Using KenPom to Predict the 2023 NCAA Basketball Champion
The 2022-23 KenPom preseason rankings were released two days ago, kicking off another season for one of the top websites for college basketball predictive analytics. If you’ve seen any of my college basketball analysis, I use this site a fair amount. I took to kenpom.com to see what similarities I could find in past national champions. Can we use Ken Pomeroy’s metrics to predict the 2023 national champs?
KP has been around for 20 national champions. I looked for common threads between all of them. The two most prominent metrics Pomeroy displays are Adjusted Offensive Efficiency and Adjusted Defensive Efficiency. A combination of the two gives the Adjusted Efficiency Margin used to rank the teams week-to-week.
Narrowing Down the List of Potential National Champs
Of the 20 national champions tracked by KenPom, the lowest any finished in Offensive Efficiency was 39th (2014 UConn) and the lowest any finished in Defensive Efficiency was 22nd (2021 Baylor). Admittedly, a midseason COVID-19 pause probably affected the Bears in the metrics unfairly, but we’ll roll with them anyway.
In the current preseason rankings, there are 16 teams who have at least a top-39 offense and top-22 defense. These teams are: Kentucky, Baylor, Arizona, UCLA, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Auburn, Virginia, Kansas, Houston, Indiana, Arkansas, TCU, Creighton, and Oklahoma. A list of 16 teams doesn’t really get us anywhere, but it’s a start. Good thing we can go further than that.
16 to 11 to 7
18 of the 20 national champions in the sample (90%) finished in the top 20 for both Offensive and Defensive Efficiency. This year, 11 teams fit those parameters in the preseason rankings. The list is now: Kentucky, Baylor, Arizona, UCLA, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Auburn, Virginia, Kansas, and Houston. Let’s narrow it down a little bit more.
14 of the 20 national champions in the sample (70%) finished in the top 15 for both Offensive and Defensive Efficiency. Only seven teams match those criteria in this year’s preseason rankings. Those seven are: Kentucky, Baylor, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Auburn, and Virginia. Again, the rankings stand to change (potentially quite drastically) throughout the season, so it’s worth keeping up with KenPom to see who falls within the “KP championship contender” parameters over time. This is a nice small group to start with. It’s worth noting that last year’s champion Kansas was within this preseason threshold.
If researching preseason analytics before a single game has been played is any indication, I’m ready for college basketball to be back.
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