Biggest Winners and Losers from Men's College Basketball with 1 Month to Go
From Tristen Newton thriving for the defending national champions to Kentucky defending a whole lot of nothing these days, the 2023-24 men's college basketball season is full of winners and losers with one month left in the regular season.
For each of the seven main conferences—yes, the Mountain West is a main conference this season—we've identified a biggest winner and a biggest loser at roughly 75 percent of the way through the regular season. Also included are a couple of wild cards in each direction from outside the main seven conferences.
Winners are players or coaches/teams who have drastically exceeded expectation.
And, well, the Losers haven't.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics are current through the start of play Wednesday, Feb. 7.
Atlantic Coast Conference
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Biggest Winner: RJ Davis, North Carolina
Purdue's Zach Edey is all but certainly going to be named National Player of the Year for a second consecutive season. But RJ Davis' maturation into a star has been a sight to behold and likely to result in a spot on the All-American first team, maybe as the first runner-up to Edey for NPOY.
And it sure would be fun if he's on the first team while Arizona's Caleb Love lands on the second or third team, given how acrimonious that breakup was this past offseason.
Of course, that's a big part of why Davis has become Buddy Hield 2.0. Instead of sharing a backcourt with a guard who averaged more than 15 shots per game, he now has a point guard who actually enjoys passing the ball in Elliot Cadeau, which has allowed A) Davis to tap into some elite-level scoring and B) North Carolina to become a legitimate threat to win it all.
Biggest Loser: Miami Hurricanes
We could dunk on Louisville and Notre Dame here for being terrible, but they are who we thought they were, battling for last place, as was expected in the ACC preseason media poll.
In that same poll, though, Miami was picked to finish second in the league, ahead of North Carolina and behind only Duke.
Yet, the Hurricanes—a.k.a. the No. 13 team in the preseason AP poll—aren't even within shouting distance of the projected NCAA tournament field right now, and they are sitting at 6-6 in a mediocre ACC without having even played Duke or UNC yet.
Miami lost at home to Louisville, which might as well be grounds for not being eligible for the dance. They were also held to 38 points in Monday's loss at Virginia, scoring fewer than 40 points in a game for the first time since 1948, per Patrick Stevens of the Washington Post.
Big 12 Conference
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Biggest Winner: BYU's scoring margin
After going 7-9 in their final season in the West Coast Conference, the Brigham Young Cougars didn't seem like they would be much of a threat in their first year in the Big 12, projected in the preseason to jostle with UCF for last place in the conference.
But after running a freight train through nonconference play with a 12-1 record and an average scoring margin of 28.9 points per game, BYU has continued to play relatively well against its league foes.
The Cougars are merely 4-5, but their wins over Iowa State, Texas and West Virginia each came by double digits. Moreover, they've been competitive in most of their losses, tied in the final minute against Houston and leading at some point in the final 12 minutes of the losses to Baylor, Texas Tech and Cincinnati.
We complained early in the year that the efficiency-based KenPom and NET were over-rewarding BYU for running up the score against not-great competition, but the Cougars have backed up their predictive metrics and legitimately might reach the Elite Eight for the first time since 1981, or the Final Four for the first time in program history.
Biggest Loser: Oklahoma State Cowboys
The Pokes got off the schneid recently with home wins over West Virginia and Kansas State, but what an atrocious season this has been in Stillwater.
Thus far in the more than a quarter century of KenPom history, the Cowboys have never finished a season rated outside the top 100 in the country. But they entered Wednesday at No. 122 with more losses to teams outside the top 100 (three) than wins over top-100 foes (one).
No one particularly expected Oklahoma State to win the Big 12 this season, but the Cowboys were at least supposed to flirt with an at-large bid and maybe post an overall winning record. That ship sailed in a hurry with early losses to Abilene Christian, St. Bonaventure and Notre Dame, and they've yet to recover.
Big East Conference
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Biggest Winner: Tristen Newton, Connecticut
Rarely if ever do we see a team win the national championship and bring back its starting point guard the following season, but Connecticut was afforded that luxury with Tristen Newton.
He went for 19 points and 10 rebounds in that title game against San Diego State and opted to return for one more year in a more prominent role.
Yes, he was pivotal on last year's roster, but he wasn't the star, or even anything close to it. Adama Sanogo and Jordan Hawkins were the stars. Andre Jackson was the difference-maker. Donovan Clingan was the future. And Newton was just a really good, somewhat underrated veteran leader.
So, he came back and is merely leading the reigning champions (and one of the current favorites to win it all) in points, rebounds and assists, putting up numbers on par with what Jalen Pickett gave Penn State last season.
Barring some sort of collapse, he should be a first-team All-American.
Biggest Loser: DePaul Blue Demons
There's bad.
There's really bad.
Then there's 2023-24 DePaul.
In KenPom history—since 1999—there have been three instances of a power-conference team finishing the season outside the KenPom top 270: 2022-23 Louisville (290), 2015-16 Rutgers (279) and 2011-12 Utah (302). And that Utah team deserves somewhat of a mulligan in setting that futility record while changing coaches and conferences (MWC to Pac-12) that offseason.
But DePaul might break that record, currently sitting at 3-20 overall and No. 301 on KenPom with only one game left on the schedule in which it is given at least a 10 percent chance of victory. And even for that home game against Georgetown—which might be the second-worst power-conference team this season—the expectation is still that the Blue Demons will lose.
They already fired head coach Tony Stubblefield, but that hasn't helped. DePaul has lost nine consecutive games by double figures, several by 30-plus points.
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Big Ten Conference
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Biggest Winner: Boo Buie, Northwestern
Buie was already a star. He scored 40 points between Northwestern's two NCAA tournament games last season, and he's going to reach 2,000 career points at some point in the next couple of contests.
But this fifth-year senior has elevated what was already a high level of play and could be gearing up to take over this year's dance.
Heading into Wednesday night's bubble battle with Nebraska, Buie was averaging 18.9 points, 5.5 assists, 3.5 rebounds and 1.5 steals per game. Those are all career-high marks, as is his just-a-shade-under-40 percent three-point clip.
If he can maintain his 18.5, 5.5, 3.5 and 1.5 averages, he would join Oregon's Payton Pritchard, Oklahoma's Trae Young and Washington's Markelle Fultz as the only power-conference players to do so in the past decade.
Biggest Loser: Juwan Howard, Michigan
It's one thing to have a bad season, which Michigan is very much having. At 7-15, the Wolverines are the only Big Ten team with a sub-.500 overall record.
But it goes well beyond just not winning for Juwan Howard.
There was the reported altercation with the strength coach in mid-December. The decision to let Phil Martelli serve as head coach for the game against Penn State in Philadelphia. Dug McDaniel's bizarre road games suspension.
Now, he's out here throwing his scholarship players under the bus, saying after the latest epic second-half meltdown against Rutgers, "I've considered, you know, maybe going with my walk-ons. Because they care. They're going to give a lot of what we ask. They're all dialed-in."
Well, maybe the starters aren't dialed in because the starting point guard is averaging over 36 minutes per game at home and zero on the road? Or because dating back to Christmas, you've been outscored by an average score of 45.3-32.9 in the second half, and you can only live that movie so many times before it becomes the expectation?
Michigan was a No. 1 seed three years ago, but how can it bring Howard back next season after this disaster?
Mountain West Conference
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Biggest Winner: Danny Sprinkle, Utah State
Returning production can be a great gauge on whether a team figures to improve from one season to the next.
But as Danny Sprinkle has demonstrated this season with the Aggies, it can also be completely overrated.
After Ryan Odom left for the VCU opening, almost the entire 2022-23 Utah State roster also left in one way or the other. The only player on the current USU roster who appeared in a game for the Aggies last season is Landon Brenchley, who logged eight scoreless minutes as a redshirt freshman and has scored nine points this season.
Sprinkle came in from Montana State, built the entire team from scratch and might actually win the damn league. Utah State is 19-4 overall and could be headed for the best NCAA tournament seed in program history. (That high-water mark is currently the No. 8 seed it received in 2019.)
Sprinkle has to be at least a top-five candidate for National Coach of the Year.
Biggest Loser: Everyone who travels to Laramie, Wyoming
Losses to Wyoming are a big no-no as far as the NET is concerned, where the Cowboys aren't even a top-150 team.
But road games against Wyoming have been a death sentence, resulting in bad losses for both Nevada and Colorado State. (Somehow, New Mexico avoided that fate in a comfortable win Tuesday night.)
Wyoming is 1-8 in true road games this season, the lone win coming at Air Force last week. But the Cowboys are 8-2 at the Arena Auditorium, which might be the weirdest-named building in the country in addition to one of the toughest places to play.
San Diego State lucked out and does not need to travel to Laramie this season, and it could win the league because of it.
Both Utah State (Feb. 14) and Boise State (Feb. 24) still need to make that dreaded road trip to nearly 8,000 feet about sea level. We'll see if those NCAA tournament hopefuls can survive it.
Pac-12 Conference
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Biggest Winner: Myles Rice, Washington State
Everyone loves an underdog or a comeback story, and there isn't a bigger one than what's happening in Pullman.
Myles Rice redshirted the 2021-22 season for normal, "probably not going to get that much playing time as a true freshman" reasons, and then took a medical redshirt the following season while receiving treatment for Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
His last chemotherapy treatment was on March 9 of last year, which was also the day Washington State was eliminated from the Pac-12 tournament and effectively eliminated from the NCAA tournament for the 15th consecutive year.
But now the rare third-year freshman is the heart and soul of the Cougars, averaging 15.7 points, 3.7 assists and 1.7 steals per game as they try to play their way into the dance for the first time since Virginia's Tony Bennett was the coach in 2008.
To that end, Saturday's road game against Oregon looms extremely large. With all due respect to the Ducks who are trying to dance in their own right, it would be awesome if Rice hits a late game-winner in that one.
Biggest Loser: The Pac-12
Yes, this entire conference has been a loser.
USC and UCLA have been disasters. Colorado has great predictive metrics and should be good, but it likely wouldn't make the field as of today. Aside from Arizona, Utah is the only particularly strong candidate for a bid, and the Utes are thus far 0-5 on the road in league play. (Washington State has a good case for a bid right now, but it's definitely still on the bubble.)
The sad thing is this isn't even close to the worst the Pac-12 has been.
It was a three-bid league in both 2018 and 2019, and just barely at that, getting two No. 11 seeds in the former and an 11 and 12 seed in the latter. And it was a two-bid league in 2012 with Oregon stealing a bid by winning the Pac-12 tournament and California getting the league's only at-large bid in a play-in game.
But if Utah tanks down the stretch and this ends up being a one-bid league, what a laughable, miserable final memory of this conference that would be.
Southeastern Conference
7 of 8
Biggest Winner: Lamont Paris, South Carolina
Dead last.
Fourteenth out of 14.
That's where the SEC preseason media poll had South Carolina finishing this season. It's also where The Almanac's Rob Dauster projected the Gamecocks.
And with good reason. They went 11-21 last season and lost three of their four leading scorers, seemingly trying to plug a sinking ship via transfer portal acquisitions from Wofford (B.J. Mack), Minnesota (Ta'Lon Cooper) and Vanderbilt (Myles Stute).
But it worked, and these nice guys aren't finishing last.
After recent wins over Kentucky and Tennessee, South Carolina is threatening to win the whole SEC and is darn near a lock to make the NCAA tournament for what would be just the second time since 2004.
The other time? They made it to the 2017 Final Four.
Biggest Loser: Kentucky's Defense
Sure, Arkansas is actually the SEC's biggest loser, going from preseason AP No. 14 to a hot mess that might post an overall losing record.
However, Kentucky's defense is the much more prominent loser.
On offense, this might be the most potent team John Calipari has had at Kentucky. At any rate, KenPom shows that the Wildcats have not had a lower turnover percentage, a higher three-point percentage or a higher assist rate under Coach Cal.
But they are squandering what could be a magical season with what has been by far their worst defense in KenPom history.
What's bizarre about that is Reed Sheppard is a phenomenal individual defender, averaging 3.3 steals and 1.2 blocks per 40 minutes. And Ugonna Onyenso has emerged as an elite shot blocker. But they're getting little out of Antonio Reeves, D.J. Wagner and Justin Edwards on that end of the floor, resulting in nearly 80 points allowed per game.
Because the offense is so good, Kentucky rarely gets blown out. But the Wildcats have already lost three games this season (all in the past month) in which they scored at least 91 points, which is highly unusual.
How unusual?
After hiring Calipari in 2009, Kentucky won 119 of the first 120 games in which it scored at least 86 points. The lone exception was a 97-92 loss to the Lonzo Ball-led UCLA Bruins, which was an outrageously efficient offensive team.
Over the past four weeks, though, Kentucky has three wins and three losses when scoring at least 86 points.
Wild Cards from the Other Conferences
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Biggest Winner: Alan Huss, High Point
Remember when Tubby Smith spent four years at High Point and they didn't get any better? Well, first-year head coach Alan Huss (previously on Greg McDermott's staff at Creighton) has swooped in and turned a woeful offense into a pretty damn good one.
The Panthers have never been to the NCAA tournament, but there's a good chance they'll win the Big South—and Huss will get quite a few job offers this spring.
Second-Biggest Winner: DaRon Holmes II, Dayton
With shouts to Xavier Johnson at Southern Illinois and Jonathan Mogbo at San Francisco, Holmes has been the brightest star from outside the seven biggest conferences, and he should be no worse than a second-team All-American next month. Dayton's center is averaging 20 points, eight rebounds and better than two assists and two blocks per game while trying to take the Flyers on the deep run that we thought they could make with Obi Toppin in 2020.
Biggest Loser: Pacific Tigers
Pacific wasn't supposed to be good this season, but after going 15-18 last year, the Tigers were supposed to be roughly "national average," landing at No. 186 in the preseason KenPom ratings. Only DePaul has plummeted further since the beginning of the season, though, with Pacific presently 4-19 vs. D-I competition and rated 343rd.
Adding to how much of a bummer this season has been, former head coach Damon Stoudamire has pulled off upsets of both Duke and North Carolina in his first season at Georgia Tech, while transfer Jordan Ivy-Curry went back to UTSA and has been scoring like there's no tomorrow, including a 38-point performance against Florida Atlantic.
Second-Biggest Loser: Penny Hardaway, Memphis
Outside of the Trae Young Oklahoma team that could not buy a win down the stretch of the 2017-18 season, it's hard to recall a rapid fall from grace quite like what Memphis went through in the latter half of January, plummeting from a borderline projected No. 2 seed to the wrong side of the bubble.
If the Tigers actually miss the dance after the start they had and how frustratingly mediocre they've been in recent years, we'll see if the coaching carousel makes a stop there.
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