2016 College Basketball Preseason Rankings & Ratings

2016 College Basketball Preseason Rankings & Ratings

November 7, 2016 – by David Hess

We stayed up late Saturday night to finish crunching the numbers and spot checking the data. Then early Sunday morning, we loaded our official 2016 college basketball preseason rankings into our database.

It should come as no shock that Duke is our top-ranked team this season. If we had come up with any other result, we’d think something was wrong with the model.

These are the ratings that drive our preseason projections, and they serve as the Bayesian priors for our predictive ratings as the season progresses. (Translation: our preseason ratings still impact our team ratings even months into the season, because that has shown to be more predictive than not.)

Below you’ll find a preseason top 25 comparison between TeamRankings, Ken Pomeroy, Dan Hanner/Sports Illustrated, the AP poll, and the ESPN Coaches poll. We’ve also posted the full rankings and ratings for all 351 Division I teams.

Using these ratings, we’ve run full season projections, which are live on the site now. Go check’em out! Pages include:

College Basketball Projected Conference Standings. Projected conference records and full regular season records, plus win odds for both the conference regular season title and the postseason tournament.Bracketology Projections. Odds to make the NCAA tournament, plus projected seeding, and lots more details. (One of our faves is the Bracketology By Conference page.)NCAA Tournament Bracket Predictions. Round by round advancement odds, including probability of a team making the Sweet 16, making the Final Four, and winning the championship.

This is all data-driven, and automated, so it will update every day throughout the season.

Ratings Method

The basic idea is that we establish a baseline prediction for a team, given their power ratings from recent years, and assuming an average amount of roster turnover. Then we make some adjustments based on how much value each team is returning on offense and defense, as well as the strength of their recruiting classes from the past few years, and the value of any transfers they’ve added this season. The result is our 2016 college basketball preseason rankings. For a more complete description, check out our blog post from three years ago.

As always, we’ve refit the model during the offseason, in order to take into account another year of data.

It’s worth noting that most of the resulting model weights shifted by less than 5% from last season, meaning the model is fairly stable, and new data points aren’t significantly changing the results. Two types of info did have their weight change by more than 5%: returning defensive value now gets 15% more weight than in past seasons, and losing high draft picks is penalized 30% more than in the past (but that only translates into an extra quarter of a ratings point penalty).

In addition, we’ve updated the way he handle transfers. Previously, a given transfer player would give the same rating bonus whether he was headed to the #1 team, or the #351 team. With our update, transfers now give a weaker boost to the very best teams, since those transfer players are less likely to actually play when they join a team that’s already very good.

Ratings Accuracy

Before we get to the 2016 college basketball preseason rankings themselves, it’s worth noting that Ken Pomeroy has compared our conference win projections with other stat-based prognosticators in past years. In terms of average error, both  two years ago and three years ago we finished second best out of four (beating Pomeroy both years, but finishing a hair behind Dan Hanner), and four years ago we finished as the best of three.

In the most recent season, Sports Illustrated compared our preseason ratings against a similar group of stat-based projections, plus human rankings. Dan Hanner (for Sports Illustrated) came out on top again, and we were in the tier behind him with Ken Pomeroy, and ESPN. Human rankings were in last place by a fair amount. Of course, that scoring was graded against Pomeroy’s own final ratings, so the numbers may have been biased in his favor a bit.

To summarize all that, after taking a few years of data into account, we feel we currently have the second best preseason ratings, behind Dan Hanner’s player lineup based projections, but ahead of Ken Pomeroy, ESPN, and human rankings.

We say this not to brag, but to try to preemptively defend ourselves against the inevitable “Team X is WAY too high/low! You don’t know what you’re doing!” comments. While these are by no means perfect rankings, the projections they drive have held their own in comparisons with other top projection systems, and we expect them to do so again this season. We’re going to get plenty of individual teams wrong, but that’s inevitable when the challenge is to project 351 teams.

Preseason Top 25 Comparison

Let’s take a look at all the teams that made it into at least one preseason top 25 from among this group:

Our 2016-17 college basketball preseason ratings (TR)Ken Pomeroy’s preseason ratings (KP)Dan Hanner’s preseason rankings, posted at SI.com (DH)AP poll (AP)Coaches poll (Coaches)

The table below lists all such teams, and shows the preseason rank in each system, along with an average rank, and finally a column showing how far TR is from the consensus (positive numbers mean we project a team to rank better than the consensus, and negative is the reverse). For teams receiving no votes in the polls, we used a rank of 50 for the AP poll, and 60 for the Coaches poll. Teams are listed in ascending order by average rank.

2016-17 College Basketball Preseason Rankings Comparison
Team	TR	KP	DH	AP	Coaches	AVG	TR Diff
Duke	1	1	1	1	1	1.0	0.0
Kansas	2	3	2	3	2	2.4	0.4
Villanova	3	2	5	4	3	3.4	0.4
Kentucky	5	4	3	2	4	3.6	-1.4
Oregon	7	6	4	5	5	5.4	-1.6
N Carolina	4	5	6	6	6	5.4	1.4
Virginia	9	7	7	8	7	7.6	-1.4
Wisconsin	8	8	8	9	10	8.6	0.6
Xavier	6	11	12	7	8	8.8	2.8
Arizona	10	10	10	10	11	10.2	0.2
Louisville	11	9	13	13	14	12.0	1.0
Indiana	15	16	15	11	12	13.8	-1.2
Purdue	17	15	11	15	15	14.6	-2.4
Gonzaga	16	22	9	14	13	14.8	-1.2
Syracuse	12	12	14	19	17	14.8	2.8
Michigan St	13	14	28	12	9	15.2	2.2
W Virginia	14	20	19	20	18	18.2	4.2
UCLA	18	21	16	16	20	18.2	0.2
St Marys	20	18	22	17	19	19.2	-0.8
Connecticut	22	41	20	18	16	23.4	1.4
Creighton	31	32	21	22	23	25.8	-5.2
Cincinnati	23	28	27	26	25	25.8	2.8
Texas	26	45	25	21	22	27.8	1.8
Butler	21	19	29	33	38	28.0	7.0
Iowa State	29	26	39	24	27	29.0	0.0
California	19	52	17	29	28	29.0	10.0
Miami (FL)	40	24	33	31	29	31.4	-8.6
Michigan	25	31	23	42	44	33.0	8.0
Maryland	39	48	36	25	21	33.8	-5.2
Ohio State	33	13	48	35	40	33.8	0.8
Florida	24	40	31	35	41	34.2	10.2
Rhode Island	50	43	32	23	24	34.4	-15.6
NC State	32	35	18	32	(60)	35.4	3.4
Clemson	34	23	34	(50)	41	36.4	2.4
Baylor	27	25	24	(50)	(60)	37.2	10.2

A few points stick out:

Duke is the unanimous #1, which is not at surprising. More on Duke in the next section…For  the second year in a row, we rank Kentucky the lowest out of all the systems (though this time only by 1 spot). Just like last fall, we think Kentucky has a great recruiting class, but they’re not returning enough experience to be the #2 ranked team (as they are in the AP poll). To put numbers on it, we have the Wildcats bringing back only 20% of their offensive production, and 31% of their defensive production. For comparison, Duke and Kansas bring 50% to 65% of their production back.Compared to the crowd, we’re most pessimistic about Rhode Island, who we rank 7 to 27 spots lower than other projections. Rhode Island’s star guard E.C. Matthews got injured at the beginning of last season, and as a result Rhode Island’s raw data from last season paints a worse picture than is justified. However, we do try to account for injuries, and even with the return of Matthews, the Rams don’t seem to have the profile of a Top 25 team. We wouldn’t be surprised if the Rams end up somewhere between those two extremes.On the other hand, we’re more optimistic about California, Florida, and Baylor. We rank each of those teams 10 spots higher than the consensus. Cal is probably the most interesting of those projections. Jaylen Brown was hailed as a top recruit last season, but he was terribly inefficient offensively and our model doesn’t view his loss as a huge negative. On the other hand, Cal still has Ivan Rabb, and our model gives fairly strong credit for having a sophomore who was a highly ranked recruit. Plus, the Bears get a large transfer bonus from Grant Mullins, who was a great shooter and passer last season for Columbia.

How Good Is Duke?

Unlike 2015-16, when these five systems combined to pick three different teams at #1 in the preseason, this year Duke is the unanimous projected #1. The humans and the computers agree.

The last team hyped this much before the season had started was the 2014-15 Kentucky team. Those Wildcats were the clear title favorites, and ended up making the Final Four before losing to Wisconsin.

Why is Duke so highly rated? And what should we expect from Duke this season?

The answer to both questions lies in their fantastic recruiting class.

The RSCI recruiting rankings go back to the freshman class for the 1998-99 season. We’ve done analysis to translate recruiting rank to team value, and based on our model, Duke has the 5th-best freshman class in that 19-year span. And if the results of the previous top classes are a guide to the future, Duke should be very optimistic:

Top 10 Recruiting Classes Since 1998-1999
TR Recruit Score	Team	Result
4.8	2013-14 Kentucky	Runner Up
4.8	2011-12 Kentucky	Champ
4.0	2013-14 Kansas	L in Second Round (Joel Embiid injured)
4.0	2014-15 Duke	Champ
3.9	2016-17 Duke	?????
3.6	2006-07 Ohio State	Runner Up
3.5	2005-06 Duke	Sweet 16
3.5	2009-10 Kentucky	Elite 8
3.5	2012-13 UCLA	L in First Round (Jordan Adams injured)
3.4	1999-00 Florida	Runner Up

Ignoring the two cases where one of the key recruits got injured, that’s 5 title game appearances out of 7 seasons. This doesn’t mean that Duke is an odds-on favorite to reach the title game, but it does bode well for their season.

Full 2016 College Basketball Preseason Rankings & Ratings, From #1 To #351

Below is our full 2016 college basketball preseason rankings.

Keep in mind that sometimes teams can be separated by several ranking spots, but have nearly identical ratings. On the flip side of the coin, two teams can be ranked adjacent to each other, but can have a big ratings gap.

Let’s look at the top of the rankings this season for an example. #3 Villanova and #4 North Carolina are separated by 2.1 ratings points. That’s more than the difference between North Carolina and #11 Louisville (1.7 ratings points). And there’s an even bigger gap (2.4 ratings points) between #1 Duke and #2 Kansas.

That means we can group teams into a few tiers at the top, with about 2 ratings points separating each tier.

DukeKansas & VillanovaUNC, Kentucky, Xavier, Oregon, Wisconsin, Virginia, Arizona & Louisville

With a projected standard error for these ratings of about 4 points, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise at all to see Duke finish the season rated lower than Kansas or Villanova, or even a single team from the top of the third tier. But to see the Blue Devils fall all the way into the middle of third tier would be a bit of a shock.

[Update (11/11/2016, 3AM Eastern): We’ve made 2 last minute changes to team ratings based on injury and eligibility news. Arizona drops 3 spots from #10 to #13 based on Allonzo Trier’s potential absence, and Ray Smith’s ACL injury. Yale drops from #108 to #144 based on Makai Mason’s season-ending injury. We are not going to edit the table below, so that our original ratings are preserved for posterity. But our final preseason ratings and projections on the site will reflect these changes.]

Rank	Team	Rating
1	Duke	23.9
2	Kansas	21.5
3	Villanova	20.5
4	N Carolina	18.4
5	Kentucky	18.0
6	Xavier	17.5
7	Oregon	17.5
8	Wisconsin	17.2
9	Virginia	17.0
10	Arizona	16.7
11	Louisville	16.7
12	Syracuse	16.2
13	Michigan St	16.0
14	W Virginia	15.0
15	Indiana	14.7
16	Gonzaga	14.6
17	Purdue	14.3
18	UCLA	14.3
19	California	13.7
20	St Marys	13.5
21	Butler	13.5
22	Connecticut	13.4
23	Cincinnati	13.3
24	Florida	13.2
25	Michigan	13.0
26	Texas	12.8
27	Baylor	12.7
28	VCU	12.1
29	Iowa State	12.1
30	Texas A&M	12.0
31	Creighton	12.0
32	NC State	12.0
33	Ohio State	11.9
34	Clemson	11.9
35	Georgetown	11.8
36	Wichita St	11.8
37	Pittsburgh	11.7
38	Marquette	11.7
39	Maryland	11.6
40	Miami (FL)	11.4
41	San Diego St	11.4
42	Seton Hall	11.3
43	Dayton	11.3
44	S Methodist	11.2
45	Texas Tech	11.2
46	Princeton	11.0
47	Oklahoma	10.9
48	VA Tech	10.9
49	Florida St	10.9
50	Rhode Island	10.8
51	Vanderbilt	10.8
52	Kansas St	10.6
53	Iowa	10.2
54	Notre Dame	10.0
55	Nevada	8.5
56	Arkansas	8.4
57	Colorado	8.4
58	Georgia	8.1
59	BYU	8.0
60	Alabama	8.0
61	Stanford	7.9
62	Arizona St	7.9
63	TX-Arlington	7.8
64	USC	7.6
65	Valparaiso	7.6
66	Northwestern	7.6
67	Minnesota	7.6
68	Monmouth	7.4
69	Utah	7.1
70	Oklahoma St	6.9
71	Providence	6.9
72	S Carolina	6.7
73	Washington	6.6
74	Illinois	6.6
75	New Mexico	6.4
76	Miss State	6.4
77	Auburn	6.4
78	TX Christian	6.4
79	Mississippi	6.4
80	NC-Wilmgton	6.3
81	UAB	6.2
82	N Iowa	6.2
83	Geo Wshgtn	6.0
84	Wake Forest	6.0
85	Davidson	5.8
86	Oregon St	5.8
87	Wm & Mary	5.5
88	Ohio	5.5
89	Belmont	5.3
90	Houston	5.1
91	Richmond	4.9
92	Harvard	4.8
93	Akron	4.8
94	LSU	4.8
95	James Mad	4.5
96	Nebraska	4.5
97	Memphis	4.3
98	Siena	4.3
99	St Bonavent	4.2
100	Vermont	4.1
101	Toledo	3.9
102	Illinois St	3.8
103	Penn State	3.8
104	Tennessee	3.7
105	Col Charlestn	3.7
106	Temple	3.7
107	W Kentucky	3.6
108	Yale	3.6
109	Fla Gulf Cst	3.5
110	Central FL	3.5
111	GA Tech	3.5
112	WI-Grn Bay	3.4
113	Ste F Austin	3.4
114	North Dakota State	3.3
115	St Josephs	3.3
116	N Mex State	3.2
117	Middle Tenn	3.1
118	S Dakota St	3.1
119	Chattanooga	3.1
120	AR Lit Rock	3.1
121	Weber State	3.0
122	Lg Beach St	3.0
123	St Johns	2.9
124	Iona	2.8
125	Boise State	2.6
126	Oakland	2.6
127	Buffalo	2.6
128	Tulsa	2.5
129	UC Irvine	2.5
130	Ball State	2.5
131	Hofstra	2.4
132	E Michigan	2.3
133	Pepperdine	2.2
134	UNLV	2.2
135	Fresno St	2.2
136	Murray St	2.1
137	Old Dominion	2.1
138	Sam Hous St	1.5
139	GA Southern	1.4
140	Indiana St	1.3
141	Montana	1.3
142	Winthrop	1.3
143	Elon	1.3
144	La Salle	1.3
145	Lehigh	1.2
146	Evansville	1.1
147	N Illinois	1.0
148	CS Bakersfld	1.0
149	Towson	0.9
150	W Michigan	0.9
151	E Carolina	0.9
152	S Illinois	0.8
153	Georgia St	0.8
154	LA Tech	0.6
155	LA Lafayette	0.6
156	Marshall	0.5
157	Missouri	0.5
158	U Mass	0.4
159	IPFW	0.4
160	Fordham	0.2
161	Nebraska Omaha	0.2
162	UCSB	0.2
163	Pacific	0.2
164	Santa Clara	0.1
165	St Peters	0.0
166	Wash State	0.0
167	Utah State	-0.1
168	Albany	-0.3
169	Grand Canyon	-0.3
170	Colorado St	-0.3
171	Central Mich	-0.5
172	Wyoming	-0.5
173	Morehead St	-0.7
174	Bucknell	-0.8
175	Mercer	-0.8
176	Duquesne	-0.9
177	Hawaii	-0.9
178	Stony Brook	-0.9
179	Portland	-1.2
180	Geo Mason	-1.2
181	Columbia	-1.4
182	DePaul	-1.6
183	Idaho	-1.6
184	Northeastrn	-1.7
185	E Tenn St	-1.7
186	NC-Asheville	-1.8
187	Denver	-1.8
188	N Hampshire	-1.9
189	Air Force	-1.9
190	Loyola-Chi	-2.0
191	NC-Grnsboro	-2.0
192	Charlotte	-2.1
193	Missouri St	-2.2
194	Rutgers	-2.3
195	Drake	-2.3
196	Wagner	-2.4
197	Tulane	-2.4
198	Boston U	-2.5
199	Wofford	-2.5
200	IUPUI	-2.5
201	Rider	-2.5
202	Cleveland St	-2.6
203	Fairfield	-2.6
204	LA Monroe	-2.7
205	Saint Louis	-2.7
206	Boston Col	-2.8
207	TN State	-2.8
208	Detroit	-3.0
209	Bowling Grn	-3.0
210	Cal St Nrdge	-3.0
211	New Jersey Tech	-3.0
212	S Florida	-3.1
213	Loyola Mymt	-3.2
214	Kent State	-3.2
215	U Penn	-3.3
216	Wright State	-3.3
217	S Alabama	-3.3
218	TX A&M-CC	-3.4
219	Manhattan	-3.4
220	Oral Roberts	-3.5
221	Holy Cross	-3.5
222	Dartmouth	-3.6
223	TX El Paso	-3.6
224	N Florida	-3.8
225	Coastal Car	-3.8
226	Jacksonville	-3.9
227	North Dakota	-3.9
228	Furman	-3.9
229	Rice	-4.0
230	Fla Atlantic	-4.0
231	Lipscomb	-4.0
232	Canisius	-4.0
233	North Texas	-4.1
234	Cornell	-4.2
235	UMKC	-4.2
236	Cal Poly	-4.2
237	E Kentucky	-4.4
238	TX Southern	-4.6
239	High Point	-4.6
240	CS Fullerton	-4.6
241	E Washingtn	-4.7
242	Montana St	-4.7
243	Youngs St	-4.7
244	Bradley	-4.7
245	Troy	-4.8
246	UC Riverside	-4.9
247	WI-Milwkee	-4.9
248	Stetson	-4.9
249	Sac State	-5.0
250	S Mississippi	-5.0
251	W Illinois	-5.0
252	Florida Intl	-5.2
253	Colgate	-5.2
254	Brown	-5.5
255	Idaho State	-5.5
256	UC Davis	-5.7
257	Drexel	-5.7
258	Jackson St	-5.7
259	TN Tech	-5.8
260	San Diego	-5.8
261	Quinnipiac	-5.9
262	Samford	-6.0
263	Gard-Webb	-6.0
264	San Fransco	-6.0
265	Navy	-6.0
266	Texas State	-6.1
267	F Dickinson	-6.1
268	Marist	-6.1
269	Southern	-6.2
270	Norfolk St	-6.2
271	Arkansas St	-6.2
272	Seattle	-6.5
273	Radford	-6.5
274	San Jose St	-6.6
275	Northern Kentucky	-6.6
276	NC Central	-6.6
277	South Carolina Upstate	-6.7
278	Liberty	-6.8
279	South Dakota	-6.8
280	Delaware	-6.9
281	Austin Peay	-6.9
282	Mt St Marys	-7.0
283	Charl South	-7.1
284	E Illinois	-7.1
285	Miami (OH)	-7.2
286	Binghamton	-7.4
287	Niagara	-7.6
288	SIU Edward	-7.7
289	Portland St	-7.8
290	TN Martin	-7.8
291	NW State	-7.8
292	W Carolina	-7.9
293	New Orleans	-8.0
294	VA Military	-8.1
295	Rob Morris	-8.2
296	App State	-8.3
297	Massachusetts Lowell	-8.6
298	American	-8.7
299	Loyola-MD	-8.7
300	Howard	-8.7
301	Jksnville St	-8.8
302	Kennesaw St	-8.9
303	Bryant	-9.0
304	Maryland BC	-9.1
305	S Car State	-9.1
306	Houston Bap	-9.2
307	SE Louisiana	-9.2
308	IL-Chicago	-9.2
309	Incarnate Word	-9.3
310	Campbell	-9.3
311	Alabama St	-9.4
312	N Colorado	-9.4
313	LIU-Brooklyn	-9.4
314	Utah Val St	-9.5
315	Morgan St	-9.5
316	Army	-9.8
317	St Fran (NY)	-9.8
318	Lafayette	-9.9
319	Longwood	-10.1
320	Hampton	-10.3
321	SE Missouri	-10.4
322	Sacred Hrt	-10.8
323	Lamar	-11.0
324	McNeese St	-11.1
325	Hartford	-11.2
326	Nicholls St	-11.3
327	St Fran (PA)	-11.3
328	NC A&T	-11.7
329	Chicago St	-12.1
330	Beth-Cook	-12.2
331	Savannah St	-12.2
332	Maryland ES	-12.2
333	Abilene Christian	-12.2
334	Central Ark	-12.3
335	S Utah	-12.4
336	N Arizona	-12.4
337	Grambling St	-12.4
338	Coppin State	-12.5
339	Delaware St	-12.5
340	Prairie View	-12.5
341	Citadel	-13.3
342	Ark Pine Bl	-13.4
343	TX-Pan Am	-13.4
344	Miss Val St	-13.4
345	Maine	-13.9
346	Alab A&M	-14.0
347	Presbyterian	-14.1
348	Alcorn State	-14.3
349	TX-San Ant	-15.3
350	Central Conn	-16.1
351	Florida A&M	-16.9

As a final reminder, be sure to check out the season projections we create using these 2016 college basketball preseason rankings. There’s a ton to see:

College Basketball Projected Conference Standings. Projected conference records and full regular season records, plus win odds for both the conference regular season title and the postseason tournament.Bracketology Projections. Odds to make the NCAA tournament, plus projected seeding, and lots more details.NCAA Tournament Bracket Predictions. Round by round advancement odds, including probability of a team making the Sweet 16, making the Final Four, and winning the championship.

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