Big East Nonconference Roundup

With Big East play upon us, time to take a quick look at where the conference stacks up compared to preseason expectations, as well as looking forward to what we can expect.

Massey Composite Ranks

I’m a huge proponent of using preseason ranks as a gauge to measure season results. And the fairest way I’ve found is using Massey’s Composite ranks, which collect 20+ human and algorithmic models to give you an overall look at how teams measure up.

Collecting these weekly also gives us a great visual to see the rise and fall. Like take DePaul, they were widely expected to be the worst team in the conference, and that is true, but the level of failure is almost twice of what was expected. So much so that they fell off this chart. They are currently ranked 224th, 88 spots below their already low baseline. It’s not worth jumbling up the entire conference just to be able to see them. And same will go for Georgetown soon as well.

This also gives us a good way to group teams into tiers, with the top being a jumble of Marquette/UConn with Creighton lurking closely behind. From there it’s a bit of a jumble in the middle, then Seton Hall and then the bottom drops out.

TRank Efficiency Tiers

I still love my OG TRank charts. This one measures the adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency (taking pace out of the equation) and adds in the lines based on national trends. You can see that UConn is a Tier 1 by a healthy margin, with Marquette just straddling the cutoffs.

And for reference, DePaul is the first Big East Tier 6 team I’ve ever seen on this chart. It’s kind of incredible.

Big East Title Odds

This is ripped directly from TRank once more, so please be sure to visit the link and see it for yourself.

You can see here that UConn goes into conference play as a heavy favorite, much as they were last season. We all saw how that played out.

KenPom AdjEM Change

This is another way to see how teams are performing compared to their preseason baseline, but only using KenPom’s data. Butler’s rise leads the way, but UConn’s leap off an already high predicted EM is notable.

On the other hand, 7 Big East teams have either underperformed or hit KenPom’s prediction dead on, which means as a whole the conference had an underwhelming noncon.

Conclusion

Overall, the Big East is on track for 5 bids, using TRank’s projections, with a decent chance for either 4 or 6 bids.

Let the games begin.