Top Men's College Basketball Programs in Danger of Missing the 2023 NCAA Tournament
Kentucky has won eight men's college basketball national championships, Villanova has won it all in two of the past six tournaments and Michigan has been an NCAA tournament regular for more than a decade. But each of those (normally) top teams is in danger of missing the 2023 dance.
Typically for this annual mid-January article, we define "top teams" as any squad projected for a No. 9 seed or worse that either appeared in the preseason AP Top 25 or appeared in X of the past Y NCAA tournaments. With that approach, we capture both the teams that have disappointed compared to expectations for the current season as well as teams that we're used to seeing in the bracket.
This year, however, there have been so darn many disappointing teams from the preseason AP poll that we can ignore that latter criterion altogether.
Every team on this list was ranked two months ago but is now either on the bubble or nowhere near the at-large conversation.
Teams are listed in alphabetical order. Statistics and resume data are current through the start of play Wednesday.
Creighton Bluejays
1 of 8
Resume: 9-8, NET: 26, RES: 62.5, QUAL: 17.7
Three Best Wins: Arkansas (in Maui), Texas Tech (in Maui), vs. Seton Hall
Three Worst Losses: vs. Nebraska, BYU (in Las Vegas), Arizona State (in Las Vegas)
Current Bracket Matrix Projection: No. 10 Seed
Truth be told, I don't know what the record is for longest losing streak during the regular season by a team that made the NCAA tournament via an at-large bid.
However, I do know Trae Young and Oklahoma made it in 2018 in spite of a six-game losing streak that February, so we can't write off Creighton just because it went an entire month between wins earlier this season.
That does pretty well sum up why the Bluejays are on the bubble, though.
They started 6-0 with quality neutral-site victories over Texas Tech and Arkansas before falling apart and suffering three bad losses while indispensable center Ryan Kalkbrenner was sidelined by a non-COVID illness.
Because of his absence for those games and because of how good Creighton has been when he's on the court, there's still a strong argument that the team would belong in the field today. Its NET ranking and QUAL metrics are certainly better than the vast majority of teams on the bubble.
But when you go 9-8 through your first 17 games, there's quite a bit of work to be done over the latter half of the regular season.
Creighton has home games remaining against Connecticut, Xavier, Marquette, Providence and Villanova, as well as road games against the Friars and Wildcats. Win four of those seven games and don't screw up too badly elsewhere and the Bluejays should be in great shape for a bid.
We expected more from the preseason No. 9 team in the AP Top 25, though.
Dayton Flyers
2 of 8
Resume: 12-5, NET: 55, RES: 72.0, QUAL: 45.7
Three Best Wins: at Davidson, at Fordham, Wyoming (in Chicago)
Three Worst Losses: BYU (in Nassau, Bahamas), at UNLV, NC State (in Nassau)
Current Bracket Matrix Projection: No. 12 Seed (as projected A-10 champion)
If Dayton wins the Atlantic 10 tournament and sneaks into the dance as a double-digit seed, it could be dangerous.
The Flyers have a highly rated defense and a roster with the tallest average height in the nation, per KenPom.com. That latter tidbit is remarkable, since they don't have a single seven-footer. But with guards Kobe Elvis (knee) and Malachi Smith (ankle) both out indefinitely, every member of Dayton's primary seven-man rotation is 6'6" or taller.
However, winning the A-10 tournament is likely Dayton's only path to the NCAA tournament, because it squandered all of its opportunities in nonconference play.
It's not like the Flyers whiffed against impending No. 1 seeds, either. Neither BYU nor UNLV is in the projected field. And while NC State, Wisconsin and Virginia Tech are in good shape for a bid, not one of those teams is a sure thing to dance.
Either way, going 0-5 against teams in the KenPom top 100 before embarking upon an A-10 slate devoid of Quadrant 1 opportunities is a good way to eliminate yourself from the at-large conversation before it even really begins.
If Dayton were to win every game between now and the A-10 championship, maybe there would be a chance. That would put the Flyers at 28-6 with no truly bad losses. But it's effectively "auto-bid or bust" for what was the No. 24 team in the preseason AP poll.
Kentucky Wildcats
3 of 8
Resume: 10-6, NET: 62, RES: 77.5, QUAL: 34.7
Three Best Wins: Michigan (in London), vs. LSU, vs. Yale
Three Worst Losses: vs. South Carolina, Michigan State (in Indianapolis), at Missouri
Current Bracket Matrix Projection: No. 11 Seed
Prior to Tuesday night, Kentucky was in OK shape. The Wildcats didn't have any great wins, but they also didn't have any bad losses. And the predictive metrics loved them, which kept them on the correct side of the bubble.
Then they lost at home to South Carolina, and now this ship is officially taking on water at an alarming rate.
Credit to the Gamecocks for battling on the boards and for making tough buckets late in the shot clock, often on deep threes by Meechie Johnson. The criticism of Kentucky's effort in the game is more than warranted, but South Carolina also hit what felt like an entire season's worth of back-breaking, somewhat dumb-luck shots.
If Kentucky hadn't entered that game already on the bubble, I suspect we'd view the outcome as more of an oddity, especially considering the Wildcats didn't have Jacob Toppin (shoulder) and lost Cason Wallace to back spasms in the first half.
But because we were already having "Will Kentucky even make the tournament?" debates after the Wildcats were throttled by Alabama on Saturday, this home loss as a 20-point favorite against the clear-cut worst team in the SEC is instead viewed by some as the final straw for John Calipari.
The good news for Kentucky is there's time to salvage this mess. The Cats were a projected No. 10 seed before the loss. They're, at worst, among the first 10 teams out of the projected field today. Win at Tennessee on Saturday or knock off Kansas on Jan. 28 and they're right back in the thick of it.
However, it's still hard to believe we've reached the "a win over a Top Five team might be enough to get them back into the field" point with a squad that opened the season at No. 4 in the AP poll.
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Michigan Wolverines
4 of 8
Resume: 9-6, NET: 77, RES: 76.0, QUAL: 55.7
Three Best Wins: vs. Maryland, vs. Penn State, Pittsburgh (in Brooklyn)
Three Worst Losses: vs. Central Michigan, Arizona State (in Brooklyn), Kentucky (in London)
Current Bracket Matrix Projection: Appears in 0 of 61 Projections
At times, Michigan has looked like a real contender.
The 35-point blowout of Maryland was incredible. Leading Penn State pretty much wire-to-wire despite a typical Herculean effort from Jalen Pickett was also impressive. And though they lost the games, the Wolverines had each of Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina on the ropes until the final buzzer.
At other times, Michigan has looked like a dumpster fire.
The Wolverines needed the 35-point win over Maryland to negate the 25-point loss to Arizona State. They lost at home to Central Michigan, needed overtime to beat Ohio and darn near lost to Eastern Michigan, none of whom is much of a threat to even win the Mid-American Conference.
But if Selection Sunday were tomorrow, Michigan would be a pretty easy "thanks but no thanks" for the selection committee with zero Quad 1 wins and a dreadful Quad 4 loss.
After going 6-5 with a bad loss and only one decent win (Pittsburgh) in nonconference play, the Wolverines might need to finish 13-7 in Big Ten play to secure a bid.
That might sound absurd given the overall strength of the league, but conference record simply doesn't matter as a standalone data point. And let's not forget that Nebraska went 13-5 in the Big Ten in 2017-18 and ended up with a No. 5 seed in the NIT.
At least Michigan started 3-0 on its quest for 13 wins, though?
North Carolina Tar Heels
5 of 8
Resume: 11-6, NET: 32, RES: 32.5, QUAL: 23.3
Three Best Wins: Ohio State (in NYC), vs. Michigan (in Charlotte), vs. Wake Forest
Three Worst Losses: at Pittsburgh, at Virginia Tech, at Indiana
Current Bracket Matrix Projection: No. 7 Seed
Of this lot of disappointing preseason AP Top 25 teams, North Carolina is in the best shape.
However, the Tar Heels are also the biggest disappointment of all, after reaching the 2022 national championship and then debuting at No. 1 with 47 of the 62 initial first-place votes.
They brought back four of last year's five starters. They added Pete Nance as a graduate transfer from Northwestern to replace Brady Manek. And they added a trio of top-100 freshmen.
In the era of unknown transfer chaos—in Tuesday's Florida-LSU game, all 10 starters were former transfers, only one of whom (Colin Castleton) played for his current team last season—UNC looked like a sure thing to be very good.
Instead, they have gone 1-6 in Quadrant 1 games and even needed a last-second miracle to force overtime to get that lone quality win over the Buckeyes.
Worse yet, now they're banged up. Nance left early in the game against Wake Forest and has since missed games against Notre Dame and Virginia with a lower back injury. And one minute into Tuesday's game against UVA, Armando Bacot rolled his ankle and did not return.
Without that starting frontcourt, it's a miracle they managed to only lose by seven on the road against what might be the best team in the ACC. Still, it was another missed opportunity for a team that has been free-falling toward the bubble for the past seven weeks.
Oregon Ducks
6 of 8
Resume: 9-7, NET: 65, RES: 65.5, QUAL: 53.7
Three Best Wins: at Utah, Villanova (in Portland, Oregon), vs. Washington State
Three Worst Losses: vs. UC Irvine, vs. Utah Valley, at Colorado
Current Bracket Matrix Projection: Appears in 0 of 61 Projections
While most of the teams on this list could reasonably play their way into the field, Oregon would just about need to run the table.
The Ducks have no wins over the projected field, and they need to make up for the bad losses to UC Irvine and Utah Valley. However, opportunities to do so will be few and far between in the Pac-12, where Arizona and UCLA are the only teams even remotely assured a spot in the NCAA tournament.
In addition to the three remaining games against Arizona (two) and UCLA (one at home), there are a couple of fringe Quad A games (vs. Utah, at Arizona State) that fall into the "would be nice to win, wouldn't hurt too much to lose in a vacuum" category. But anything else would be a bad loss that they can't afford.
Thus, even if Oregon goes 12-3 the rest of the way with the three losses coming against the top two teams in the league, you're talking about a 21-10 team (heading into the Pac-12 tournament) with three borderline Q1 wins and probably two Q3 losses. SMU went 24-9 with a similar quadrant breakdown of results last season and was the third team out on Selection Sunday.
It's not looking promising for what was the No. 21 team in the preseason AP poll.
Texas Tech Red Raiders
7 of 8
Resume: 10-6, NET: 73, RES: 112.0, QUAL: 45
Three Best Wins: vs. Louisiana Tech, vs. Eastern Washington, Louisville (in Maui)
Three Worst Losses: vs. Oklahoma, Creighton (in Maui), at Iowa State
Current Bracket Matrix Projection: Appears in 3 of 61 Projections
Allow me to make it clear up front that I don't miss the RPI. But speaking as someone who spent more than a decade doing bracketology when RPI was the primary sorting metric, it's downright disgusting that Texas Tech is even being considered for a bid.
TTU ranked top-50 in the NET and was top-40 in each of the three predictive metrics on the NCAA team sheets (KenPom, BPI and Sagarin) before Tuesday's 34-point loss to Iowa State. That's because TTU's 10 wins have come by an average margin of 25.0 points, while its losses have been close games against quality opponents.
But they haven't beaten anyone, and they rank 177th in RPI as a result. And getting drilled by the Cyclones did quite a number on their predictive metrics.
The good news is the world is the Red Raiders' oyster.
It's plausible that every game left on Texas Tech's schedule will be a Quadrant 1 result. At this moment, the road game against LSU and the home game against Oklahoma State would be Quadrant 2, but both of those games are right on the Q1/Q2 cut line.
The other good news is they do at least look like a tournament-caliber team. (Iowa State blowout notwithstanding.)
The Red Raiders led TCU by 13 in the first half of their Big 12 opener before letting that road game slip away. Three days later, they almost won at home against Kansas.
Still, that was a tough-luck 0-2 start to Big 12 play for a team that accomplished absolutely nothing during the nonconference portion of the season. Even in what is very clearly the toughest conference in the country, they're going to need to cobble together at least a 9-9 record, probably 10-8 in Big 12 play to make up for doing nothing for the first two months of the season.
And after starting 0-4, we wish them the best of luck on that quest.
Villanova Wildcats
8 of 8
Resume: 8-9, NET: 93, RES: 126.5, QUAL: 64.7
Three Best Wins: vs. Oklahoma, vs. St. John's, at Georgetown
Three Worst Losses: at Portland, at Temple, at DePaul
Current Bracket Matrix Projection: Appears in 0 of 61 Projections
For a while there, Villanova looked like a tournament team with a healthy Cam Whitmore (thumb injury).
The Wildcats started 2-5 without him and had a lot of work to do to make up for that poor start, but they won their first five games with him on the court, including solid victories over Oklahoma and St. John's.
But now, the 2016 and 2018 national champions look like a mess again.
They've lost four of their past five games to drop back below .500 overall, with the most recent misstep—a 10-point loss at DePaul—perhaps the biggest disappointment of the season.
Not only is Villanova 8-9 overall, but it is 0-5 against Quadrant 1 and 2-9 against the top three Quadrants.
The Wildcats do have seven Quadrant 1 opportunities remaining, based on current NET rankings. But they just about need to win every one of those to make up for how poorly they have played.
Even if they were to go 12-2 the rest of the way with the losses coming against Connecticut and Xavier, we're talking 20-11 overall with a 5-7 Q1 record and three bad losses. That's no better than the resume Rutgers had last season when it barely made the cut as the third-to-last team in.
And, again, that's assuming a 12-2 finish after an 8-9 start—something no one actually expects Villanova to pull off.
It sure looks like 'Nova will be missing the dance for just the second time since 2004.
Recruit ratings via 247Sports.
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