KenPom, one of the leading metric systems used to evaluate college basketball teams and one of the official metrics used by the selection committee when determining inclusion and seeding for the NCAA Tournament, unveiled its preseason ratings for the 2024-2025 men’s college basketball season this week.
Unlike other ranking systems, KenPom is a predictive metric which takes into account a team’s offensive and defensive efficiency, a projection of how many points each team will score and surrender per 100 possessions. These ratings are combined to produce a net rating which determines the overall KenPom ranking for each team. Of course, there is no data yet for the upcoming college basketball season, which is still a few weeks away, but KenPom still releases preseason ratings in an attempt to predict the metrics of each team.
In those preseason ratings, KenPom has Virginia ranked 78th overall with an adjusted offensive efficiency rating of 103.2 that ranks 110th nationally and an adjusted defensive efficiency rating of 92.6 that ranks 42nd. If those numbers were to hold as accurate predictors of the upcoming UVA season, it would be the lowest KenPom rating for Virginia since the 2010-2011 season, Tony Bennett’s second season in Charlottesville.
KenPom has Virginia predicted to rank 13th in the ACC out of 18 teams. Yikes.
2. Duke
14. North Carolina
24. Clemson
38. Pittsburgh
44. Wake Forest
52. NC State
55. Miami
64. Louisville
68. Syracuse
69. Notre Dame
70. Georgia Tech
74. SMU
78. Virginia
90. Florida State
92. Virginia Tech
99. Stanford
113. Boston College
135. California
If you take a brief look under the hood, it begins to make some sense why KenPom is so low on the Hoos. The end of UVA’s 2023-2024 season obviously did not shower the team in glory, whether you prefer these complex metrics or a simple eye test. From a numbers standpoint, KenPom ranked UVA 68th overall at the end of the year with a lowly ranking of 200 in adjusted offensive efficiency to go along with what KenPom considered the 7th best defense in the country. Qualitatively, Virginia barely snuck into the NCAA Tournament and got blown out by Colorado State in a play-in game, the last in a way-too-long list of blowout losses suffered by the Cavaliers last season.
With the team’s engine, Reece Beekman, departing for the NBA this offseason and no guaranteed Alpha on the roster to replace him, the metrics have no choice but to doubt the Cavaliers. Most of the transfers Virginia has on the roster did not have significant roles on their former teams and thus do not bring an impressive statistical resume with them to Charlottesville. Isaac McKneely is the only returning player from last year’s UVA team who averaged more than five points per game. Until games begin to be played to provide some evidential data points, it’s hard to argue against KenPom’s assessment, even though 13th in the Atlantic Coast Conference seems to maybe drastically underrate Tony Bennett’s track record in the ACC. We’re not sure how that fits into the KenPom puzzle, if at all.
The good news is that KenPom is essentially meaningless until close to the end of the season, when teams are putting the finishing touches on their NCAA Tournament resumes in the hope that they have impressed the committee enough to hear their name called on Selection Sunday. If Virginia gets off to a good start, these metrics should correct themselves rather quickly and the Hoos could very well find themselves in their normal good standing according to KenPom and the other rankings systems.
Here’s how UVA ended each of the last 11 seasons according to KenPom:
2023-2024: 68th overall, 200th offense, 7th defense
2022-2023: 34th overall, 72nd offense, 25th defense
2021-2022: 72nd overall, 85th offense, 59th defense
2020-2021: 19th overall, 17th offense, 36th defense
2019-2020: 42nd overall, 234th offense, 1st defense
2018-2019: 1st overall, 2nd offense, 5th defense
2017-2018: 2nd overall, 1st offense, 11th defense
2016-2017: 12th overall, 50th offense, 2nd defense
2015-2016: 4th overall, 8th offense, 7th defense
2014-2015: 6th overall, 21st offense, 2nd defense
2013-2014: 4th overall, 27th offense, 4th defense
KenPom isn’t alone in being low on the Cavaliers, and the doubts are warranted given how last season ended and given the uncertainty on this team’s roster. But followers of UVA basketball know better than to question Tony Bennett’s ability to get any Virginia team to compete a lot closer to the top of the ACC than 13th.
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