Men’s college basketball Top 25: How far should Memphis, Kansas fall? How high can Florida rise?

Noticeably absent when the NCAA mens basketball selection committee revealed its top 16 seeds on Saturday was Memphis, which was ranked No.

14 in last weeks Associated Press poll.

Ive had a hard time deciding what to do with the Tigers because their predictive metrics are not great they sit No.

47 in the rankings at KenPom.com, for instance and theyre not dominating the American Athletic Conference at a level most elite teams in lower-tier leagues do.

The 2008 Tigers went undefeated in Conference USA and had an efficiency margin of 29 points in conference games; this years Tigers are plus-12.2.

Advertisement But because the Tigers kept winning, voters kept moving them up each week.

One voter had them No.

8.

Most were in the 11-13 range.

Then on Sunday, Memphis lost in overtime at Wichita State, the eighth-place team in the American.

So ...

now what? The Tigers now have two losses to teams outside the top 100 in KenPoms ratings.

Only two teams Im currently ranking have a sub-100 loss (Clemson and Louisville) and theirs are to the same opponent (Georgia Tech).

Memphis also has three sub-top-50 losses; no one in my Top 25 has more than two.

Memphis still has some really good wins (5-2 in Quadrant 1 games), but there was a reason the committee wasnt considering it in the top 16, even before that loss to the Shockers.

Sorry, Tigers.

Youre off my ballot.

And if youre trying to predict their eventual seed: Memphis plays in the 10th-best league in college hoops, per KenPom, and the last time a team in the 10th-best league had a seed higher than 7 was San Diego State in 2014, which landed as a No.

4 seed.

Now, on to the game of the weekend.

Reminder: Below my Top 25, I give nuggets on an unspecified number of teams each week.

So when a team appears in the table but not in the text below, thats why.

Scroll on for notes on Auburn, Duke, Florida, Houston, Wisconsin, Michigan, Michigan State, Kansas.

1.

Auburn Whats going to make Auburn such a tough out in the NCAA Tournament is its ability to get exactly what it wants when a game gets tight.

After Alabama made a furious comeback that tied Saturdays game at 65 with just under eight minutes left, the Tigers scored 29 points over their final 19 possessions (1.53 points per possession), including points on nine of their next 10 trips following an empty possession immediately after the Crimson Tide tied it up in an eventual 94-85 win .

Advertisement Auburn coach Bruce Pearl has five different guys who can get hot and take over a game, and the spark plug in this one was freshman Tahaad Pettiford, who continues to make big buckets in big moments.

Pettiford, who was 0 of 4 from 3 at the time, hit a pull-up 3 in transition to take back the lead and then a few minutes later made back-to-back driving layups out of ball screens against Cliff Omoruyis drop coverage, starting with this one: Thats an off-hand scoop off the wrong foot against an elite rim protector.

Auburn went right back to it, except this time running a Spain action on the side of the floor: Freshmen are not supposed to be this good out of ball screens; Pettiford is scoring 1.03 points per possession out of them, per Synergy.

Among players who finish at least four ball screen plays per game, hes the 19th-most efficient in the country.

Among that top 20, hes the only freshman and one of only two underclassmen.

GO DEEPER Johni Broomes chase for greatness and embodiment of the American dream 2.

Duke Duke and Cooper Flagg continue to be historically awesome.

The latest such result was Saturdays 106-70 win over Stanford.

The Blue Devils scored 1.61 points per possession.

According to Ken Pomeroy, thats the fourth-highest efficiency against a high-major opponent in his database, dating back to the 1996-97 season.

For Duke, thats the second-highest efficiency in any game since 1997.

The only output that topped this one was 1.68 PPP against Presbyterian in the 2014-15 opener.

Those Blue Devils went on to win the national title.

GO DEEPER Cooper Flagg is on the clock 3.

Florida Florida has performed as the best team in college basketball the last two weeks, winning four consecutive SEC games, including a win at Auburn.

During that stretch, leading scorer Walter Clayton missed the Vanderbilt game, starter and spiritual leader Alijah Martin missed the Auburn and Mississippi State games, and Floridas best big man Alex Condon played one minute against Mississippi State (well count that as a missed game) and missed Saturdays win over South Carolina.

Backup forward Sam Alexis also missed the South Carolina game.

Thats five missed games from starters, and the Gators won three of the four by double digits and beat Auburn by nine.

Advertisement Is there a team better equipped to handle missing a key player? Probably not.

And now the Gators have added another piece with 7-foot-1 center Micah Handlogten returning this weekend from an 11-month absence due to a broken leg and playing 20 minutes against the Gamecocks.

Itll likely take Handlogten a few weeks to get in game shape he was noticeably winded against South Carolina but he still put up an impressive line: two points, three rebounds, five assists, two blocks and two steals.

Handlogten had the best plus-minus per 100 possessions on last years Gators, per CBB Analytics, and hes come back with a noticeably thicker frame.

He will likely settle in as the fourth big on this team.

Thats quite the luxury and a good jump start on next season, especially if the Gators lose Condon to the NBA.

5.

Houston Houston has had the best offense in the Big 12, and the ascension of transfer point guard Milos Uzan has helped the Cougars improve as the season has progressed.

Early in the season, the Houston offense was built around either playing through JWan Roberts in the post or finding shots for LJ Cryer and Emanuel Sharp.

Uzan mostly was trying to play facilitator.

Uzan scored a season-high 19 points on Saturday in a 62-58 win at Arizona and has now scored in double figures in eight straight games.

Hes getting a heavy diet of ball screens and learning how to take advantage of the fear of Roberts on the roll.

Against the Cats, he scored nine points off ball screens set by Roberts and also had this bucket when Arizona had focused all of its attention on trying to prevent Roberts from getting the ball in the post against Caleb Love: It takes confidence to go against a coachs wishes notice Kelvin Sampson had motioned to get the ball to Roberts and take the shot yourself.

On one of the biggest possessions of the game, the Cougars went back to the Uzan-Roberts pick-and-roll, and Uzan again noticed that Henri Veesaar wasnt going to fully commit to stopping the ball for fear of giving Roberts an easy path to the rim.

You cant play cat and mouse with Uzan because he has one of the best floaters in the game.

This preseason when I was at Houston for an exhibition against Texas A&M, Sampson was begging Uzan to take that floater.

He no longer has to beg, and it has made Houston a lot harder to deal with.

GO DEEPER Houston wears down Arizona, giving Kelvin Sampson a win he has lacked his entire career 9.

Wisconsin With a 94-84 win in West Lafayette on Saturday , Wisconsin became the first team to beat Purdue by double digits at Mackey Arena since Jan.

22, 2021, when eventual No.

1 seed Michigan did it.

This game goes to the top of the advertising campaign for John Tonje to be a first-team All-American.

Tonje went for 32 points, six boards, three assists and a block.

He was perfect inside the arc, and he made 4 of 9 3s, including three step-backs.

Watch Purdues CJ Cox (No.

0) on this play to see how afraid the Boilermakers were that hed make another: This was one of two last-second dimes for Tonje.

Not only is he awesome scoring off the bounce, hes really smart about when to attack and when to pass it off.

The Badgers are so unselfish and theres so much spacing that he doesnt need to hunt shots.

The opportunities will be there.

And Tonje is cooking right now.

Since going scoreless in a win at USC, Tonje is averaging 24.3 points per game.

Hed be on my first-team All-America ballot if the season ended today.

Advertisement No.

12 Michigan Michigan has a one-game lead over Michigan State in the Big Ten and has gone from a team that struggled to win in close games, losing four of its first six games decided by four points or less, to a suddenly clutch one.

During Michigans six-game winning streak, it has won by 4, 3, 4, 3, 2 and 3.

Theres been some good fortune in there Bruce Thornton air-balled a wide-open floater to tie it on Sunday but Michigan is executing at a pretty high level in high-stress situations.

In those six wins, theyve either trailed or been tied in the last five minutes four times.

They have a great closer in Danny Wolf, who is such a tough matchup because he can do things like this: Head coach Dusty May has also put in a zone defense, giving him a nice defensive changeup down the stretch in these close games.

Michigan is allowing only 0.773 points per possession in zone, per Synergy.

The Wolverines are now 9-4 in games decided by four points or less.

They host Michigan State on Friday.

The line, according to KenPom: Michigan -2.

Expect another nail-biter.

No.

15 Michigan State Tom Izzo passed Bob Knight for the most Big Ten wins ever on Saturday , but heres the stat that really shows Izzos brilliance: Only five schools have ever made 20-plus NCAA Tournament appearances in a row, and all of those runs came under multiple coaches, except for Michigan State and Izzo.

This tourney will mark 27 straight appearances for the Spartans, matching North Carolina for the second-most consecutive appearances in a row.

If not for the canceled tournament in 2020, Izzo would be passing the UNC streak this season.

GO DEEPER 'Ready, shoot, aim': The Doug Gottlieb coaching experiment No.

24 Kansas With a 74-67 loss at Utah on Saturday, the Jayhawks are on the verge of being unranked for only the second time since 2009.

Bill Selfs team has been ridiculously consistent through the years.

Obviously a lot gets made of how good they are at Allen Fieldhouse, but most of Selfs teams are good on the road as well.

The last two have not been.

Kansas is 6-13 on the road since the start of the 2023-24 season.

During Selfs prime years at Kansas 2005-06 through 2012-13 his teams averaged 2.4 road losses per year.

The first five years of that run, the Jayhawks lost a combined 13 times on the road.

The Jayhawks will probably be a team many pick against in the NCAA Tournament wisely, and Ill get to that here shortly but the numbers say Im underrating them.

Theyre still in the top 25 in every metric, including No.

10 at BPI, 14 in the NET, 15 at KenPom and 16 at Torvik.

The resume-based metrics are slightly lower but still Top 25-worthy, and thats why KU was a No.

4 seed in Saturdays bracket reveal.

Now onto the bad news for Kansas.

Heres a list of past teams with similar resumes, per Torvik: Dropped out: Memphis, Creighton.

Keeping an eye on: Saint Marys, Illinois, New Mexico.

(Photo of Moussa Cisse: William Purnell / Imagn Images).

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