Call the DMV, We Need to Transfer a Title (Keep the Name, Just Change the Year)
How does this year's team match up with the last ten national champions?
Every year there are random analysts spouting out that the last 20 national champions have been in the top 40 of KenPom rankings for offensive efficiency and top 22 for defensive efficiency. These people are wrong. The ratings they are referencing are post-tournament KenPom ratings, and it’s obvious that a six game win streak will cause these numbers to improve as other teams lose. Luckily, KenPom has a feature that allows you to see the pre-tournament ratings for teams. Looking at how Kansas compares to the champions over the last ten tournaments based on pre-tournament ratings can give us an idea on how this year’s team matches up with past champions and where they fall short.
As you can see, every team looks like one part of their game drove their successful runs to the championship with the exception of 2014 Connecticut, which won due to Shabazz Napier pulling off a miracle run and eventually playing against an 8th seed Kentucky team that came together at the end of the year. This is the outlier that can give lower-seeded teams hope, but you’d have to have too many things break correctly to have that opportunity. While this season has felt wide open at times, history is showing us that we can expect one of the better-seeded teams to win the championship.
In six of the last seven and eight of the last 10 tournaments, a one seed has won the championship. It makes sense, the best teams are often on the one line. This year, Kansas is on the one line for the 10th time since Bill Self came to Kansas. This is how they’ve finished:
National Champions - 2 times (2008, 2022)
Final Four - 1 time (2018)
Elite Eight - 4 times (2007, 2011, 2016, 2017)
Sweet Sixteen - 1 times (2013)
Round of 32 - 1 time (2010)
If anything, this should show that being a one seed doesn’t guarantee anything in terms of being the national champion. That being said, 70% of the time Kansas has been a one seed, they’ve at least reached the Elite Eight. Being one of the eight best teams in the country is certainly not a disappointment for most teams, but Kansas identifies success in terms of national championships. Does this year’s team have what it takes to hang another national championship banner in Allen Fieldhouse, though?
What stood out to me when looking at the pre-tournament KenPom rankings was the offensive efficiency of the champions over the last five tournaments. Each of them were in the Top 10 going into the tournament. This Kansas team doesn’t meet that standard. If anything, the offense has been struggling over the last month and a half, which luckily hasn’t translated into many losses. The defense has been elite over this stretch, which has helped hide some of the deficiencies the offense has had during this timeframe. Look at the Bart Torvik rankings for Kansas since February 1st:
The offense has been average at best based on these rankings (74th in the country), but the bigger issue to me has been the variability between games. Kansas had a stretch where they scored 88, 78, 87, and 87 points in four consecutive games. The followed that up with 63, 76, 67, and 59 points in the next four game stretch. Some of that is due to who they played but one of the 87 point games came against Oklahoma State, ranked 10th in KenPom defensive efficiency. Texas, on the other hand, shut Kansas down and held them to under 60 points twice in the last week of the season.1 If anything, if Kansas can consistently score in the 70’s, they should have a shot to win every single game. The games where they don’t hit that mark is where they’re vulnerable. They are currently 7-6 in games where they don’t score 70 points, compared to 20-1 in games where they do.
Looking back at the KenPom pre-tournament rankings for past champions, it appears that Kansas’ most comparable teams are the 2016 Villanova team or the 2013 Louisville team.2 As Kansas fans, we experienced what that Villanova team could do as they ended Perry Ellis' career in heartbreaking fashion. If anything, that should give Kansas fans more confidence that they can rely on their defense to shut down teams in the tournament when they need to, similar to the win over TCU a few weeks ago. The Louisville team stormed back from a double-digit deficit in the second half against Wichita State in the Final Four and took down Michigan in the championship. That same Michigan team needed a deep 3 from Trey Burke to take down Kansas in the Sweet Sixteen, otherwise that Kansas team could have won Self's second national championship. Louisville's backbone was elite guard pressure that created turnovers and kept opposing teams out of the paint. On top of the pressure, they had 6'11 Gorgui Dieng to clean up the few defensive mistakes at the rim. This Kansas team would need to increase their defensive turnover rate in order to line up with what that Louisville team brought defensively. They would also need Ernest Udeh Jr. to turn into Cole Adrich circa 2008 to match the rim protection. In other words, the more accurate comparison would be the 2016 Villanova team.
This team’s offense that can go cold at times and could hold back the ceiling, but there is a similar profile from the past that Kansas can point to as precedence. They will need to lock down on defense during those stretches to keep teams from going on runs like Texas has done twice over the last week. There also aren’t many teams that align with past winners KenPom metrics at this point in the season either: Houston (11th offensive efficiency, 4th defensive efficiency), Connecticut (6, 18), Purdue (4, 26), Texas (18, 11), Alabama (19, 3), UCLA (25, 1), and Creighton (28, 15) are the only teams in a similar position as Kansas when you look at full season efficiency rankings.3 It does say that this field is wide open, but being the one seed provides Kansas an advantage the only three other teams in the field have. Having the opportunity to go through Kansas City would have been an even bigger advantage. Instead they are being sent out West to deal with the likes of Connecticut, Gonzaga, Saint Mary’s, UCLA, TCU, and Arkansas or Illinois. While we can complain about how it appears Kansas was given an unfair road to the Final Four, the truth is that at some point you have to beat good teams. Could it have to happen a little earlier or more often than Kansas fans prefer this year? Yes. It doesn't change that six straight wins adds another banner to the greatest basketball arena in the world. Let's get it started.
Kansas State scored 116 teams against Texas on January 3rd. Rodney Terry has Texas aligned defensively and locked in at the right time this year.
That Villanova team had Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, and Josh Hart, two guys who are currently tearing up the NBA and one who will be around the league for a while.
If you narrow the focus to games since the beginning of February to determine who has played well recently, you add Texas A&M and Memphis to this list.