Maryland as the Best College Basketball Team Next Year? I'm Skeptical

Maryland has been anointed in the “way too early” rankings as one of the best teams in the country next year. They were third in the one we posted here in early May, second  at CBS last week, and Jeff Goodman of ESPN had them as #1 in his most recent offering today. It’s rare that you will see them outside the top 4 in any ranking, meaning that the expectation is that they will be a #1 seed and the Big Ten favorite.

Maryland made a big jump back into national prominence last year. They finished as a #4 seed in the NCAA Tournament, losing in the second game to West Virginia, as Melo Trimble got beat up and ultimately left the game with injuries. They were also not particularly dominant for a team seeded that highly in terms of winning comfortably against decent opponents. The record was bolstered by going a remarkable 8-0 in close games (5 points or less, or OT), until losing to Michigan State in the Big Ten Tournament. They were rated 32nd in the Pomeroy ratings at the end of the year as a result, and 27th in the Sagarin ratings.

How rare is it for a team rated that lowly to finish as a #1 seed the next season? Going back the last 13 years, nearly 75% of the #1 seeds were in the top 15 in the Pomeroy ratings the previous year. Only six teams were outside the top 30 in the Pomeroy ratings the year before they rose to a #1 seed.

One of them, Kentucky in 2010, is an anomaly since that was Calipari’s first year in Lexington, and the team also added John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins. The other five were more along the “veteran team making a leap” mode (Stanford 2004, Virginia 2014, Michigan State 2012, Memphis 2006, and Washington 2005), though it should be noted that none of those teams reached the Final Four.

Maryland is a pretty safe bet to be pretty good next year, and has a good floor where we don’t expect them to fall apart. The questions seem less severe than other teams. They return Melo Trimble and Jake Layman, and the major loss was Dez Wells. The Terps add three potential pieces from vastly different routes, in highly rated freshman Diamond Stone, Georgia Tech transfer Robert Carter, and Rasheed Sulaimon, eligible to play right away after being kicked out of the Duke program.

Will they go 8-0 in close games again? Probably not. So while they will be improved, they must be vastly improved from an efficiency and dominance standpoint to justify the current rankings. There are lots of question marks with other traditional top powers, from Duke to Kentucky to Arizona, and that’s what’s driving this. Some times those questions go unanswered, but you can expect a decent amount of them to be answered more credibly than you think.