A few weeks ago, I mentioned that Auburn had been the best team in Ken Pomeroy’s database on Dec. 15 in any of the last 14 seasons.
At that time, Auburn had an adjusted efficiency margin of 35.01. Usually, anything over 30 is good enough to earn the No. 1 ranking in KenPom’s database, but Duke and Tennessee were also over 30 at that point. Well, we may be in for a historic season of dominant teams because Houston and Iowa State have joined those three in the plus-30 club in the ensuing weeks.
In only six years of Pomeroy’s database have at least three teams finished plus-30 in adjusted efficiency margin. In each of those seasons, the national champion came out of that group. Here’s the list, with one asterisk to denote a Final Four appearance and two for the title winners:
Take note. This could be a March that goes chalk.
Reminder: Below my Top 25, I give nuggets on an unspecified number of teams each week. So when a team appears in the table but not in the text below, that’s why. Scroll on for notes on Auburn, Tennessee, Iowa State, Duke, Alabama, Marquette, Illinois, Kentucky, Houston, UConn, Kansas, Michigan State, Michigan, West Virginia, Wisconsin.
Auburn has five players that currently rank in the top 100 of offensive rating at KenPom; no other team has more than three. That means the Tigers have five of the most efficient players in all of college basketball on their roster. (A reminder: There are 364 teams in Division I!) I reached out to Pomeroy to see whether a team has ever had that many hyper-efficient players, and it has happened three times.
| Off. Rating rank | Postseason finish | |
|---|---|---|
|
South Dakota State (2010-11) |
17 |
Did not qualify |
|
Wisconsin (2014-15) |
1 |
Lost National Championship |
|
Gonzaga (2020-21) |
1 |
Lost National Championship |
|
Auburn (2024-25) |
1 |
??? |
Auburn is currently 5.1 points ahead of second-place UConn in this season’s adjusted offensive efficiency rankings, which is a massive lead. Apparently, a high-major team with five super-efficient guys on the roster leads to a ticket to the national championship game. (Yes, Gonzaga counts as high-major.)
It’s also within the realm of possibility that Auburn gets to a record six top-100 efficiency players. Miles Kelly currently ranks 218th. The other five are all in the top 80: Chad Baker-Mazara (19), Dylan Cardwell (58), Denver Jones (62), Chaney Johnson (70) and Johni Broome (77). Broome ranks among players who use at least 28 percent of his team’s possessions.
Also, shout-out to Nate Wolters, the star of that South Dakota State team. College basketball nerds know. Happy to report I saw Wolters play in-person when the Jackrabbits came to UMKC his senior season.
Chaz Lanier is on his way to giving Tennessee a first-team All-American for the second straight season. Lanier has made at least five 3s in three straight games. He has the fourth-most 3-point attempts in college basketball, and his quick release is a big reason why. I slowed the film to see how fast his draw is. Here it is in real-time. Don’t blink.
Synergy rounds to tenths of a second, but I had the above 3 and the one below between 0.3 and 0.4 seconds, so I’m gonna say he’s at 0.35 from catch to release. It’s like he’s playing hot potato.
If you think there’s a guy with a faster release, send me the shooter and the shot on X or Bluesky. (I’m @cjmoorehoops on both platforms.) If your shooter has a quicker draw than Lanier on a normal catch-and-shoot shot, I’ll give you and your shooters a shout in next week’s Top 25.
I was planning to compare Iowa State to Baylor’s 2021 national championship team. In the year before the Bears won the title, they had a dominant defense (fourth-best at KenPom) and a good offense (17th-best). The units flipped in their title season, when they ranked second in offense and 22nd in defense. Going into Saturday’s game against Baylor, Iowa State’s offense/defense rankings were third/17th, compared to 52nd/first last year. Welp, the Cyclones flexed their defensive muscle again in a 74-55 win, and now they’re eighth/eighth.
Iowa State and Duke are the only two teams this year who are top-10 on both ends. Out of the 27 national champs in KenPom’s database, 16 have been top-10 in both. (As noted above, the Cyclones are also in that special plus-30 category.) T.J. Otzelberger appears to have himself a title contender.
Duke is now 7-0 with six double-digit wins since inserting Sion James into the starting lineup in place of Caleb Foster. (That one single-digit win was over Auburn.)
That lineup has now played the same number of minutes together as the version that included Foster, and the data supports the change. The Blue Devils are significantly better defensively with James, per CBB Analytics:
| Efficiency margin | Off. Eff. | Def. Eff. | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
James lineup |
36 |
123.2 |
87.2 |
|
Foster lineup |
19 |
123.6 |
104.7 |
Among Duke’s nine most-used offenses, the top five all includes James. The Blue Devils’ best one? Super-small sample size alert: The James-Tyrese Proctor–Kon Knueppel–Mason Gillis–Maliq Brown combo is plus-111.8 points per 100 possessions. That group has only played together 14 minutes and was plus-24 in those minutes. If Jon Scheyer had any courage, he’d bench that Cooper Flagg fella!
Alabama is college basketball’s top-scoring team at 91.1 points per game and is doing it despite continuing to shoot it poorly from 3. The Crimson Tide went 9 of 29 (31 percent) from 3 on Saturday against previously unbeaten Oklahoma and still won 107-79.
That was right in line with their season-long numbers. The Crimson Tide are shooting 31.6 percent from deep, ranking 247th in 3-point accuracy. It’s the second-worst 3-point shooting team that Nate Oats has ever coached, and this group shoots nearly half its shots (49.8 percent) from deep. That’s the highest 3-point rate of any team Oats has ever coached. So why does the offense still work? Spacing. The threat of the 3 opens up the floor, and the Crimson Tide lead the country in 2-point accuracy at 63 percent. This year’s Alabama team also has the highest free-throw rate of Oats’ tenure.
Last year’s group shot 37.3 percent from 3, and while this team has topped 40 percent from deep in only two games, you’d eventually expect some kind of regression towards the mean, especially from star Mark Sears, who is at 33.3 percent after shooting 43.6 percent from 3 last season. Good luck to defenses whenever Sears heats up. If that happens, the Crimson Tide are a candidate to join the plus-30 club.
Marquette is one of the best teams in the country at going on long runs because of its defense. The Golden Eagles won both games last week with long runs — 21-0 on Providence and 26-3 against Creighton — sparked by their ability to force turnovers. During the Providence run, the Friars had more turnovers (eight) than field goal attempts (five). Against Creighton, it was nearly equal during the run: five turnovers and six field goal attempts.
For the season, Marquette has 34 runs of at least 8-0, which is tied for fifth-most in the country, per CBB Analytics.
The Illini made some history on Thursday at Oregon:
(22) Illinois 109, (9) Oregon 77. In Eugene.
The 32-point margin of victory is the largest ever by any team in a road game against an AP Top-10 opponent.
— Jared Berson (@JaredBerson) January 3, 2025
Illinois finished off its West Coast swing with an 81-77 win at Washington on Sunday. To put into perspective the job Brad Underwood has done rebuilding after losing five starters, the Illini are the least-experienced high-major team in college basketball, per KenPom, and are now projected to share the Big Ten title with Michigan. I give another coach some National Coach of the Year love below, but Underwood would probably be my pick if the season ended today.
Koby Brea busted out of a shooting slump — 6 of 20 from 3 in his previous three games — to shoot Florida off the floor on Saturday in a 106-100 win Saturday. This was peak Kentucky offense, with six players scoring in double figures, led by Brea’s career-high 23. The Wildcats share the ball and take great shots, and Brea’s gravity is such a weapon. Even when the defense tries to stick to him, he patiently waits for an opening and masterfully uses shot fakes, raised-eyebrow fakes or side dribbles tightroping the 3-point line to finally find space. It’s beautiful to watch:
Brea has already made 45 3s at a 52.3 percent clip. It’s unreal how accurate he is when opponents are trying to do everything in their power to not let him get an open shot.
Houston’s defense looked a lot like last year’s in a 86-55 win over BYU on Saturday. BYU is one of the best pick-and-roll teams in the country, and Houston’s pick-and-roll defense is always one of the best. Defense beat offense on this day. Many possessions looked like this first one of the game in which BYU could barely get inside the 3-point line:
To illustrate Houston’s dominance, I charted how often BYU was able to get a paint touch against Houston’s set defense over the first 36 minutes (Kelvin Sampson pulled his starters for the final four minutes).
| Possessions | Basket or FTs | |
|---|---|---|
|
Paint touches |
23 |
15 |
|
Non-paint touches |
29 |
5 |
Since losing two of three at the Players Era Festival, Houston has been the best team in college hoops, per Bart Torvik, and has a ridiculous 79.6 adjusted defensive efficiency. Tennessee is just holding on to the best defense crown at KenPom over Houston — 87.1 to 87.3 — but the Coogs are coming.
Tarris Reed went from a solid big man on a losing team a year ago to one of the nation’s most efficient, productive bigs at UConn. Reed looks faster and more athletic, and his analytics improvement is obvious:
| Off. rating | Off. Reb.% | Def. Reb. % | Blk% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Michigan (2023-24) |
96.4 |
11.1 |
19.9 |
5.2 |
|
UConn (2024-25) |
129.8 |
16.5 |
30.2 |
8.8 |
Dan Hurley and his staff deserve props for identifying Reed as a great fit. There were more prolific bigs in the transfer portal, but it’s hard to say UConn could have found a better fit for what it needed in trying to replace Donovan Clingan. Props to Reed for choosing fit over opportunity. He knew he was going to have to share minutes with Samson Johnson and likely come off the bench, but it looks like he landed in the right spot.
After losing its first conference opener in 34 years on Tuesday, Kansas made some history with a 99-48 annihilation of UCF on Sunday.
Kansas’ 51-point win at UCF is:
– the largest road win in Big 12 history
– the largest win in a Big 12 game since KU beat Texas Tech by 58 in ‘08
– the largest win in any “power 6” conference road game since Louisville won by 55 at Pitt in 2017— Jared Berson (@JaredBerson) January 5, 2025
Bill Self got back to his old-school ways, making sure to pound it in the paint with post pins, rolls and drives. The Jayhawks outscored UCF 62-10 in the paint. They scored six times on post pins, including a nifty set to open the game, which looked like a set to get Zeke Mayo a corner 3 but turned into a post feed from a spot where the Jayhawks do not usually enter it.
Tricky, tricky.
Self may have found a starting lineup he likes, too, by inserting Shakeel Moore, who has missed seven games with a foot injury and had been a fringe member of the rotation until Sunday. In his first start, Moore finished with six points and six assists, and Kansas was plus-35 with him on the floor. This team needs to take advantage of its size inside, and Moore could be helpful there because he looks to be a skilled feeder of the post. He made several nice post entries, including this gem:
NBA scouts are often hesitant to read too much into 3-point percentages at the college level because of small sample sizes. There’s a belief that free throw shooting is a better indicator of whether someone can shoot or not. So what are we to make of this year’s Spartans? They are one of the worst 3-point shooting teams in the country — ranking 339th at 28 percent — yet they’re the fifth-best free throw shooting team in the country, knocking down 81.3 percent of their freebies.
Despite the icy shooting from deep, Tom Izzo has found a way to win, similar to the approach Kansas used on Sunday, by trying to score in the paint and in typical Izzo fashion, pushing the pace and scoring in transition. The Spartans average 20.4 points per game in transition, per Synergy. They’re also averaging 35.1 points at the rim, and at 1.398 points per attempt in tight, they’re the ninth-most efficient team in the nation there.
Meanwhile, rival Michigan is making shots everywhere, ranking second in 2-point field-goal percentage (62.6) and third in effective field goal percentage (59.3). A big reason for Michigan’s success is do-everything 7-footer Danny Wolf, who had a rare line in Saturday’s win at USC.
Michigan’s Danny Wolf tonight vs USC:
– 21 points
– 13 rebounds
– 7 assists
– 6 blocks
– 2 stealsHe’s the first Division I player with at least 20 points, 10 rebounds, 6 assists, and 6 blocks in a game since Oakland’s Keith Benson in 2010.
— Jared Berson (@JaredBerson) January 5, 2025
Also significant because…
This is the second time this season that Wolf has had at least 20 points, 5 assists, and 5 blocks in a game (also at Wisconsin).
He’s the only Division I player in the last 15 years to do that twice in a career.
— Jared Berson (@JaredBerson) January 5, 2025
Jared Berson, a Michigan grad, had to enjoy delivering those nuggets. If you love learning statistical outliers, give Berson a follow.
Also, a reminder that Michigan has three losses by a combined five points. That’s why the computers love the Wolverines — 13th at KenPom, 12th at Torvik and 10th at Evan Miya — more than the human polls.
West Virginia just became the first team in 34 years to beat Kansas in the conference opener while also winning for the first time ever at Allen Fieldhouse. The Mountaineers are one of four Big 12 teams off to a 2-0 start in conference play. And Darian DeVries is doing all of this without his son Tucker DeVries, who is the team’s second-leading scorer and was our top-rated transfer this past spring. The Mountaineers were also without third-leading scorer Amani Hansberry at KU.
DeVries has always excelled as an offensive coach, but he’s winning with defense with this group. Since his son was sidelined, the Mountaineers rank second in adjusted defense, rank fifth overall at Bart Torvik and are 5-0. DeVries has to be in the way-too-early running for National Coach of the Year, and former East Carolina/Oklahoma State point guard Javon Small is playing like an All-American.
Let’s let Berson finish this off.
Wisconsin’s 116 points tonight are the most by any team in a Big Ten conference game since Iowa scored 116 vs Northwestern in 1995.
The Badgers’ 21 3-pointers set a Big Ten single-game record.
— Jared Berson (@JaredBerson) January 4, 2025
Another gem of a performance from Bizarro Wisconsin, which ranks in the top 200 in adjusted tempo for the first time since 2006.
Dropped out: Maryland, St. John’s, Cincinnati, Drake.
Keeping an eye on: Nebraska, Utah State, Ole Miss, San Diego State, UC San Diego, Arkansas.
(Photo: Johnnie Izquierdo / Getty Images)
