New Year, New Power Rankings

Power Rankings As Of New Years Day

Jan 01, 2024

Team rankings are calculated using the predictive model I use to make my daily predictions (click here for the model description). For power rankings, I use that model to predict the results of each team playing every other team twice (home and away). From there, the team’s predicted winning percentage becomes their power rating. Team sheets (available here) are a good starting point to understand why a team is ranked where they are, but also check out the model’s prediction errors for each team here.

I’ll highlight and discuss my Top 25 first and then go through the full rankings by conference.

Top 25

Highlights

Houston and Iowa State retain the #1 and #2 spots respectively, helped by strong performance metrics.
#3 Alabama doesn’t have the largest jump, but it does have the most impressive one.
- Largest beneficiary of Arizona’s drop (loss to Stanford).
- Huge win over a really good Liberty squad.
#21 Texas A&M and #25 Memphis make their rankings debut.
- Neither was particularly impressive this week, but both deserve a Top 25 ranking.
- The drops by Gonzaga and Saint John’s really helped them out.
The Big 12 conference snags 3 of the Top 5 spots and 8 of the Top 25.

Biggest Surprise

#23 Kentucky’s drop.
- Despite a solid win over Illinois State, Kentucky’s offensive rebounding margin was -17.
- That kept their performance metrics stagnant overall while many of the teams ahead of them improved.
- This is an area of concern for Kentucky.
  - Getting outrebounded offensively has allowed their opponents to stay in games more than they should.

By Conference

Each of the columns to the right of the team are based off of the model’s projected results against every NCAA D1 team. They are not a summary of a team’s current performance.