Winners and Losers of 2022-23 Men's College Basketball Season so Far
From the highs of the Mountain West Conference and Kansas' Jalen Wilson to the lows of Creighton and Louisville, the first third of the 2022-23 men's college basketball season has featured plenty of big winners and losers.
Before the 2022 portion of the 2022-23 campaign wraps up, let's highlight some of the biggest developments and surprises of the first two months. It could be players, coaches, teams, entire conferences or specific events/tournaments.
Winners might be players or teams drastically exceeding preseason expectations or things that were great about what was largely the nonconference portion of the season. Losers either failed to live up to lofty hype or have been way worse than we imagined they could be.
Selections are presented in no particular order aside from oscillating between winners and losers.
Winner: The Phil Knight Invitational/Legacy Tournaments
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Don't worry. I'll spare you the Bill Walton-ish lavish praise of Phil Knight and all things Nike. But the two eight-team tournaments held in celebration of the 85th birthday of one of Oregon's most famous alumni were sensational.
In the Phil Knight Invitational, it was the best of times for the Big East, and it was the worst of times for the Big East. While Connecticut stormed through Oregon, Alabama and Iowa State by a combined margin of 57 points to win the tournament, Villanova went 0-3 against Iowa State, Portland and Oregon.
That tournament also gave us Iowa State upsetting No. 1 North Carolina, followed by the Tar Heels and Alabama playing a four-overtime affair in the third-place game that led us to question just how expensive "free" basketball actually can be. It was hideously memorable, but it jump-started the two-pronged belief that Alabama could be a Final Four team and North Carolina might be a mess this year.
Meanwhile, in the Phil Knight Legacy, Purdue went on one heck of a run as Zach Edey ran away with the early debate for National Player of the Year. The 7'4" Boilermaker racked up 68 points and 31 rebounds as Purdue won consecutive games by double-digit margins against West Virginia, Gonzaga and Duke—each of whom was projected for a No. 4 seed or better in our most recent bracket.
It's too bad we didn't get some grand Legacy/Invitational championship at the end of it, because Purdue and Connecticut are now the two top-ranked teams in the AP poll.
I suppose we can wait until the Final Four to settle that score.
Loser: Creighton Bluejays
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Expectations were higher for the Creighton Bluejays this season than ever before. South Dakota State transfer and three-point specialist Baylor Scheierman was joining a 23-win team from last year that brought back the young quartet of Ryan Nembhard, Ryan Kalkbrenner, Arthur Kaluma and Trey Alexander.
For the first time in program history, Creighton opened the season ranked in the AP Top 10 at No. 9. But for the first time under Greg McDermott—who became the head coach before the 2010-11 season—the Bluejays had a .500 or worse record 12 games into their schedule.
They had started 8-4 or better in each of the previous 12 seasons. They even started 9-3 in 2014-15, when they finished 14-19 while trying to figure out life after Dougie McBuckets.
However, this year's critically acclaimed squad has taken some serious early lumps.
In fairness, Creighton had one of its most aggressive nonconference schedules ever. The Maui Invitational field was loaded. The Bluejays' first game back on the mainland was on the road against No. 2 Texas.
Losing at home to Nebraska, though? Followed by back-to-back losses in Las Vegas against BYU and Arizona State? During a six-game losing streak overall? Yikes.
The regular starting five uncharacteristically could not buy a bucket in the Nebraska game. They didn't have Kalkbrenner (illness) for either game in Vegas, which was both figuratively and literally a huge problem. (BYU dominated Creighton on the glass by BYU.) If you're the buy-low, glass-half-full type, those are caveats worth keeping in mind.
All the same, what a disappointing start from what was supposed to be the best team in the Big East and one of the top candidates to win the national championship.
Winner: Jalen Wilson, Kansas
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Jalen Wilson easily could have gone pro this past offseason. In fact, it's highly unusual that he didn't.
Each of the past four national champions—2021-22 Kansas, 2020-21 Baylor, 2018-19 Virginia and 2017-18 Villanova—had three players average at least 11 points per game. Wilson was the lone member of that dozen who opted for another year of college hoops.
He has made the most of it, though, blossoming from a tertiary option behind Ochai Agbaji and Christian Braun into one of the most unstoppable scorers in the country.
In each of Kansas' wins over Duke, NC State, Wisconsin, Seton Hall and Missouri, Wilson had at least 15 points and 10 rebounds. He was especially dominant in the low-scoring affairs against the Blue Devils and the Badgers, scoring 39 percent (54 of 138) of Kansas' total points between those two marquee neutral-site victories.
For as much as he's shooting on a nightly basis, Wilson has been surprisingly efficient. His three-point stroke has improved. His assist rate is up. His turnover rate is down. And he continues to grab rebounds at an impressive level.
All of that has coalesced into arguably the top challenger to Purdue's Zach Edey for National Player of the Year, as well as a player who might be a first-round pick this summer.
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Loser: Mark Fox, California
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Cal head coach Mark Fox entered this season firmly entrenched on the hot seat. The Golden Bears had gone 35-58 overall and 15-43 in Pac-12 play in his three seasons at the helm. When you don't show any sort of improvement by your fourth year at a major-conference program, you usually don't get a fifth.
And to put it lightly, the Golden Bears have not improved.
They did finally win a game this past Wednesday against UT Arlington, mercifully ending their reign as the nation's last winless team. After losing 15 of its final 18 games last season, Cal started out 0-12.
We aren't talking about some ill-advised nonconference gauntlet, either. Cal lost home games against UC Davis, Southern, Texas State and Eastern Washington, as well as a road game against UC San Diego.
None of those five teams has any hope of making the NCAA tournament as an at-large, and Cal was favored to win all five. Instead, the Golden Bears just kept stockpiling L's as their season rapidly spiraled out of control.
In 114 seasons, California has never posted a winning percentage below 22.2. If we assume an immediate exit from the Pac-12 tournament for a total of 32 games, Cal will need to go 7-12 the rest of the way to avoid that fate.
Even in a down year for the Pac-12 as a whole, good luck with that.
At this point, it's really just a question of whether Cal lets Fox finish out the season on the sideline before officially beginning the search for a new head coach.
Winner: Southern Miss Golden Eagles
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A ton of teams have been much better than anticipated.
Florida Gulf Coast shocked everyone with a road win over USC on opening night and will enter Atlantic Sun play with an impressive 10-3 record. Charleston has taken a big leap for the second consecutive season under Pat Kelsey, sitting at 12-1 as the surprising champions of the Charleston Classic. And 12-1 Fordham might actually be relevant for the first time in more than a half-century.
But the Southern Miss Golden Eagles take the cake for exceeding expectations.
ESPN's bracket guru Joe Lunardi had Southern Miss dead last in the Sun Belt at No. 303 overall (out of 363 teams) in his preseason ratings, and he was more optimistic than most. Busting Brackets' Bryan Mauro put them at No. 323 and they were 324th on KenPom.com.
However, after an 11-2 start that includes road wins over Vanderbilt and Liberty, Southern Miss is all the way up to No. 137 on KenPom and looks like one of the top threats to represent the Sun Belt in the NCAA tournament.
The Golden Eagles had finished each of the previous three seasons with a single-digit number in the wins column. But out of nowhere, they are making buckets, crashing the glass, winning the turnover battle and outscoring opponents by more than 18 points per game.
Mercer transfer Felipe Haase and Ole Miss transfer Austin Crowley have been godsends in Hattiesburg.
Loser: Atlantic 10
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The Atlantic 10 has placed multiple teams into 16 consecutive NCAA tournaments, but that streak is in serious jeopardy after a disastrous nonconference slate.
Dayton was supposed to be the cream of the A-10 crop, ranked No. 24 in the preseason AP poll. Instead, the Flyers have squandered every opportunity to beat anyone of value. They lost at UNLV, went 0-3 against Wisconsin, NC State and BYU in the Battle 4 Atlantis and got destroyed by 28 at Virginia Tech for an 0-5 record against the KenPom top 100.
Saint Louis was expected to be the top challenger to Dayton, and the Billikens did get out to a nice 3-0 start that included a quality win over Memphis. But they have gone 5-5 since then, including a horrific home loss to SIU Edwardsville this past Wednesday.
The league's newcomer, Loyola-Chicago, looked like a fringe NCAA tournament candidate in the preseason, but the Ramblers have been most disappointing of all. They needed overtime to survive their season opener against Fairleigh Dickinson, and they proceeded to suffer losses to Tulsa, Harvard and DePaul during a brutal 3-5 start. They are now 6-6 after a 13-point loss to Stanford on Thursday.
At the start of play this past Thursday, eight of the A-10's 15 teams had dropped at least 30 spots from their preseason KenPom ranking. At least Fordham has been a pleasant surprise at 12-1.
But Fordham—with its long history of ineptitude and with nothing close to a quality win this season—being the saving grace for the A-10 might be the clearest indicator of how far the league has fallen.
Winner: Mountain West Conference
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While the A-10 has crashed and burned, the Mountain West has asserted itself as the king of the mid-majors.
First and foremost on the list of the league's winners is Richard Pitino at New Mexico.
Along with Connecticut and Purdue, the Lobos are one of three remaining undefeated teams, just two years removed from a disastrous 6-16 campaign. And it hasn't just been a cupcake buffet. Winning at Saint Mary's was probably the most impressive thing this program has done since earning a No. 3 seed in the 2013 NCAA tournament. Wins over Iona and San Francisco were also solid. And they're doing it with four former transfers in the starting five.
Utah State and UNLV were also surprisingly on the list of unbeatens until a little over a week ago. The Aggies and Rebels started 9-0 and 10-0, respectively, each excelling against a good-not-great nonconference slate consisting of a lot of Quadrant 2/3 affairs. It's that mid-major scheduling sweet spot where you should just about run the table if you want to be taken seriously as an at-large candidate, but where the full complement of wins looks impressive.
Most noteworthy, though, is that both Air Force and San Jose State have elevated the Mountain West's basement.
Those programs have been woeful for a while now, each posting losing records in each of the past nine seasons. SJSU was particularly dreadful, entering this season with an overall record of 60-206 (21-139 in league play) since joining the MWC before the 2013-14 campaign. Yet, both the Falcons and Spartans enter league play at 9-4, comfortably situated in the top 200, both on KenPom and in the NET.
That's great news for a conference that figures to be in the mix for four, maybe even five bids in March.
Even the league's most disappointing team, Wyoming, might turn a corner if and when MWC preseason player of the year Graham Ike is finally able to make his season debut. The Mountain West has been good, but it could be all sorts of special right now if Ike hadn't suffered that lower leg injury a few days before the Cowboys' season opener.
Loser: Louisville Cardinals
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How bad have things gotten this season for the once proud Louisville Cardinals?
On Dec. 20—two days after hearing all about what a cool gesture it was for their former, disgraced, never-truly-penalized head coach Rick Pitino to take his newfound Iona Gaels out to New Mexico to face his undefeated son—the Cardinals were a one-point underdog.
At home.
Against Lipscomb.
They lost by eight.
Louisville is now 2-11 overall, and legitimately might not win another game, considering one of those wins came by just six points at home against Florida A&M, which might be the worst team in the country.
The Cardinals already lost by 22 to Florida State, which is probably the second-worst team in the ACC. (Louisville is, of course, the worst.) It was their ninth consecutive loss to start the season, and their sixth straight loss by a margin of at least 19 points.
Such is life when your defense is mediocre, at best, and every page of your offensive playbook seems to just be, "Welp, let's see what El Ellis can do here."
I never knew it was possible to drop 120 spots on KenPom in the span of less than three weeks, but the 'Ville found a way.
Winner: Dennis Gates, Missouri
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Missouri has not been particularly relevant in men's college basketball since leaving the Big 12 for the SEC over a decade ago. The Tigers have been to just three NCAA tournaments since 2012, losing in the first round as either a No. 8 or No. 9 seed each time.
But under new head coach Dennis Gates, there's something percolating in Columbia.
The Tigers will enter SEC play with an 11-1 record, including wins against Wichita State on the road, UCF and, most recently, a 93-71 shellacking of Illinois.
The offense is humming, ranked second in the nation in effective field-goal percentage, trailing only Arizona in that department. That is an unfathomable turnaround from ranking outside the top 275 in eFG% in five of the past eight seasons.
Gates has also drastically ratcheted up the aggressiveness level on defense, as Missouri is leading the nation in steal percentage.
And the latter certainly contributes to the former. In the aforementioned big win over Illinois, Missouri had 13 steals, leading directly to 27 points. They weren't all fast-break buckets, but the Tigers do get a lot of pick-twos and transition threes.
What's wild is that Missouri has had this early success without getting much out of Isiaih Mosley, who averaged better than 20 points per game over the past two seasons at Missouri State.
Instead, the Tigers have relied heavily upon other up-transfers, like Noah Carter from Northern Iowa, DeAndre Gholston from Milwaukee, Sean East from John A. Logan Community College and D'Moi Hodge and Tre Gomillion, who followed Gates from Cleveland State.
Of the eight leading scorers, Kobe Brown is the only one who was on the roster last season. Just a master class in patchwork by Gates. And it might get even better if Mosley gets healthy and hits his stride.
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