It has been a season marked by upsets, a rotation of No. 1 teams and seemingly no clear-cut favorites moving forward. But over the past few weeks, we’ve started to get some separation at the top, especially when it comes to sorting teams by résumé.
The 1-seeds, as it stands, are fairly clear-cut: Baylor, Gonzaga, San Diego State and Kansas, with the latter three coming in whichever order you choose. Combined, those four teams have lost one game since the calendar turned to 2020, Kansas’ defeat to Baylor. They’re a combined 36-1 in that span. They’re the top four teams in the NET rankings, four of the top five at KenPom, the top four in ESPN’s Strength of Record metrics — and the top four of the AP poll.
Gonzaga has also lost just once, at the Battle 4 Atlantis the day after Thanksgiving. The Bulldogs have run roughshod over the West Coast Conference, with only two games decided by single digits. One factor moving forward for them is the availability of Killian Tillie.
San Diego State is the last unbeaten remaining in college basketball. The Aztecs are one of the best defensive teams in the country and have a legitimate All-America candidate in Malachi Flynn. A zero-loss San Diego State team is a surefire 1-seed.
Then there’s Kansas, which has three losses — but is atop most metric-based rankings. There has been constant discussion about how there’s no dominant team in college basketball this season, but this Jayhawks’ adjusted efficiency margin would rank in the top three in all but two seasons in the KenPom era (since 2001-02). They would be considered the No. 1 team in a couple of those seasons, too. Kansas leads the nation in Quadrant 1 wins, too.
There’s still more than a month until conference tournaments start, and Louisville and Dayton are playing as well as anyone in the country right now — and the metrics still love Duke — but the top-four teams in the rankings are in their own tier for now.
Gonzaga’s (No. 2) past two games — at Santa Clara and at San Francisco — were two of the Bulldogs’ worst offensive outings in several weeks. Not surprisingly, one of them came when Tillie played only nine minutes and the other came with Tillie sidelined. There’s no definitive timetable for Tillie’s return, but the Zags need him healthy for the NCAA tournament.
Meanwhile, last week was supposed to be one of the San Diego State (No. 3) Aztecs’ tougher weeks remaining in the regular season: a road trip to The Pit, where New Mexico hadn’t lost all season, and a home date with Utah State, the second-best team in the Mountain West. The trip to Albuquerque was a cakewalk, with San Diego State rolling by 28. But Utah State did test the Aztecs. The Aggies went on a 19-3 run late in the first half and stayed in the game until a scoring drought in the final 10 minutes. San Diego State didn’t have trouble scoring against Utah State, but the Aztecs allowed 1.08 points per possession — their most all season. Most of that stemmed from the Aggies shooting 42.9% from 3; no other opponent has reached 40% all season.
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