Winners and Losers of 2023-24 Men's College Basketball Season so Far
From the highs of the Mountain West Conference and Purdue's Zach Edey to the lows of Louisville and the Pac-12, the first 40 percent of the 2023-24 men's college basketball season has featured plenty of big winners and losers.
Before the 2023 portion of the campaign wraps up, let's highlight some of the biggest developments and surprises of the first two months.
It could be players, coaches, teams or entire conferences.
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: James Madison Dukes
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If you've paid any attention to this college basketball season, you've surely heard that James Madison is one of the final remaining unbeaten teams in the country. It's down to just JMU, Houston and Ole Miss in that race to be the last team standing.
But did you know the Dukes are also leading the nation in scoring at 92.6 points per game?
They've consistently played at a fast pace over the past five seasons, but they have steadily evolved from frenetic inefficiency to a deep rotation of guys who can score at a high level without committing many turnovers.
Recently, their schedule has been a bit of a joke. JMU has only faced one KenPom top-300 foe in the past month, and even that game against No. 234 Old Dominion wasn't exactly a major test.
In November, though, the Dukes won games away from home against Fresno State, Kent State, Southern Illinois and, most notably, Michigan State, scoring at least 76 points in every game thus far.
The only game in which JMU didn't average at least one point per possession was that opening triumph over the Spartans, in which the Dukes were still figuring out how their pieces fit together. (Michael Green didn't even start that game, and now he's their third-leading scorer, their top three-point weapon and their primary source of both assists and steals.)
Most people still seem to be viewing James Madison as a fun early story that will eventually fizzle out, but there is something legitimate brewing in Harrisonburg. The Dukes might run the table in the Sun Belt, and they might be this year's version of Florida Atlantic, capable of making a run to the Final Four.
Loser: Michigan State Spartans
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After opening the season at No. 4 in the AP poll and projecting as one of the top candidates to win the national championship, Michigan State got out to its most disappointing start since Tom Izzo got the job more than a quarter century ago.
The Spartans started out with a home loss to James Madison. That doesn't look quite as bad in retrospect with JMU still hanging around as one of the final unbeatens, but it was still bad.
They proceeded to lose to Duke, Arizona, Wisconsin and Nebraska in the process of opening the season 4-5.
On some nights, it was terrible three-point shooting. On others, they simply got outworked in the paint. And as seemingly everyone except for Tyson Walker under-performed, many questioned why Izzo wasn't at least letting freshmen Xavier Booker and Jeremy Fears play more in hopes of sparking something.
Perhaps they have finally turned a corner, though.
Blowing out Baylor on Dec. 16 was a near-must for a team that had dropped completely off the radar from an early bracketology perspective. Building on that with equally dominant victories over Oakland and Stony Brook was promising. The defense has kicked it up a notch, and senior point guard AJ Hoggard has been much better in December than he was in November.
Still, the Spartans have a steep mountain to climb to get anywhere close to what was expected of them two months ago. They still feel like a third-tier team in the Big Ten, a far cry from the Purdue team they were supposed to rival for conference supremacy.
Winner: Zach Edey and the Purdue Boilermakers
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No matter how great Purdue looks this season, you are well within your rights to doubt this team in March. Even with Zach Edey (and Mason Gillis) in the mix for each of the past three seasons, the Boilermakers have lost to a No. 13 seed (North Texas), a No. 15 seed (Saint Peter's) and a No. 16 seed (Fairleigh Dickinson) in the NCAA tournament.
Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us three times, shame on Purdue.
However, if we had to pick a national champion right now, the Boilermakers are absolutely one of the top four choices, if not the singular No. 1 option.
And that's largely because the reigning National Player of the Year has been even more dominant while defending his crown.
In four games played against opponents ranked outside the KenPom top 75, Purdue has taken it easy on Edey, averaging 22.3 minutes, 16.8 points and 8.3 rebounds. But when the Boilermakers have needed him against quality foes, he has delivered to the tune of 32.8 minutes, 27.6 points and 11.5 rebounds.
Edey has also blossomed into a better shot-blocker and is drawing fouls at an astronomical rate, averaging 8.5 made free throws per game.
But while Edey remains the clear favorite for NPOY, the biggest reason to believe this is the year Purdue finally gets over the hump and reaches a Final Four under Matt Painter might be the improvement of point guard Braden Smith.
Smith was solid as a freshman, but he has taken a massive step forward as a sophomore, now averaging 13.3 points, 6.7 assists and 5.5 rebounds. He had a bit of an off night in the loss to Northwestern, but he was crucial in the victories over Arizona, Alabama, Marquette and Gonzaga.
Edey is a no-brainer first-team All-American, and Smith is making the case to be considered for a spot on that five-man roster, as well. And if that continues to be the case, Purdue just might follow in Virginia's footsteps by winning a title the year after losing to a No. 16 seed.
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Loser: Kenny Payne and the Louisville Cardinals
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Kenny Payne got somewhat of a mulligan for last year's 4-28 disaster. Louisville should never, ever be that awful, but it was his first year as a head coach and he inherited an absolute mess. So he got a second season at the helm.
With year No. 2 not going much better than the first, though, that "new hire" grace period is long gone, replaced by the most high-profile hot-seat watch in the country.
The Cardinals are 5-7, but they could easily be 2-10 right now. They just barely won their opener against UMBC, needed a late comeback and overtime to beat New Mexico State and allowed Bellarmine to hang around until the bitter end.
In addition to those narrow victories over teams outside the KenPom top 240, Louisville suffered dreadful losses to Chattanooga, DePaul and Arkansas State.
They do at least have a much more balanced scoring attack than last year, and they do occasionally give a damn on defense. That's improvement.
But they've merely improved from "unequivocally the worst major-conference team" to "definitely one of the seven worst major-conference teams," which isn't going to cut it at Louisville.
Some thought the blowout home loss to Kentucky might be the final straw, but athletic director Josh Heird said that Payne will remain Louisville's coach into the new year.
That's hardly a vote of confidence in the program's current state, though, as the new year begins in a matter of days.
At this point, Payne's status as head coach is going to be asked about after every loss, which there figure to be a ton of the rest of the seasonāeven in an ACC that isn't looking like anything special.
Winner: Chris Beard and the Ole Miss Rebels
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It has been a rough season for most of the new head coaches at major conference programs, but Chris Beard having Ole Miss at a perfect 12-0 is very much an exception to that rule.
It wasn't always pretty. Five of the Rebels' first nine wins came by a one-possession margin, including a one-point home win over a Detroit Mercy squad that is presently 0-13.
But wins are wins, and Ole Miss is closing in on what would be a program record for consecutive victories to begin a season.
The current record came when the Rebels started out 13-0 in 2007-08...before losing nine of their first 13 SEC games and narrowly missing the NCAA tournament. For their sake, here's hoping this hot start comes with a less disappointing finish.
For what it's worth, though, this team has a bit of a 2018-19 Auburn vibe going for them.
If you'll recall, those Tigers made a ton of threes, blocked a ton of shots and racked up a ton of steals en route to a surprise trip to the Final Four as a No. 5 seed. And Ole Miss is shooting better than 40 percent from distance while ranking fourth in the nation in block percentage and 13th in steal percentage. (The Rebels don't hoist nearly as many threes as that Auburn team did, though.)
The unknown is whether they're taking advantage of a weak schedule or if they're actually good. The Rebels did score a come-from-behind, three-point home win over Memphis in the only game they've played against an NCAA tournament-caliber foe to date, but there will be plenty more challenges of that ilk in SEC play to clue us in on whether Ole Miss is for real.
Pretty hard to argue with 12-0, though.
Loser: Pac-12
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Arizona looks like a legitimate title contender. The Wildcats are 9-2 with wins over Duke, Alabama, Wisconsin and Michigan State, and their two losses to Purdue and Florida Atlantic were arguably the two most captivating games of the entire 2023-24 season to date. They haven't made a Final Four since 2001, but that's a team capable of winning it all.
As far as the rest of the Pac-12 is concerned, though...
Yikes.
Utah has been a revelation with solid victories over BYU, Saint Mary's and Wake Forest. The Utes are pretty clearly the second-best team in the league and would at least be a tournament team if Selection Sunday were today.
But finding a third tournament team from this league will be a challenge, because Utah and Arizona are the only Pac-12 teams to get a Quad 1 victory thus far this season. The rest of the league has gone a combined 0-20 in those opportunities.
Before departing for the Big Ten next year, USC and UCLA were supposed to be the top challengers to Arizona in the Pac-12. Instead, they've gone a combined 11-11, each suffering a home loss to a team from the Big West Conference. (USC lost to Long Beach State; UCLA lost to Cal St. Northridge.)
The Bruins already have virtually no hope of making the NCAA tournament, and the Trojans are going to need to do some serious work in Pac-12 playāwe're probably talking 14-6, at a minimumāin order to overcome their poor start and reach the dance.
If Arizona goes a perfect 20-0 in conference play while Utah fades to some extent, there's a chance this could be a one-bid league.
When all is said and done, there will most likely be at least two, probably three Pac-12 teams dancing, but let's just say the league isn't going out with a bang in its final season of existence.
Winner: Mountain West
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While the Pac-12 has been a disaster, the Mountain West has picked up a lot of that slack west of Texas, emerging as a realistic five-bid, maybe even six-bid league.
The big five up top are Colorado State, San Diego State, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah State, going a combined 56-6 thus far.
Not only is that a gaudy record, but there's quite a bit of quality behind that quantity. Colorado State blew out Creighton on a neutral floor. Nevada had a statement win over TCU in the Diamond Head Classic and won at Washington early in the year. San Diego State already has four KenPom top-100 victories.
New Mexico is the only one of the five that doesn't have multiple wins against the top two Quadrants. And the only Q3 or Q4 loss in the bunch was a Utah State overtime loss at Bradley, which slipped from Q2 down to Q3 within the past few days.
Beyond that quintet, Boise State is also lurking as an at-large candidate at 8-4 with solid wins over Saint Mary's, San Francisco, VCU and North Texas with no bad losses on its ledger, either.
Now that they've built up this solid collective tournament resume, though, the big key is going to be avoiding bad losses to Air Force, Fresno State, San Jose State and Wyoming, as it wouldn't take more than one or two blunders against that bottom tier to lower the ceiling for possible bids.
But if I had to bet today on whether the Pac-12 or Mountain West will place more teams into the 2024 NCAA tournament field, I'm putting all of my chips on the Mountain West.
Loser: Vanderbilt Commodores
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Vanderbilt was the late-season breakout sensation of 2022-23.
After a 10-12 start to the year, the Commodores entered Selection Sunday having won 10 of their last 12 games, including two wins away from home over Kentucky and impressive home victories over Tennessee and Auburn.
It wasn't enough to make the NCAA tournament, but it did seem like they were finally hitting their stride under Jerry Stackhouse and might be able to find their way back into the dance this year.
That dream went up in smoke in a hurry as Vanderbilt opened the year with a terrible home loss to Presbyterian.
More recently, the Commodores have lost seven of their past eight games, with the lone victory in more than a month coming against lowly Alabama A&M.
Vandy did almost shock the college basketball world this past Saturday, coming up just short on the road against Memphis. But that came after a home loss to Western Carolina, and after blowout losses to Texas Tech, San Francisco, Boston College and Arizona Stateānone of which is particularly likely to make the tournament at this point in time.
Vanderbilt entered that Memphis game as the lowest-rated major conference team, per KenPom, with Notre Dame and DePaul as the only other teams anywhere close to the Commodores' spot in the basement.
They should win the home game against Dartmouth this coming Saturday, but after that, KenPom doesn't even give them a 40 percent chance of winning any specific SEC game on the schedule.
The only conference games in which Vanderbilt is given at least a 20 percent chance of victory are the home games against Georgia, LSU and Missouri.
There's a better than six percent chance they go 0-18.
Winner: Houston Cougars
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There has been an awful lot of naysaying about the 12-0 Houston Cougars.
Because they don't have upper-echelon wins quite like what Purdue and Kansas picked up in Maui or that Arizona has acquired against one of the toughest schedules in the nation, some have scoffed at the notion that the Cougars might be the best team in the country or that they deserve a No. 1 seed at this stage in the bracketology journey.
But come on, people.
Houston is very, very good, yet again.
The Cougars are No. 1 in the NET. No. 1 on KenPom. No. 1 in BPI. They're second in SOR and fifth in KPI. And as of Christmas morning, they were one of just three teams with at least three wins against the top half of Quad 1. (Houston is 3-0, Arizona is 3-2 and Purdue is 4-0.)
Despite losing Marcus Sasser, Jarace Walker and Tramon Mark from what was a No. 1 seed one year ago, the Cougars have continued to thrive, leaning heavily on Baylor transfer LJ Cryer for offense (17 PPG) while remaining elite on defense with opponents averaging a nation-low 50.0 point per contest.
Jamal Shead is filling up the stat sheet to the tune of nine points, six assists, four rebounds and more than two steals per game. The trio of Ja'Vier Francis, J'Wan Roberts and JoJo Tugler has been basically impenetrable in the paint. Redshirt sophomore Emanuel Sharp has broken out in a huge way.
These dudes are for real.
Houston can (and should) win the Big 12. It can win a national championship. And it's time to start talking about the Cougars as the contender they are, because no one has been better thus far.
Loser: Gonzaga, Saint Mary's and the WCC
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After adding BYU before the 2011-12 season, the West Coast Conference had fairly consistently been a multi-bid league. Gonzaga always gets into the dance, and typically at least one of BYU or Saint Mary's would join the Zags in March.
That was supposed to continue this year even with BYU off to the Big 12, as both Gonzaga and Saint Mary's opened the year in the AP Top 25.
However, they have sputtered through their worst collective nonconference slates in a long time, likely leaving the WCC as a one-bid league.
Of the two, things have definitely gone worse for the Gaels. They did score a very impressive road win over Colorado State, handing the Rams their only loss of the year. But the Gaels are sitting at 8-6 with home losses to Weber State and Missouri State in addition to blowout losses to San Diego State and Xavier.
The good news is the only other time in the past 15 years that Saint Mary's entered WCC play with at least five losses, it recovered enough to win the 2019 WCC tournament for an automatic bid. But it has been a dreadful start for an atypically poor-shooting Gaels squad. They are already borderline "auto bid or bust."
Gonzaga isn't in great shape, either.
Neutral-site victories over Syracuse, UCLA and USC were decent, but those teams aren't anywhere close to at-large consideration at the moment. The Zags haven't done anything better than that, blowing major opportunities against Purdue and Connecticut and also taking a loss at Washington.
Gonzaga does still host San Diego State this Friday and has a road game against Kentucky in mid-February. If it doesn't win at least one of those games, though, an at-large bid probably isn't happening, should the Zags need one.
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