climbing the mountain to March Madness can be a veritable game-changer. As we slowly turn the corner into February and the last six weeks before Selection Sunday, fans, coaches, alumni and general observers should all keep a close eye on Northwestern, Virginia Tech and TCU to see if they can end their long droughts by closing the deal.

Is Another Chicago Curse About to End? (USA Today Images)

• Northwestern. With a 7-2 Big Ten record and its first AP Top 25 ranking in seven years, Northwestern is finally in position to end the other less-publicized Chicago area losing streak. Though there have been a few close calls over the course of the last decade, head coach Chris Collins seems to have the group of Wildcats that will break through. His team currently ranks 29th in the RPI, having gone 18-4 against a schedule that KenPom rates as the 67th toughest in college basketball. The selection committee values road wins and Northwestern has answered this season by winning four of its first five Big Ten away games. Hopes are high in Evanston, and with nine games left in the Big Ten season, it would take a fairly monumental collapse for Collins’ team to play its way out of the Big Dance.

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This week, let’s take a break from discussions of the nation’s top 15 teams and all their tribulations. They get enough coverage already. Each year, there’s a bevy of small conference schools that threaten to upend the postseason hopes of middle-tier power conference teams with resumes that are, frankly, often more deserving. For now, they toil away in relative obscurity, their only chance at an appearance on any of the ESPN networks generally as a for-pay beatdown victim or in the finals of their conference tournament.

UNC-Wilmington and Several Other Mids Have Work to Do to Go Dancing Again (USA Today Images)

When a team from a small league can escape the non-conference season with a few wins over the Alabamas, Colorados, Seton Halls and DePauls of the college hoops world, they set themselves up for a chance at a low NCAA seed. More importantly, these schools must dominate their conferences to have any shot at an at-large bid. At season’s midpoint, here’s a quick look at several of them. All records are through Tuesday, January 24.

With a strength of schedule ranking in the 130s, UNC-Wilmington (17-2 (8-0 CAA), KenPom rank: 45, RPI rank: 26) does not have a shoo-in resume, but the Seahawks could end up with more than 25 wins and a credible at-large case. The current leader of the Colonial Athletic Association lost close games to Clemson and Middle Tennessee State, another mid-major contender, but there really aren’t any bad losses on its resume to speak of. But this is the perfect example of a team that cannot afford to lose more than one or two more games this season — and road losses might not kill them, but home losses surely will. College of Charleston sits one game back of UNC-Wilmington in the CAA but and owns an RPI of 67 and really has nothing to speak of from the non-conference schedule. Rather, the conference’s best non-conference wins came from third place Northeastern, which shocked Michigan State and beat Connecticut but has not been consistent enough to be taken seriously.

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It is that time in the college basketball season where one week can send a team into a downward spiral. This past week has given us two candidates for teams that can fall off the national landscape if there is no course correction. #15 West Virginia experienced a nightmare week. The Mountaineers first were stunningly upset Wednesday in Morgantown by a rebuilding Oklahoma team before becoming victims of the Octagon of Doom in a Saturday loss at #25 Kansas State. While West Virginia had a bad week, #19 Creighton definitely had a worse one. On paper, the Blue Jays winning at #24 Xavier on Monday looks like a quality victory, but in that win, the team lost star point guard Maurice Watson Jr. for the season due to a torn ACL. In Creighton’s first game without Watson’s services, it was upset at home Saturday by unranked Marquette. It will be worth keeping an eye on both West Virginia and Creighton moving forward to see if either team can overcome this past week and get back on course towards a fruitful finish to the regular season.

This week’s Quick N’ Dirty Analysis of the RTC25 is after the jump.

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The College Football Playoff has caught a lot of flak for a system that rewards four teams in an environment where five power conference champions all feel that they are deserving. The NCAA Tournament with its 68 teams is obviously a lot more inclusive, but the pursuit of the four top seeds shares some of the flaws of the football system. College basketball features a less defined definition of its power conferences, but depending on your opinion of the Big East and American, our landscape features a minimum of six power conference champions which presumably would have a shot at the top line. On top of that, there are always a handful of mid-majors capable of having a stake in selection of the #1 seeds. With the American sitting at eighth in the RPI this season, Cincinnati would likely need to run the table for a chance at a top seed, an unlikely outcome. That leaves seven entrants, loosely defined to include conferences, for only four spots. Let’s examine each in turn.

Are Wisconsin fans gearing up for a possible #1 seed? (Photo by David Stluka)

• Big Ten. Thanks to a pair of unexpected swoons by Indiana and Michigan State, Purdue and Wisconsin seem to be the only Big Ten teams with a semi-realistic chance of making a run at a #1 seed. However, the margin of error is already thin for both. The Boilermakers have four reasonable losses with wins over Notre Dame and Wisconsin, while the Badgers’ likely best win came at Assembly Hall against a struggling group of Hoosiers. It would be difficult to imagine that these resumes could turn into top-seed material by March. The Big Ten’s best teams appear to have suffered too many hiccups before conference play and are now slowly cannibalizing themselves into the lower seed lines.

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Between Malik Monk’s dunks, Lonzo Ball’s passes, West Virginia’s presses and barrages of Creighton’s threes, college basketball feels like it has gotten more exciting this year. Play has definitely gotten faster, as this tweet from Synergy Sports about the rise of transition offense in 2016-17 suggests.

Here's a look at the most prolific transition offenses in the NCAA since '08. This year's Kentucky team is on another level entirely. pic.twitter.com/mut6Fc4TST

— Synergy Sports Tech (@SynergySST) January 11, 2017

This season isn’t necessarily all that much faster — possessions across the sport have only dropped 0.2 seconds per trip (from an average of 17.3 seconds to 17.1 seconds), and transition attempts are only up 0.7% — but that doesn’t mean at the tail end certain teams aren’t playing faster. Let’s take a deeper dive into several of the brand names on their list, with an eye on whether they can keep up their prolific transition offenses through the rest of this season.

Kentucky: 25.7 Transition PPG (all data from hoop-math.com)

Malik Monk is a Holy Terror in Transition (USA Today Images)

• Who They Are: Ranked second nationally in offensive efficiency, these Wildcats might be the most efficient team John Calipari has ever coached. Ranked ninth nationally in tempo, they are definitely the fastest. Kentucky has attempted 38.2 percent of its initial field goals in transition, a mark that ranks fourth in the country and is well higher than its 26.7 percent mark a season ago.
• How They Do It: Kentucky attempts 21.5 percent of its initial field goals in transition after an opponent’s miss, which ranks first nationally. The Wildcats also live at the rim, attempting 54 percent of their transition shots from close range (no rankings exist for this, but it’s very high) and making 75 percent of those attempts. The one questionable area is that they are not very good at shooting in transition, though, with a 29 percent conversion rate on transition threes the lone weakness in a sterling transition game.

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