Sorry, Florida! Tough break, Kansas! Better luck next year, North Carolina!
History suggests you’ve already been eliminated from national title contention.
Those teams are each outside the top dozen in Monday’s newly released Week 6 AP Top 25, a poll that has been a surprisingly accurate tool when predicting men’s college basketball’s eventual national champion. The past 21 national champions and 35 of the past 36 were each ranked in the top 12 in their respective season’s Week 6 AP poll.
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Since the 2003-04 season, the average Week 6 ranking of the eventual national title winner has been 4.9. As former ESPN college basketball writer John Gasaway was the first to note, no other week during the season has been a better barometer, not even the polls that come out in late February or early March.
The average preseason rank of the past 21 eventual national champions has been 10.0. The last 21 national champions have had an average ranking of 5.5 in the final AP poll before the NCAA tournament begins.
The last time a team outside the top 12 in Week 6 made a national championship run, freshman Carmelo Anthony was leading Jim Boeheim to his lone title at Syracuse. The late-blooming 2002-03 Orange didn’t enter the AP Top 25 until mid-January but caught fire during the second half of the season.
Before that, you have to go all the way back to Danny Manning’s 1987-88 Kansas team to find another national champion that didn’t crack the Week 6 AP top 12. Those 11-loss Jayhawks earned the nickname “Danny and the Miracles” when they went from a No. 6 seed in the NCAA tournament to winning the national title.
If history is an indicator, the men’s national champion will come from this list. (Yahoo Sports)
What’s so special about the Week 6 AP poll? Why has it outperformed other polls when seeking to identify the team that will soon be climbing ladders and cutting down nets?
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It’s easy to explain why the Week 6 poll is more predictive than the Week 1-5 iterations. By early December, most high-majors have played at least a few games against fellow power-conference programs. There is more data available to help separate contenders and pretenders than there previously was in November.
Take Kentucky, which began the season at No. 9 but has since tumbled out of the Top 25. The Wildcats have yet to defeat anyone with a pulse, falling to Louisville, Michigan State and North Carolina before their own fans booed them early and often in Nashville during a humiliating 94-59 loss to Gonzaga.
Conversely, top-ranked Arizona, second-ranked Michigan and fourth-ranked Iowa State have so far outperformed expectations. The Wildcats boast victories over the likes of UConn, Florida, UCLA and Auburn. The Wolverines annihilated Gonzaga by 40 points to win the prestigious Players Era tournament title in late November. The Cyclones demolished previous No. 1 Purdue on Saturday at venerable Mackey Arena.
The more vexing question is why the Week 6 poll has proven as reliable or more than AP voters’ late-season evaluations. In theory, three more months of games should provide a richer understanding of which teams are truly elite. In reality, many of the teams that prove themselves national-championship caliber in November and December never drop out of the AP top 10 the rest of the season.
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UConn’s juggernaut 2024 national title team never fell out of the AP top five after Week 6. Nor did fellow recent champions Baylor in 2021, Virginia in 2019 or Villanova in 2018. Last year’s Florida team rose to No. 9 in the AP poll by Week 6 and then essentially kept on climbing the rest of the season.
Which team this season is most likely to go from outside the top 12 this week to hoisting a championship trophy at the end of the season?
One potential threat is 19th-ranked Kansas, which is 7-3 with victories over Tennessee, Syracuse, Notre Dame and Missouri despite having projected No. 1 pick Darryn Peterson for just three games so far this season. If Peterson can stay healthy, he can carry the offense for a team that already has shown a high ceiling defensively.
Don’t discount reigning national champion Florida either. The 18th-ranked Gators returned every frontcourt rotation player and restocked their backcourt via the transfer portal. Florida lost by a single point at undefeated Duke last Tuesday despite Xaivian Lee enduring a nightmarish 1-for-10 shooting night. If the Gators can get better shooting and playmaking out of Lee, they’re still capable of contending in the SEC and nationally.
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Undefeated Vanderbilt is the highest-rated team in Ken Pomeroy’s rankings that is outside the top 12 in the latest AP poll. The Commodores, eighth in KenPom but 15th according to AP voters, have clobbered Saint Mary’s, VCU and SMU but have yet to face a fellow Top 25 team.
BetMGM lists Florida and Kansas among its dozen national title favorites. North Carolina (No. 14), Illinois (13), Arkansas (17), Vanderbilt and St. John’s (22) are not far behind.
Those bets are each at least 20-to-1 long shots. If any of them come through, it will mean defying 20-plus years of history.
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