9 Underrated Men's College Basketball Teams at the Start of February
Underrated teams come in all different shapes and sizes in men's college basketball.
They could be an unranked team that deserved to be ranked, or a ranked team that deserve to be ranked higher. They might be a team that just gets lost in the shuffle in a really good conference, or one that gets forgotten about in what has been a disappointing league.
Or maybe it's a mid-major that's finally getting healthy three months into the season, or one that needs to be taken more seriously as a candidate to win multiple games in the NCAA tournament.
Whatever the reason, these nine teams feel most like "buy-low" candidates in early February.
Teams are listed in no particular order, though, we will save our favorite underappreciated national championship contender until the end.
The "Unranked, Matchup Nightmare" Team: Missouri Tigers
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Missouri just missed the cut in this week's AP poll, checking in atop the list of "Others Receiving Votes." It also entered play on Tuesday just outside the top 50 on KenPom.
However, there shouldn't be a single coach in the country thinking, "Man, I hope we get matched up with the Tigers in the first weekend of the NCAA tournament."
Because Missouri is a bona fide problem.
The Tigers lead the nation in turnover margin at plus-6.8 per game, and they are 15-2 when tallying at least eight steals. That includes blowout victories over Illinois, Iowa State and Kentucky.
When they get those steals, they're looking to turn them into points as quickly as possible. They're averaging 83.1 points per game, which ranked ninth nationwide heading into Wednesday.
The Tigers' pace of play isn't quite as breakneck as it was for the first month of the season, but transition buckets in uptempo, high-scoring affairs is still clearly their comfort zone.
It's a good thing they're comfortable in high-scoring games, because they are pretty common for a defense that is just plain bad when it isn't forcing turnovers. Opponents average more than 75 points and over 13 offensive rebounds per game against a defense that neither blocks many shots nor offers much resistance in the paint.
That's what makes Missouri a matchup nightmare. The Tigers can be beaten soundly. But if you're prone to the occasional lazy pass or lacking a dominant post presence, things can snowball in a hurry.
The win over Iowa State was a reminder of what this team can do. Perhaps the Feb. 11 trip to Tennessee will be another one.
The "Getting Healthy at the Right Time" Team: Dayton Flyers
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The Dayton Flyers opened the season in the AP Top 25. They brought back all seven of the leading scorers from a very young team that won 24 games in 2021-22, and they seemed to be in the best shape to win what was supposed to be a strong A-10.
Then the injury bug worked its way through the Flyers' entire backcourt.
Koby Brea was Dayton's top three-point threat last season, but he missed the entire preseason and the first regular-season two games with a lower body injury. One game after making his season debut, he was out for four games with an illness.
Point guard Malachi Smith also missed Dayton's first three games with an injury, returned to the court for the four games that Brea missed with his illness and then went back on the shelf for a month-and-a-half with an ankle injury. Meanwhile, shooting guard Kobe Elvis suffered a knee injury in the final game of the Battle 4 Atlantis and was out until mid-January.
The Flyers didn't have all three of their best guards available until their Jan. 21 game against George Washington. Smith, Elvis and Brea all came off the bench in that one. Two-year starter R.J. Blakney missed the subsequent game against Rhode Island with a lower-body injury, but he was back in the starting lineup three days later against Richmond.
Long story short, we are just now beginning to see the Dayton that we were expecting throughout the offseason. But if the Flyers stay healthy from here on out, they might pick up a few quality wins over VCU (Feb. 7) and Saint Louis (Feb. 10 and March 3) down the stretch and build some momentum for when the games actually matter.
The "Written Off After an Unforgivable Loss" Team: Iowa Hawkeyes
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When it comes time to fill out a bracket, I will be picking Iowa to lose before the Sweet 16. The "great offense, apathetic defense" approach never works in March, and it especially hasn't worked for Fran McCaffery and the Hawkeyes.
But this team is underrated, even if it might not be a real threat to do damage six weeks from now.
Iowa already has four wins over teams in the KenPom top 25, as well as nine total wins against the KenPom top 70. Most notable by far is the season sweep of Rutgers, with the Hawkeyes winning each of those games by 11 points. They also smoked Iowa State and erased an early 21-point deficit in a 91-89 victory over Indiana.
But it always ends up circling back to that one nightmare game, doesn't it? The 92-83 home loss to Eastern Illinois, which presently ranks 347th on KenPom.
It was a bizarre game. Both Kris Murray and Connor McCaffery were out of the lineup for the Hawkeyes. Plus it was a late December "buy game" with no students on campus. Iowa jumped out to an early 18-4 lead and tried to just put it in cruise control from there. But the Panthers did the unthinkable, scoring 88 points in the final 34 minutes for one of the biggest upsets in college basketball history.
If we could excise that one game and give the Hawkeyes a mulligan for it, they might be a ranked team and would have a tournament resume worthy of consideration for a No. 5 or No. 6 seed. Instead, they're down in the projected No. 9-10 seed range and did not receive a single vote in this week's AP poll.
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The "Forgotten About in a Bad League" Team: Virginia Cavaliers
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There's a decent chance you watched Monday's game between Virginia and Syracuse since there were no other games remotely worth watching in that timeslot. But prior to that, when was the last time you watched the Cavaliers play?
Maybe the Jan. 10 game against North Carolina, in which Pete Nance didn't play and Armando Bacot left with an ankle injury less than two minutes after tipoff? Or was it the December losses to Houston and Miami?
It's my job to watch college basketball, and I feel like I've barely seen Virginia play over the past month, because the ACC is about as nationally irrelevant as it has ever been. (See: unranked UNC at unranked Duke this weekend in a battle between two of the four best NCAA tournament resumes in the conference.)
The Cavaliers are up to No. 6 in the AP poll and No. 4 in the Coaches Poll, but the consensus national championship odds don't reflect it. As of Tuesday morning, they were 12th, checking in at +2425, per Vegas Insider.
While I haven't watched Virginia a ton lately, I've seen enough of this team to know there aren't 10 other teams better equipped to win the title. Though they do have a pair of freshmen—Isaac McKneely and Ryan Dunn—among their top reserves, this is a very old team with three fifth-year seniors in the starting lineup.
The defense isn't quite as potent as it was back in the 2014-20 timeframe, but trying to score on Virginia is still a miserable endeavor. Only one team (Baylor in an 86-79 UVA victory in mid-November) has reached 70 against the Cavaliers this season.
And the offense has improved by leaps and bounds from where it was one season ago. The Cavaliers rarely commit turnovers, shoot 38.5 percent from the perimeter and are doling out assists on better than 68 percent of made field goals.
Calling UVA one of the top five favorites to win it all might be a little aggressive, but it's certainly among the top 10.
The "Top Mid-Major Who Needs Even More Love" Team: Florida Atlantic Owls
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Florida Atlantic has won 20 consecutive games and is up to No. 19 in the AP poll. If the AP poll meant anything whatsoever in bracketology, that theoretically suggests that the Owls should be a No. 5 seed in the NCAA tournament.
However, FAU tends to get treated as a token mid-major—a team from a one-bid league that has a shot at a single-digit seed if it doesn't screw up too much in February, but one that nobody talks as being legitimately good enough to make a Sweet 16 or Elite Eight run.
To be fair, the Owls haven't beaten anyone of note. Their best wins were road games against Florida and North Texas, neither of whom is a legitimate at-large candidate today. Their lone loss (at Ole Miss) also came at the hands of a team well outside the projected field.
There's no way of knowing what to expect if Florida Atlantic ends up in, say, a 7/10 first-round matchup with West Virginia, who will play probably more than 20 games against tournament teams this season. But it's about time we start taking the Owls seriously, because this is a well-rounded, very deep rotation that can make it rain from the perimeter.
Three of their five leading scorers (Johnell Davis, Alijah Martin and Michael Forrest) aren't even in the starting five, but they have nine guys who are all averaging at least 15 minutes and at least five points per game.
If you want to postpone buying in until you see how they fare this weekend at UAB and at Charlotte—two of their three toughest games in Conference USA play—you do you. But if Florida Atlantic wins both of those contests, start spreading the word about the legitimacy of the team that entered Wednesday tied with Purdue for the best record in the nation.
The "Lost in the Big 12 Shuffle" Team: West Virginia Mountaineers
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It's absurd how loaded the Big 12 is. Between Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, TCU and Texas, 60 percent of the 10-team league is currently projected for a No. 4 seed or better in the NCAA tournament, resulting in enthralling game after enthralling game.
The other four teams are pretty darn good, too. This past Monday, Iowa State was tied for first place in the league standings, was a slight underdog on the road against 0-8 Texas Tech, and the Red Raiders got the win in overtime.
The Big 12 has been so good that West Virginia has gotten lost in the shuffle.
In fairness, the Mountaineers are a bubble team that has lost all seven of its games against the top half of Quadrant 1. A home win over TCU is the closest thing they have to a statement victory.
But they're 25th in the NET and 19th on KenPom, in large part because they at least put up a fight every night.
In the Phil Knight Invitational where Purdue destroyed both Duke and Gonzaga, the opening-round game between the Boilermakers and the Mountaineers was a four-point affair with five minutes remaining. A week later at Xavier, WVU lost by 10, but that was a tie game with five minutes to go. The 'Eers also opened Big 12 play by taking Kansas State to overtime (in Manhattan) before falling short.
The only loss that got a little lopsided was the home game against Kansas. But that'll happen when you're facing the reigning national champion without your team leader in assists and steals. (Kedrian Johnson missed that game with a concussion.)
Kentucky is the team hovering in the projected Nos. 10-11 seed range that jumps out as a threat to pull off multiple upsets in the Big Dance. But if West Virginia ends up getting in as a No. 10 or No. 11 seed, best of luck to the No. 2 or No. 3 seed that might have to deal with that matchup in the second round.
The "Defense Wins Championships" Team: Rutgers Scarlet Knights
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This might no longer be the case after Indiana's resurgence, but the Scarlet Knights were once regarded as the top challenger to Purdue in the Big Ten. They even won in West Lafayette in early January.
But even that praise for Rutgers always felt like more of a "pick a best team out of this mess of candidates" than a profession of faith in the Scarlet Knights as a threat to win multiple NCAA tournament games.
Here's the thing, though: Rutgers is legitimately good.
It is currently boasting the second-most efficient defense in the nation, even after giving up 93 points in a loss to Iowa over the weekend. Caleb McConnell is one of the top candidates for National Defensive Player of the Year, while Clifford Omoruyi is a 6'11" shot-blocking and angry-dunking menace in the paint.
In addition to the massive win at Purdue, Rutgers has defeated each of Indiana, Maryland, Northwestern, Penn State and Ohio State. It also spent the entirety of January ranked within the top 20 on KenPom. The Bracket Matrix consensus on the Scarlet Knights right now is a No. 5 seed.
The AP poll hasn't followed suit, though. Rutgers made a brief cameo at No. 23 in the Jan. 16 AP poll, but it quickly vanished after a loss at Michigan State.
The offense is certainly questionable, which makes it scary to pick Rutgers to reach the second weekend of the tournament. But the same goes for Tennessee, and the Volunteers are currently No. 2 in the AP poll.
Rutgers should at least be ranked in the Top 25, probably even in the Top 20. Instead, the Scarlet Knights were 10th among others receiving votes this week.
The "Overrated-Turned-Underrated" Team: Creighton Bluejays
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Creighton was this year's offseason darling.
The Bluejays might not have even made the 2022 NCAA tournament if they hadn't beaten both Marquette and Providence in the Big East tournament. But they got into the Big Dance, and they nearly upset eventual national champion Kansas without both starting point guard Ryan Nembhard and starting center Ryan Kalkbrenner.
"Just imagine how good they'll be with that duo healthy, and with the addition of South Dakota State transfer Baylor Scheierman," went the offseason discourse, until a team that earned a No. 9 seed in the NCAA tournament ended up at No. 9 in the preseason AP poll.
Some argued it wasn't a high enough ranking for Creighton. Others loudly railed against the Bluejays being a Top 10 team, and then loudly did a victory lap when they scuffled through a six-game losing streak from Nov. 23 through Dec. 16. The Bluejays plummeted out of the rankings in a hurry and haven't been back since.
But they have won seven of their last nine games, and the two losses came in hard-fought games on the road against arguably the two best teams in the Big East (Connecticut and Xavier)/ After temporarily dropping to around 30th on KenPom, Creighton is once again knocking on the door of a top-10 rating following a 17-point revenge victory over the Musketeers this past Saturday.
It sure seems like the Bluejays are who the AP voters thought they were three months ago.
Scheierman has been an awesome addition, leading the team in both total points and rebounds. The healthy Nembhard/Kalkbrenner duo has been great, with the former averaging 5.4 assists and the latter averaging 2.4 blocks per game. Arthur Kaluma has blossomed into a legitimate NBA prospect. And Trey Alexander, who's averaging 13 points per game, is certainly no slouch.
This is a Final Four-caliber team that simply went through a rough patch when a brutal portion of the schedule coincided with Kalkbrenner missing three games with an illness. Creighton almost beat Arizona in Maui. It should've won at Texas and it easily could've won at Xavier.
Buy stock while you still can.
The "Criminally Under-Ranked Title Contender" Team: Saint Mary's Gaels
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Saint Mary's climbed a few more spots this week to No. 18 in the AP poll, but it's time to put some real respect on the Gaels name.
They have yet to lose a game by more than five points, and even that five-point loss was a 53-48 game at Houston. Since that early December loss to the Cougars, the Gaels have won 13 out of 14 games, most of them by double digits.
They have been within the top 10 on KenPom since Jan. 8. They're up to No. 6 in the NET and No. 8 on Sagarin, too. Basically, the AP poll is the only "metric" not buying Saint Mary's as a title contender.
Saint Mary's defense is sensational, allowing only 57.1 points per game. Logan Johnson is exactly the type of veteran point guard you want running the show in March. He averages 12.2 points, 3.8 assists and 1.7 steals per game. He sets the tone for everything the Gaels do.
Alongside Johnson are three starters who shoot better than 43 percent from three-point range in Aidan Mahaney, Alex Ducas and Kyle Bowen. Mahaney, the freshman phenom who's leading the team in scoring, hit the Dirk Nowitzki-esque fadeaway winner at BYU last weekend. Ducas is the fourth-year wing who's shooting 40 percent from deep for his career. And Bowen is the 6'8" ultimate glue guy who does a little bit of everything.
Down low, breakout big man Mitchell Saxen is is a bulkier, more assertive version of Bowen. He's averaging 12.6 points, 8.2 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 1.2 blocks and 1.0 steals per night.
The Gaels have some legitimate depth in Augustas Marciulionis, Luke Barrett and Harry Wessels, too. But their starting five can beat anyone in the country.
Will they finally make a Final Four for the first time in program history? Could they win it all?
Saint Mary's has never been better equipped to make it happen.
Kerry Miller covers men's college basketball and Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @KerranceJames.
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