Alabama’s loss to Purdue on Friday calls for a new No. 1 this week, and my choice is Auburn.
The Tigers have been the most dominant team through two weeks and are one of only two with a top-five offense and a top-five defense in KenPom’s efficiency metrics. Houston is the other, and Auburn beat the Cougars last weekend.
During these early weeks, it’s difficult to decide whether to overreact to one result. I usually lean toward giving more credit to a team that wins on the road or at a neutral site — see Kentucky’s big jump this week after the Champions Classic — and trying not to penalize a team too much for losing on the road. Alabama and Arizona dropped, but not too far.
Reminder: Below my Top 25, I give nuggets on an unspecified number of teams each week. So if a team appears in the table but not the text below, that’s why.
No. 1 Auburn
Auburn’s opponents’ possessions are lasting an average of 20.1 seconds, which is third-slowest in Division I, per KenPom. This is not normal for Bruce Pearl’s defenses; in 2021-22, Auburn ranked 27th-fastest in defensive possession length. This could change as the sample size increases, especially in the run-and-gun SEC, but my theory is it’s really hard to get a quality shot against this defense. The Tigers press on makes, denying the inbounds pass, and once opponents get it in, they usually have to walk the ball up because it takes just about everyone in the backcourt to get the ball inbounds. Then once they in the frontcourt, watch how hard it is to run any kind of action against the Tigers:
They’re up the line one pass away. They blow up dribble handoffs. They can switch everything late in the shot clock, and when you set a ball screen with your big, they’re usually hedging and forcing the handler away from the basket. And their foot speed helps them keep the ball in front in one-on-one defense. This is an exhausting team to run offense against. The Tigers led the country in effective field-goal percentage defense last season, and it feels like they’re even better defensively this year.
No. 5 Alabama
Alabama’s offense was not great last Monday against McNeese. The Crimson Tide were rushing shots, and the right people were often not taking them. They were much better on Friday in an 87-78 loss at Purdue, putting more pressure on the rim and improving quality of their looks from 3. They just shot it poorly, going 9 of 29 from long range, with star Mark Sears having a rare 1-of-6 off night. That’s not going to happen very often.
Alabama will also be a better shooting team once South Florida transfer Chris Youngblood returns — Youngblood is out with an ankle injury until sometime in December. The guy Alabama needs to get on track is Jarin Stevenson, who is 0 of 13 from 3 through four games. Stevenson went scoreless against the Boilermakers, and all four of his misses were open catch-and-shoot looks. But what we learned from Alabama last season is that the results will eventually catch up to the process, and this team is deeper and more talented than last year’s group that made the Final Four. No reason to overreact too much to a loss at one of the most difficult road environments in college basketball.
Accompanying UConn’s massive jump in offensive efficiency two years ago was a jump in assist rate. The Huskies went from never finishing in the top 100 of assist rate in Dan Hurley’s first four seasons to finishing eighth in their first national title season and then fifth last year. Through three games this season, they’ve been even better:
| 22-23 | 23-24 | 24-25 | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
First 3 games |
56.8 |
59.6 |
69.7 |
|
End of season |
63.2 |
63.6 |
?? |
It’s hard to have too many takeaways about the defending champs from games against three overmatched opponents, but the fact these Huskies are sharing the ball is a good sign. Hurley is helping matters by running intricate sets that lead to assisted baskets.
This team has a ways to go to have the same kind of flow as the last two, but the possession below is what it looks like when it’s right. Keep an eye on Alex Karaban (No. 11), who sets three screens, making his defender think he’s not going to be part of the play, and then boom, he gets his own screen and is wide open:
This is what has made UConn’s offense so difficult to defend and scout the last couple years. There’s no chance you’re going to be able to prepare your teams for all of the actions Hurley will throw at you.
No. 9 Kentucky
New coach Mark Pope is getting a lot of love this week, and deservedly so. He built a team from scratch this spring and has the Wildcats already playing like a group that has been together for years. Let me heap one more round of praise on him: Pope made the analytically smart play on Tuesday against Duke by playing three of his starters with two fouls in the first half, running counter to how John Calipari has operated in the past. Cal ranked near the bottom of college hoops in the percentage of time his players spent on the floor with two fouls in the first half.
On Tuesday, Pope could have benched his guys, but when…
- Otega Oweh, UK’s second-leading scorer against Duke and the defensive star of the game, picked up his second foul with 9:37 left in the first half, he played another 5 minutes and 55 seconds the rest of the half.
- Andrew Carr, arguably UK’s best player in the win, picked up his second foul with 9:12 left, he played 6 minutes, 46 seconds the rest of the half.
- Lamont Butler, who seems to be this team’s leader, picked up his second foul with 8:23 left, he played 3 minutes, 1 second the rest of the half.
Carr finished the game with two fouls, Oweh with three and Butler with three. Every second of the game matters. Play your best players with two fouls! Bravo, Mr. Pope.
No. 10 Duke
Duke’s lack of ball movement against Kentucky wasn’t great. (I broke it down here.) The Blue Devils took a lot of 3s without probing the defense. Their approach on Saturday against Wofford was much better, with most of their 3s coming off penetration and paint touches. Against Kentucky, Duke went 3 of 21 from 3 on possessions without a paint touch and 1 of 3 on paint-touch 3s. Against Wofford, Duke was 9 of 12 on paint-touch 3s and 7 of 26 on non-paint-touch 3s, but a lot of those were still good shots, either in transition or after drawing two defenders to the ball.
It felt like Duke made a point to make the extra pass:
This is something to watch in Duke’s next few big games, which are coming up soon. Duke goes to Arizona on Friday and takes on Kansas in Vegas next Tuesday.
No. 11 Purdue
Never underestimate Matt Painter’s ability to identify back-to-the-basket scorers and develop them. The difference in Friday’s win over Alabama was the ability to simply get the ball to Trey Kaufman-Renn and let him go to work in the post. He scored 26 points, with 14 of those coming on post-ups. Grant Nelson is going to have nightmares of trying to guard Kaufman-Renn, who put on a clinic with moves like this one:
Painter is great at drawing up plays to generate post-ups. Kaufman-Renn cannot replicate Zach Edey’s production, but this is still very much a strength for the Boilermakers.
One other question for this year’s team was who would be the secondary ball handler with the graduation of Lance Jones. Freshman CJ Cox is emerging as that guy. Cox has 23 points in the last two games, and like Braden Smith, he’s a killer in the mid-range against drop coverage. Smith is also playing at an All-America level.
Purdue had been solid but not spectacular until the Alabama game, but how the offense operated in that win was certainly an eye-opener.
Texas Tech is the team the computers and humans are farthest apart on. Texas Tech ranks No. 9 at KenPom, No. 10 at Evan Miya and No. 12 at Bart Torvik. The Red Raiders have yet to appear in the AP Top 25, despite my best efforts. I was one of 18 voters to rank Texas Tech last week and slotted them the highest, at No. 11.
In defense of the other voters, the Red Raiders have played a weak schedule thus far, but they’re crushing those teams. At KenPom, the predicted winning margins for the three games has been 77; the actual margin has been 101. Texas Tech was missing its two top point guards (Elijah Hawkins and Christian Anderson) in the first two games. Both came off the bench last week against Wyoming in a 96-49 win, which KenPom predicted would be a 21-point win.
It’s possible that Texas Tech is this year’s Iowa State, a team beating up on lesser competition early, which could be a sign it’s about to be way better in the Big 12 than expected and the computers are the first to catch on. (Cincinnati is another candidate.) The one difference was that Iowa State had a dominant defense, while Texas Tech is elite offensively. The Red Raiders lead the country in effective field goal percentage (66.3) and are shooting 47.8 percent from deep.
No. 14 Marquette
Marquette’s non-Kam Jones shooting, which I touched on last week, is still a concern — the Golden Eagles went 13 of 49 (26.5 percent) last week in two wins — but Jones is so awesome and Marquette’s defense is good enough that there’s no reason to panic just yet. Jones put on a show on Friday in a 78-74 win at Maryland, which is a vastly improved team also worth keeping an eye on. His footwork and ability to make hard below-the-rim shots is unparalleled. Just watch his brilliance:
Jones is shooting 71.4 percent from 2 and 54.5 percent from 3, with the ball in his hands a ton, against defenses built to stop him. His conditioning is almost as impressive as the moves he’s making.
Watch Marquette! Jones alone makes it worth tuning in.
No. 17 Indiana
Indiana senior Trey Galloway is on a minutes restriction after offseason knee surgery, and Indiana will benefit once that’s over. Through three games, IU’s best five lineups all have Galloway on the floor, per CBB Analytics, and the Hoosiers who benefit the most are IU’s frontcourt. Galloway has 19 assists in 57 minutes — the best assist rate among high-major players — and 15 of those 19 have gone to Malik Reneau, Oumar Ballo and Mackenzie Mgbako. He’s an awesome post feeder, and he’s really good making reads in the pick-and-roll. My old teammate Seth Davis always puts out an all-glue guy team, and my bet is Galloway will be the captain this season.
No. 21 Texas A&M
Texas A&M’s offense has benefitted from the addition of SMU transfer Zhuric Phelps, who missed the season-opening loss at UCF. Phelps is leading the team in scoring, and the Aggies rank 10th in adjusted offensive efficiency since his return, per Bart Torvik. Phelps has made it so that Wade Taylor IV doesn’t have to carry the offense. Taylor, whose efficiency numbers were down last year, went 4 of 15 in the opener against UCF. In three games with Phelps, he’s shooting less and has a 67.4 effective field goal percentage. The Aggies have struggled early on in recent season, and the UCF loss felt like a sign that was happening again, but it probably wasn’t worth judging this team until Phelps was in the lineup.
No. 22 Wisconsin
What Wisconsin did to Arizona on Friday night had to be breaking some kind of law in the state of Wisconsin. The Badgers are supposed to grind you out in a low-possession game. That is the way. What has gotten into Greg Gard?!
Some more oddities about their 103-88 win…
- This tied for Wisconsin’s highest-possession game (at 82 possessions) in KenPom’s database, dating back to 1996-97. It was the highest against a high-major opponent.
- IT was the first time Wisconsin broke 100 against a high-major since 1993 and the first time it did so against a ranked opponent since 1970.
- The Badgers’41 free-throw makes tied a program record, set Jan. 1, 1955.
- Wing John Tonje, who played only eight games at Missouri last season because of a foot injury, scored a career-high 41 points. He scored a total of 21 points in those eight games in 2023-24.
Was this a statistical outlier, or a sign of things to come? This offense has been awesome, despite losing leading scorer AJ Storr to Kansas, starting point guard Chucky Hepburn to Louisville and third-leading scorer Tyler Wahl to graduation. The Badgers are shooting an NCAA-best 90 percent on free throws, and Tonje has always had a gift for getting fouled. He looks like a star, and because of his ability to get to the line, he’s likely a much more efficient one than Storr was.
I held off on going overboard with Wisconsin’s ranking, holding onto the possibility that this was a bit of an outlier, especially because of the free throws and the fact it was Arizona’s first road game, but it’s certainly possible this is an out-of-nowhere special team. Gard has adopted a continuity ball screen offense the last two seasons and began to play a bit faster last year. And as Jesse Temple wrote this week, Wisconsin has evolved in its approach to development. If this is real, Gard is a super-early candidate for Coach of the Year.
No. 23 Creighton
Ryan Kalkbrenner’s shooting numbers through four games are absurd. He has made 38 of 42 2s, 3 of 4 3s and 18 of 20 free throws. Out of his five misses, he’s gotten two of them back himself and scored. On his one 3-point miss, Creighton also got a putback. So on the 46 shots Kalkbrenner has attempted, Creighton has only come away without points twice. Twice! Kalkbrenner could break some field-goal percentage records this year because he doesn’t stray far from the basket, as you can see in this heat map via CBB Analytics:
Dropped out: Arkansas, Wake Forest
Keep an eye on: Xavier, BYU, Mississippi State, Pittsburgh, VCU, Oregon, Penn State, Maryland, Mississippi, San Francisco, Nevada
(Top photo: John Fisher / Getty Images)
