College Basketball Teams Guaranteed to Improve Their Win Total in 2016-17
Depending on the college basketball team, the 2015-16 season was either one to remember or something it wishes to forget. For those on the bottom end of that equation, the offseason is a time of hope and promise that things will surely get better next time around.
If only it were that easy. In college basketball, the sad reality is that teams who struggle one year are likely to do so again the following season.
To make notable year-over-year improvements usually requires an upgrade in talent, the return of missing stars and possibly a coaching change. Sometimes all of those things, and even then there's no real guarantee.
We did find some schools, however, that seem destined to increase their win total during the 2016-17 season. Whether that's because they had a really bad 2015-16 or some other factor, the prospects for next season look much better than the just-completed one.
Boston College Eagles
1 of 8
2015-16 record: 7-25, 0-18 ACC
Of the 351 Division I schools in action last season, only two failed to win at least one conference game. We don't have enough confidence that Chicago State will be able to avoid a similar fate again in 2016-17, but Boston College almost has to improve by default.
The first 0-18 team in ACC history, the Eagles take a 19-game losing streak into next season and have to replace two of their top three scorers. That includes center Dennis Clifford, who summed up BC's abysmal year in the press conference following their season-ending 22-point loss to Florida State by saying the best memory he had was "going out to eat."
BC won't be challenging for the ACC title in 2016-17, but it should be able to show at least a little improvement. Guard Jerome Robinson had an impressive freshman season, averaging 11.7 points per game and shooting 37.1 percent from outside, and he's one of four freshmen who scored at least five per game for the Eagles.
They added five players, a quartet of three-star high school prospects and 6'6” wing Connar Tava, a graduate transfer from Western Michigan who averaged 12.3 points and 6.2 rebounds on 52.1 percent shooting last season.
Clemson Tigers
2 of 8
2015-16 record: 17-14, 10-8 ACC
Clemson's 2015-16 was a bit of a roller coaster, stumbling out of the gates at 7-6 but then winning five straight ACC games to sit near the top of the league standings in mid-January. The up-and-down results continued, though, with the Tigers dropping four of the next six and never winning more than two in a row again.
This resulted in their fifth straight season missing the NCAA tournament, and then star forward Jaron Blossomgame (18.7 points, 6.7 rebounds per game) declared for the NBA draft. An invite to the draft combine made it even more likely he was done with Clemson, but on the final day possible, the 6'7” junior withdrew from draft consideration and opted to return to school.
By doing that, Blossomgame gives Clemson its best chance in years to make the NCAA field and really make some noise in the ACC. The Tigers, who tied for seventh in 2015-16, haven't finished in the top four in the league since 2007-08.
Blossomgame is one of three returning starters, along with forward Donte Grantham and guard Avry Holmes, and Clemson adds three transfers: guards Shelton Mitchell (Vanderbilt) and Marcquise Reed (Robert Morris) and center Elijah Thomas (Texas A&M).
Reed averaged 15.1 points per game as a freshman in 2014-15, while the 6'9”, 251-pound Thomas will become eligible in December after leaving A&M midway through his freshman year.
Harvard Crimson
3 of 8
2015-16 record: 14-16, 6-8 Ivy League
Harvard won the Ivy League four straight seasons from 2012-15, twice pulling upsets in the NCAA tournament during that run, but an injury to guard Siyani Chambers and major graduation losses led to the school's first losing record in eight years.
Chambers missed the entire season, and because the Ivy doesn't allow redshirts, he had to withdraw from school in order to maintain his eligibility.
Chambers, a 6'0” guard who was the Crimson's top assist man in 2014-15 as a junior, will be back this season, and he's joined by the best recruiting class in school history. The seven-player group ranks 24th in the country by 247Sports and a pair of four-star prospects in point guard Bryce Aiken and power forward Chris Lewis.
Aiken had plenty of offers from power programs, including Auburn, Florida State, Miami (Florida) and Seton Hall, while Lewis drew interest from Georgia Tech, Memphis, Miami, Notre Dame and Texas A&M.
Those newcomers will be instant contributors if they can fit into coach Tommy Amaker's defensive-minded system, which has ranked in the top 50 in scoring defense four of the last five seasons.
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Northwestern State Demons
4 of 8
2015-16 record: 8-20, 5-13 Southland
Northwestern State's penchant for putting the pedal to the floor hit a major speed bump last season when one half of its high-scoring backcourt suffered a knee injury in final minute of the opening game.
Jalan West had scored 25 points with six assists in a loss at Ole Miss before getting hurt, and it was soon determined he'd torn his ACL and was out for the year.
How big of a loss was that? The 5'10” West had averaged 21.3 points and 6.9 assists as a junior and entered 2015-16 as the active Division I assists leader. Without him, junior guard Zeek Woodley had to do it all himself; he ranked 11th nationally in scoring at 22.2 points per game, matching his average from the season before, but the Demons' team defense was so bad he couldn't score enough to keep up.
The result was Northwestern State's first 20-loss season since 2009 and the third-worst scoring defense (86.2 points allowed per game) in the country.
Woodley and West will both be back, with the former withdrawing from the NBA draft and the latter granted a sixth year of eligibility.
Rhode Island Rams
5 of 8
2015-16 record: 17-15, 9-9 Atlantic 10
The end of a long NCAA tournament drought looked quite good entering last season, with Rhode Island returning four starters from a 23-win team that finished second in the Atlantic 10. Then leading scorer E.C. Matthews suffered a season-ending injury 10 minutes into the opener.
Bleacher Report's Kerry Miller called it “a minor miracle” that the Rams managed to finish with a winning record without Matthews, who averaged 16.9 points per game as a sophomore, while forward Hassan Martin also missed time because of injury.
With Matthews, Martin and several other key players returning, along with the addition of Indiana transfer guard Stanford Robinson, all of those 2015-16 predictions have been shifted to next season.
St. John's Red Storm
6 of 8
2015-16 record: 8-24, 1-17 Big East
Once mentioned among college basketball's blue bloods, St. John's has been on the downswing for most of the past 20 years.
Steve Lavin managed 21 wins and an NCAA bid in 2014-15 but was still let go, and then new coach Chris Mullin basically had to start over with the departure of 11 players for various reasons.
Not surprisingly, the Red Storm were quite bad in 2015-16. Really quite bad, the school-record 24 losses including 16 in a row at one point with setbacks to Incarnate Word, Niagara, NJIT and St. Francis (New York) all on campus or at second home Madison Square Garden.
Mullin, one of the best players in school history and a first-time coach at any level, was given an empty cupboard and the team looked as such.
Amid that despair, though, he managed to sign a top-25 recruiting class. He'll also have access to some players that weren't eligible a year ago, with 6'10” forward Tariq Owens transferring from Tennessee and 2015 signee Marcus LoVett declared academically ineligible as a freshman.
At the very least, the St. John's roster will look more like one you'd expect to find at a power program, albeit one that's still likely to finish near the bottom of the Big East.
That roster will get tested early, with the Red Storm set to play in the Battle 4 Atlantis with Baylor, Louisville, Michigan State, VCU and Wichita State, but over the course of the season there should be enough opportunities to get to double-digit wins.
TCU Horned Frogs
7 of 8
2015-16 record: 12-21, 2-16 Big 12
A coaching change is often among the most common scenarios where an expectation of improvement piggybacks on the situation.
Though plenty of the 50 Division I coaching changes this offseason were the result of someone quitting or retiring, in most cases the move involved a firing and usually because of poor performance.
The TCU job opened because its previous coach, Trent Johnson, went 50-79 overall and won just eight of 72 Big 12 games in four seasons. And the Horned Frogs turned to a sitting coach, Pittsburgh's Jamie Dixon, to get their program turned around and hopefully into the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1998.
Dixon led Pitt to 328 wins and 11 NCAA bids in 13 seasons and his arrival in Fort Worth provided an instant image boost. He's been hard at work since getting hired in March, landing 4-star point guard prospect Jaylen Fisher—the best recruit in school history, per TCU's website—to join a roster that returns six of its top seven scores.
That would have been seven of seven, but leading scorer Chauncey Collins was one of two players to leave the team this week.
Don't expect TCU to be shocking the Big 12 world in 2016-17, but something closer to .500 is very possible. Considering Dixon's track record for soft nonconference schedules at Pitt, the Frogs could load up on winnable games early in the season.
UCLA Bruins
8 of 8
2015-16 record: 15-17, 6-12 Pac-12
The first seven teams on this list share a common thread of hoping for improvement in 2016-17 but knowing there's somewhat of a ceiling to any leap. With UCLA, the sky is the limit.
Under .500 for the first time in six years and with their worst Pac-12 record since 2003, the Bruins are likely to find themselves in the preseason poll this fall. Bleacher Report's updated rankings have them ninth and ESPN lists them 17th overall.
Why the jump? Well, aside from a ton of returning scoring—four players who averaged at least 10.3 points per game—UCLA also has a top-notch recruiting class coming to Westwood. It's highlighted by the inside-out duo of point guard Lonzo Ball and power forward T.J. Leaf, both among the top 20 prospects from the 2016 class.
The new blood, combined with what was already there, makes a bump in performance seem like a lock. But UCLA can't just win a few more games, not with a faction of the fanbase calling for coach Steve Alford's head despite Sweet 16 appearances in his first two seasons.
All statistics courtesy of Sports-Reference.com, unless otherwise noted. All recruiting information from 247Sports, unless otherwise noted.
Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.
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