Single Post

This is the first time since the first week of the season that I’ll be voting for someone other than Auburn at No. 1 on my AP Top 25 ballot.

After two straight losses for the Tigers — 83-72 at Texas A&M on Tuesday and 93-91 at home against Alabama on Saturday — it finally became a debate, but let me emphasize that it is still a debate. Auburn is still No. 1 in all resume-based rankings. Duke, on the other hand, is anywhere from third to sixth in those rankings but sits No. 1 in every quality-based metric, and the gap is growing.

If the season were to end today, the Blue Devils would have the second-best adjusted efficiency margin in the history of Ken Pomeroy’s ratings, trailing only 1999 Duke. So that’s my justification for voting Duke No. 1 this week. Sure, that performance has come with help from a weak ACC, but Duke did play a team I’m now ranking again recently on a neutral floor (Illinois) and won that game by 45.

Thanks to everyone who followed along with these rankings this season. Hope you’ve been entertained and learned something along the way.

Reminder: Below my Top 25, I give nuggets on an unspecified number of teams each week. So when a team appears in the table but not in the text below, that’s why. Scroll on for notes on Duke, Auburn, Florida, Michigan State, Alabama, St. John’s, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Clemson, BYU and Illinois.

1. Duke

Among the things that make Cooper Flagg so special: He almost always makes the right play, always plays with max effort and is so unselfish and tries so hard that his teammates follow his example. How can you make selfish or lazy plays if your best player rarely does either?

Flagg took over Saturday’s 82-69 win at North Carolina during a 22-5 run that turned a six-point deficit into an 11-point Duke lead. The run started with an inverted pick-and-roll, with Duke point guard Sion James setting a ball screen for Flagg:

Ah, the beauty of a 6-9 playmaker and a 6-6 point guard who can set smashing screens and roll and finish like a big. That started a 12-0 run in which Flagg also had these stretches:

• Rebounds, pushes, makes the right pass for a James layup and dunks the miss.
• Rebounds, pushes, goes around the back to scoot past UNC point guard Elliot Cadeau in the open court and gets fouled.
• Pushes in transition, hockey assist for a Maliq Brown dunk.

If there’s a separator between Flagg and Johni Broome in the National Player of the Year race, it’s Flagg’s defensive acumen. Near the tail end of the game-sealing run, Flagg made two defensive plays — both with his left hand — that show what he’s all about. The first was this block when Duke’s scramble gave Cadeau two open options, either Jae’Lyn Withers for a corner 3 or Ven-Allen Lubin for a layup:

Flagg put himself in position to stop either option. Also, the Blue Devils were out of position for good reason. Caleb Foster saw that RJ Davis was isolated on Khaman Maluach on the switch, and because he knew he was guarding a non-shooter in Cadeau, he was in the gap to try to force Davis to give the ball up. The Blue Devils are always looking to cover for one another. That’s winning basketball.

The second play was on the Cadeau missed layup below. Lubin was in perfect position to grab the offensive rebound, but watch what Flagg does:

Again, with the left hand, making it so one of his teammates has a chance at the rebound, which led to a James runout. That detail doesn’t go in a box score, but it wins games.

2. Auburn

If there’s a crack in the foundation for Auburn, it’s giving up too many shots at the rim and offensive rebounds. Texas A&M pulled off the upset earlier in the week by grabbing 20 offensive boards. Alabama wasn’t quite as successful on Saturday — just 10 offensive rebounds — but it did score 52 points in the paint.

Auburn ranks 222nd in defensive rebounding rate and allows 24.7 shots per game at the rim, which ranks 297th nationally, per Synergy. Opponents are targeting Johni Broome because he has a tendency to open his hips and try to size up the driver to block his shot rather than stopping the ball:

Broome blocks a lot of shots — he had five against the Tide — and this strategy keeps him out of foul trouble, but it makes Auburn vulnerable on the glass. So if you’re looking for a team in the bracket that can knock off the Tigers, a squad with a high offensive rebounding rate and guards who can attack the paint out of ball screens is the best bet.

4. Florida

The Gators are emerging as the third team mentioned among the national title favorites, and one thing they do better than anyone else is transition offense. Florida ranks seventh in transition points per game (19.5) and is the only team in the top 50 that scores at least 1.2 points per possession on those opportunities, per Synergy (1.202).

The Gators have bigs who always sprint down the floor and guards with the green light to shoot transition 3s. They turn defense into offense quickly, and point guard Walter Clayton’s vision and awesome handle creates opportunities even when it looks like the defense is set.

An example from Saturday’s 90-71 win over Ole Miss:

Clayton had eight assists Saturday, and three of them were in transition. The Gators don’t have to play fast to win, either. This offense is humming in the half court, too, especially with the way 6-11 Alex Condon (44 points and 25 rebounds in two games last week) is playing.

5. Michigan State

Michigan State won the Big Ten with a 17-3 conference record, the 11th time Tom Izzo has lost four or fewer games in league play. In the previous 10 years that’s happened, here’s how far the Spartans went in the postseason: Sweet 16, Final Four, national champs, Final Four, Final Four, Round of 64, lost in the title game, Final Four, Round of 32, Final Four.

So that’s a 70 percent hit rate of making it to at least the Final Four. Sparty fans have to love those odds.

6. Alabama

Mark Sears’ buzzer beater at Auburn gave the Crimson Tide a significant mental victory after blowing a four-point lead in the final minute the previous Saturday at Tennessee. Alabama coach Nate Oats called a timeout to set up the play, but he wasn’t in love with the call. “Play design wasn’t all that great,” Oats said after the game. “The thing that was great about it was it put the ball in a pretty good player’s hands”

Not only a good player, but a smart one. Credit Sears for quickly processing what the defense was doing. That’s what great players do in clutch moments.

Auburn’s Denver Jones came out of his stance for a split second when Miles Kelly ran in front of him, which allowed Sears to get to his left hand so easily. The spacing was also right for Sears to get where he wanted.

8. St. John’s

Zuby Ejiofor’s buzzer beater on Saturday was the fourth time this season the Johnnies have made a bucket in the final 10 seconds that was either to tie the game or take the lead. That’s tied for the most in Division I, per CBB Analytics. After losing its first three games this season that required a shot in that situation, St. John’s has won six of its last seven.

St. John’s has had some defensive slippage these last few weeks — five of the last seven opponents have gotten better than a point per possession, after Rick Pitino’s team had a stretch of holding 10 of 11 opponents under that mark — but one reason to bet on St. John’s this month is its comfort level in high-stress situations.

9. Texas Tech

JT Toppin is making a case for the inclusion of three big men on the All-America first team alongside Flagg and Broome. Over his last nine games, Toppin is averaging 24.4 points and 11 rebounds per game. After two games with at least 25 points in the last week, he has now gone for 25-plus six times this season.

Flagg has also topped 25 six times, and Broome has only done it four times. Toppin is a big reason why Texas Tech has the best offense in program history.

13. Texas A&M

Texas A&M upset Auburn last week by taking 15 more shots and 10 more free throws. This season the Aggies are in a class of their own when it comes to the combination of getting more shots and free throws:

CBB Analytics has these graphs going back to 2018-19. The only other team to be at such extremes in that top right corner is 2023-24 Texas A&M. Buzz Williams has sort of followed the Houston formula, but the ability to also dominate the free throw battle differentiates the Aggies.

14. Clemson

The Tigers should be celebrated for going 18-2 in the ACC, especially because they were the only team to beat Duke in league play. But to give some perspective on how bad this ACC was, Clemson is currently ranked No. 19 at KenPom, right where it finished last year. The 2023-24 Tigers went 11-9 in the ACC, and the league wasn’t great then, either.

The ACC has seven teams outside the top 100 at KenPom. The other four power conferences have a total of three.

15. BYU

Since the Cougars’ eight-game winning streak began on Feb. 11, they are the second-best team in college basketball behind Duke, according to Bart Torvik’s sorting tool. BYU’s spurtability has helped make this streak possible: The Cougars are tied with Duke for the most scoring runs of 8-0 or more — 64, per CBB Analytics. During the last eight games, they’ve had 16 of those runs and at least one in every game.

23. Illinois

Illinois has gotten back to turning the game into a math problem. The Illini are third-best team in the country at limiting 3-point attempts, and they love to lean on the 3 on offense. Since a late February annihilation in Madison Square Garden at the hands of Duke in which they went 2 for 26 from 3, the Illini have won three straight, outscoring those opponents 102-45 from beyond the arc.

With Morez Johnson out, head coach Brad Underwood hasn’t worried about playing a true big whenever Tomislav Ivisic is off the floor, and that strategy paid off down the stretch in Saturday’s 88-80 win against Purdue. During the two biggest possessions of the game, the Illini took advantage of Purdue playing a more traditional lineup by putting Purdue center Caleb Furst in a ball screen. The first one created a switch, and because Braden Smith was worried Furst would get beat off the dribble, he didn’t get out to Ben Humrichous and got burned:

The next half-court possession, the Illini got the switch again. This time Purdue left Furst on an island against one of the best off-the-dribble shooters in the country, Kasparas Jakucionis. Same result.

When Ivisic is in, he’s back to dropping dimes — 13 assists in last three games. This team has its swagger back.

Dropped out: Marquette.

(Photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)