On peaking

Welcome to a first edition of The Field of 68 Premium. For the next eight weeks, we'll offer additional weekend content, NCAA Tournament previews and analysis, and an end-of-season wrap. It's a bargain for all your March needs, at just $9.99. Click the button for more info.

Saturdays will spotlight Will Warren, who writes a marvelous college hoops newsletter, Stats By Will. (Sign up for it here.)

All Field of 68 Daily subscribers are receiving this as a free edition. We think you'll like what you see. So grab another cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy the Field of 68 Premium ahead of another terrific college hoops Saturday. - Mike Miller

As we inch our way towards March, you might hear a common refrain from commentators and basketball media: A certain team is peaking at the right time. Or a team is slumping. Everyone wants to be playing their very best basketball as March arrives.

While each case is unique because each team is unique, it’s created some fascinating situations in nearly every NCAA Tournament when it comes to "peaking." Seven of the last nine national champions lost in their conference tournament. In 2017, South Carolina went 3-7 before ripping off four wins in a row en route to the Final Four, while Villanova — a 1 seed who ripped off a 12-1 run with five top 50 wins — lost in the Round of 32.

We’ll hear a lot about the teams you don’t want to play in March, which ends up being half the field. The much more fascinating teams are the ones that started white-hot before the calendar turned to a new year. Teams like 2010 Texas (started 17-0, finished 24-10) or 2018 Auburn (started 21-2, ended 26-8). So on and so forth. Most years, there’s at least one team that plays like a top-10 or better team in November and December before sliding in January and February.

There are two ideal examples this season of the fading and the rising teams, both in the same conference: Connecticut and Creighton. UConn began this season in the Also Receiving Votes category, but sprinted to a 14-0 start and No. 2 in the AP Poll. They were, at one point, considered the odds-on title favorite. Since then, they’ve lost six of 11 and came in at No. 21 in the most recent poll.

Meanwhile, Creighton has had the complete opposite experience. The Bluejays began this year with what might’ve been the most hyped team in school history, becoming the first Creighton team to ever be a preseason top 10 unit. That all floundered by Christmas. A 6-0 start quickly turned into six straight losses and a 6-6 record. Even on the morning of January 14, Creighton woke up 9-8, 3-3 in Big East play. They’ve since posted seven straight wins and look like a terrifying team to draw in March.

I bring this up because, if you split the season on Bart Torvik’s site into two halves — November 7 through December 24, December 25 to present — you see two ships passing in the night.

• November 7 through December 24 Torvik ranking: UConn 2nd, Creighton 42nd

• December 25 through February 10 Torvik ranking: UConn 23rd, Creighton 4th

While Creighton was missing Ryan Kalkbrenner in three of their losses, that alone doesn’t explain how they’ve played like a title favorite in the new year. UConn, generally injury-free, has turned into a team playing like a 6 seed. Undoubtedly, more people would pick Creighton to go deep in March than they would UConn at this time. You wouldn’t blame them.

But: Torvik’s database dates back to the 2007-08 season, and we’re able to do similar date sorting in each season. (Excluding 2019-20 and 2020-21 for COVID-impacted reasons.) Is there really anything to finishing the season hot, as Creighton is on track to do? Can teams like UConn flip the switch back on come March? In the past, which one has been more predictive of future success? If only there were a game coming up soon between these two teams so we could make this as timely as possible.

Oh. Well then.

The hope (and fear) for UConn

At the time of writing, UConn’s listed as the final 4 seed on the Bracket Matrix. The predictive sites are more optimistic — Torvik still gives UConn a near-30% chance of a 1 seed — they might be over-rating that chance. For a team to go from playing like a legitimate top-end title contender to an also-ran is mildly surprising, but there’s been precedent. To find the best comparisons for UConn over the last 15 years, I looked for teams that:

• Ranked in the top-5 on Torvik in November/December of a given year

• Ranked 13th or worse on Torvik in January/February of that same year

• Ended up between a 2-6 seed

Considering that UConn would have to bomb out in remarkable fashion to go below a 6, I thought that to be an appropriate cutoff. While going from 4th to 13th, for example, might not seem like a huge drop, it’s still going from playing like a 1-seed to a 4-seed, i.e. going from expecting a Final Four to merely hoping to see the second weekend. It comes with a significant dropoff in expectations, as well as that negative split of playing significantly worse in the second half of the season. (Also, I’m leaving room here in the event that UConn goes on a mini-run to get back inside the top-20 or top-15.)

With our restrictions in place, there are nine historical comparisons for UConn over the last decade-and-a-half. The “expected wins by seed” column is the average number of wins a team at that seed line has brought home from 2000 to present, per Bart Torvik.

Nine teams is far from a representative sample, but as I discovered, the vast majority of November/December top five teams play like top teams the rest of the way.

Only 14 teams among the 65-team sample (21.5%) ended up 13th or worse, with the nine teams above matching our 2-6 seed restriction. Still, if you’re a UConn fan, I think you can be encouraged for a few reasons.

1. Of the six teams that were 4 seeds or better, five made the Sweet Sixteen. I suppose that when you enter the New Year playing like a title contender that’s a mild disappointment. And yet: UConn has made one Sweet Sixteen (the 2014 title run) of any kind post-2011. Dan Hurley has yet to win a tournament game at the school. A Sweet 16 would be an achievement worth celebrating.

2. Six of the nine teams in the sample achieved to or above seed expectations. The ultimate hope here is obviously 2010-11 Kentucky, who played like a top-4 team before slacking off in SEC play and being underseeded (KenPom-wise) as a 4. They needed some good shooting luck to make the Final Four, but so does literally everyone.

3. The turnaround has probably already began. UConn has won three in a row, including a beatdown of Marquette that significantly raised their ranking while writing this post. Finish on a 5-1 run and suddenly everyone feels better about your prospects.

Of course, there’s some downside. UConn had legitimate reason to think they could raise the national championship trophy this year. Only one of these nine teams came anywhere close to doing so: 2010-11 Kentucky, which coincidentally lost to UConn in the Final Four. We’ll see if these Huskies can break the spell and go deeper than the Sweet 16, which looks like a fair expectation for now.

The hope (and fear) for Creighton

If you’re a Creighton fan waking up this morning, this is probably the best you’ve felt at any point this season. The Bluejays are on a tear, playing like a legitimate top 10 team, if you believe the metrics. If they finish 5-2 or even 6-1, as metrics sites expect, Creighton’s going to have a very real chance to go from preseason top 10 team to NIT lock to 5 seed and rising. If nothing else, they’ve made it thrilling to watch.

Similar to UConn, we had to add some restrictions to find best comparisons for Creighton.

These were a little bit tougher, but we narrowed it down to a group of teams that:

• Ranked 25th or worse on Torvik in November/December of their given year

• Ranked 10th or better on Torvik in January/February

• Ended up between a 4-9 seed

There’s an argument to extend Creighton’s seeding floor lower, but given that the Bracket Matrix has them as a 7 seed rapidly rising to a 6, the range of 4-9 felt most appropriate. Again, going from 27th to 9th may not feel like that big of a jump, but it’s like going from playing like a 7/8 seed to a serious Elite Eight threat.

Again, with our restrictions in place, there are 10 historical comparisons for Creighton over the last decade-and-a-half. The results are ... surprising.

These 10 teams were, on average, the 7th-best team in the key two months of every season in their given year. The nine UConn comparisons, in contrast, were about 18th-best. Yet the teams who faded hard entering March overachieved their seed expectation six out of nine teams.

Here, Creighton’s contemporaries are just 4-for-10, with only two of the entrants making it to the second weekend. (Compare that to five of UConn’s nine going that far.)

The 10 teams involved here ended up with an average seed of 5.3, but even the six higher seeds, those at the 4 and 5 lines, only won an average of 1.3 NCAA Tournament games each, with 2021-22 Arkansas being responsible for the lion’s share. Again, while this is a small sample — a reminder that the majority of top-10 teams just end up playing like approximately top 10-15 teams in both halves of the season — it’s a jarring reminder that perhaps what we thought to be true might not be.

Still: if you’re a Creighton fan, I suggest simply not listening to me. Prior to 2022, no team on this list had cracked the Elite Eight. Then Arkansas came along and elevated the ceiling. Prior to 2023, no team on this list has cracked the Final Four. In this year, the weirdest of years I have personally experienced, who’s to say Creighton can’t break through in their own way? Fly high, Bluejay faithful.

What this means for (gestures vaguely at everyone else)

In short, you’re neither as bad as your worst games nor as good as your best, especially this year. Along with that, the season simply isn’t a linear thing. Here’s the top 15 teams from November 7 to December 24:

And here’s the top 15 teams from Christmas Day onward.

Just five of the top ten teams in the first half of the year have played like top 10 teams in the back half. Eight of the top 15 teams in the last six weeks weren’t top 15 teams before. Teams like Arkansas (10th to 39th) and Ohio State (11th to 76th) have taken stunning tumbles down the ladder of college hoops relevancy, while groups like Creighton or Iowa State (58th to 8th) have taken massive leaps.

If anything, though, this year serves as a reminder of the core truth: we know nothing. The next truth, of course, is that no one and everyone is on the list of teams you don’t want to draw in March this season.

(Psst: Don't forget to subscribe to Stats By Will)

Thanks for reading a free post from The Field of 68 Premium! If you liked this, click here to be a subscriber for the next eight weeks as we prepare you for the NCAA Tournament with statistical insights, game analysis and much more.