Visual KenPom Rankings by Conference

This week I had the idea to show final KenPom rankings of A10 teams over the past few years in a heatmap. The conference has declined rather steadily in recent years and the chart helps visualize how total the regression is. You can see the top, middle, and bottom segments of the conference getting worse. If you’re only looking at NCAA bids over the same timeframe, the numbers aren’t nearly as alarming. Charting the KenPom ranks of each team in conference paints the picture in a way that tournament bids or overall conference rank do not.

That tweet got traction and generated some interesting conversation, as well as people asking for other conferences. This post contains the same chart for all conferences, so eat your heart out.

Big thanks to Jack Gwilliam (@jackgwills on twitter) for taking time to export the KenPom data and put the lookup together. I manually punched in the A10 one by hand and never would have been able to get all conferences without the help. I don’t intend to opine on every single conference here, so I’ll leave a few notes about things that jump out. See anything interesting? Point it out in the comments.

Before we get started, your mileage will vary on how much narrative you can read into any particular heatmap. I’m an A10 writer concerned with the long-term direction of the conference for a variety of reasons. I’m also guilty of trying really hard to see shapes in the clouds, but for me, that’s half the fun of stuff like this. At the end of the day these charts are based on an arbitrary timeframe (is eight years a round number? it feels like a round number) and aren’t anything more than KenPom rankings sorted top to bottom.

That said, let’s talk about the cool looking clouds.

• First, the A10. Yikes. Davidson stealing a third bid for the conference papered over a very bad 2018 season that isn’t being discussed enough. The decline is related to a few things – the Butler, Xavier, and Temple departures hurt, but those were six years ago. Traditionally strong programs like Saint Louis, UMass, and George Washington have gone into the tank recently. The conference has seen several strong coaches leave in recent years (Will Wade, Archie Miller, Mike Lonergan) and other unsuccessful ones get replaced. Things came to a head this past season as Dayton, VCU, and St. Joe’s all finished outside the KenPom top 100 for the first time since they’ve all been in the conference. There’s concern that this is the new normal, as this year doesn’t project to be good either. You might find a ray of hope in the fact that there’s not a ton of senior talent across the conference (Otis Livingston, Javon Bess, and Josh Cunningham are the senior stars on what figure to be contenders) so the A10 may have a renaissance in the 2019-2020 season.
• A few years ago I was among the people skeptical that realignment was going to benefit the overall strength of conferences like the ACC, who were racing to add name brands. You can’t just mash all these strong programs together and expect it to work out, I thought. I was wrong. The ACC has 11 teams in the top 55 each of the past three years. 14 of 15 programs have been in the top 120 each of the past four years. That’s obnoxious.
• The WCC chart is fun to look at. According to my eyeballs it’s the one with the widest disparity between top and bottom, consistently putting multiple teams in the top 35 and 250+. I don’t know much about the WCC but it appears the middle of the conference has regressed, with Portland, San Francisco, Pepperdine, and San Diego abandoning consistent rankings in the 100-150 range for the 200+ tier.
• The SEC has a distinct upward trendline. They’ve been steadily improving across the board since Texas A+M and Mizzou joined in 2013. I have no idea if there’s a causal relationship there but those two have combined for 8 top 100 seasons in 12 combined years since joining. Other factors are of course in play, including South Carolina’s random final four season, Auburn and Alabama rising from the ashes, and strong recent play from Tennessee and Mississippi State. Top to bottom, the SEC has a strong case for second best conference in recent years.
• You guys wanna see a dead body? Look at the CAA. Ravaged after George Mason, VCU, and ODU all left, a conference that regularly put out multiple top 50 teams now has one in the past six years.
• If you want to see two more conferences that aren’t feeling well after realignment check out the MVC and CUSA. They’ve both shown signs of life recently but are miles away from their former glory.

That’s enough exposition. Onto the charts: