On Sunday, college basketball advanced analytics guru Ken Pomeroy released his preseason rankings on KenPom.com. According to Pomeroy, South Carolina basketball is a good team right along the NCAA Tournament line. The Gamecocks slotted in at No. 65 in the official Pomeroy preseason rankings.
Carolina’s 105.2 offensive rating is 84th nationally, and the team’s 92.9 mark on defense is 47th. One of 15 SEC teams inside KenPom’s 67 highest-graded teams this preseason USC owns a +12.29 net rating. The Gamecocks’ overall rating is 14th in the league, ahead of only Georgia and Vanderbilt. On offense, Lamont Paris’ team is last in the conference. On defense, South Carolina ranks 10th. Both of those numbers are negatively affected by the Gamecocks’ low mark (353rd) in adjusted tempo.
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Analytics are never going to be very high on a Lamont Paris basketball team. The team’s slower pace and emphasis on limiting mistakes help them win games but don’t help them with the computers. Clearly, winning is more important than impressing the algorithms.
Even so, KenPom’s analytics like the Gamecocks enough to include them in the large cluster of Southeastern Conference programs near the NCAA Tournament bubble. The league has seven teams positioned between No. 40 and No. 67 in the rankings. Oklahoma (40), Kentucky (42), Ole Miss (47), LSU (51), Missouri (53), South Carolina (65), and Georgia (67) can’t all make the Big Dance in March, but several of them will. Only Vanderbilt is out of Tourney consideration according to KenPom, but the Commodores have been included in several other preseason March Madness projections, nonetheless.
As things stand today, all 16 teams in the SEC are good enough for postseason play. Despite the difficult road ahead, if South Carolina is to make it back to the NCAA Tournament again, they will need to prove the analytics wrong just like they did last season.
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The Gamecocks finished the 2023-2024 campaign ranked 54th by KenPom. The team’s 26-8 record and 13-5 mark in conference play (good enough to tie for second in the SEC) show that a team can be much better than the analytics believe.
Eight SEC teams made the NCAA Tournament last season, and most college basketball talking heads believe the league will get eight or more bids again this year. If South Carolina can finish in the top half of the SEC, the Gamecocks should be dancing again in March.
The first step on USC’s journey is three weeks away. On November 4th, South Carolina will host the North Florida Ospreys at Colonial Life Arena in the season opener.
