Indiana fans will be disappointed to learn how the 2024-25 season has been forecasted by popular college basketball analytics site Kenpom.com.
The site flipped its rankings to the 2024-25 season on Sunday evening, and the Hoosiers are slotted at No. 39 nationally and just tenth in the Big Ten.
Purdue is the top team in the Big Ten and tenth overall, followed by Illinois and UCLA. Houston is the overall No. 1 team.
In a Substack post last year describing the preseason rankings, Pomeroy described the key components:
“As far as the guts of my system, I include the last five seasons of team data and two seasons of conference data (using the current season’s membership), plus returning production, transfers, and notable freshmen, along with coaching changes,” Pomeroy wrote. “Independent forecasts are made for offense and defense.”
Obviously the last five seasons of data do not paint a pretty picture for Indiana. They finished 91st at the end of the 2023-24 season, and 30th, 48th, 50th and 34th the four seasons before that.
The model says IU will have the 49th best offense this season and the 34th best defense, and it suggests the Hoosiers will finish 18-11 overall and 10-10 in the Big Ten. It only projects 29 games because there are two unknown opponents at the Battle 4 Atlantis in November.
KenPom says they factor these preseason ratings into a team’s current rating until well into January, when they are fully phased out. As the season progresses, the preseason ratings have less of an influence as a team plays more games.
Bart Torvik, another well known analytics site, predicts Indiana will be the 30th best team overall and finish sixth in the Big Ten.
The preseason AP top-25 will be released on Monday. We expect the media will predict a rosier outlook for Indiana. We saw a similar scenario play out for IU football before the season.
ESPN’s primary college football computer rankings, FPI and SP+, had IU ranked No. 77 and 81 in the preseason, respectively. The 6-0 Hoosiers are now No. 15 in both models.
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