2024-25 Big East Men’s Basketball: Where Are We Now?

Conference play gets started in earnest this week, so let’s take a swing around the league and see what everyone’s been doing, shall we?

DID YOU KNOW?

Big East play starts for Marquette men’s basketball WEDNESDAY NIGHT. It’s true! They get things going with a home game against Butler. We’ll get to a full game preview of that later on down the road, but with league play set to kick off for the Golden Eagles, it’s probably a good time to check in on the other 10 teams around the conference to see how everyone has been doing so far this year. However, instead of just doing a straight ahead “here are the teams in alphabetical order beep borp” rundown, I’m throwing a curveball into the mix!

Or rather, I’m returning to a curveball I started throwing a couple of years ago. Is it still a curveball if it’s turning into a recurring bit?

The 11 Big East teams have been ordered by “biggest change from the preseason,” but I’m not just using one source. I took the preseason KenPom.com rankings as noted on each team’s page as their ranking at the time their first game was played, and then compared everyone to where they were following the end of action on Saturday, December 14th, because no one plays on the 15th or the 16th more than any other particular reason. I did the same for BartTorvik.com’s preseason rankings, but I didn’t just look at the current rankings for the comparison. I used the filter feature to remove any preseason projections or estimations and looked at the pure numbers of how everyone’s been playing up through the end of business on Sunday. If CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish can filter data, so can I.

That gave me two change in ranking numbers for every one of the 11 teams in the league, and I just smooshed them together. This year, there is just one team that KenPom and Torvik disagreed on, which means they were slightly up in one ranking and a little bit further down in the other. Everyone else was either on the plus side in both or on the minus side in both, so there’s no doubt as to what direction everyone in the league has been heading through this point of the season. They’re all sorted below from biggest positive change to biggest negative change, and I’ll tell you this right now: There are only four teams that moved in a positive direction…… and two of them kiiiiind of had a notable advantage to doing that.

There’s also a quick info dump for every team: Record, stats leaders, and best win/worst loss according to the NET rankings — just for a nice mix of data here — on Sunday morning. I also went over to T-Rank and grabbed the current Ranketology as of Sunday morning — which is seeding the bracket based on the most likely outcomes for the year according to the algorithm — to give everyone an NCAA tournament projection. T-Rank currently gives 28 teams outside the field of 68 at least a 0.1% chance of making it in, so if you see a “No” for any given team, then they’re outside the “First 28 Out” according to the algorithm.

Everything make sense there? Okay, let’s jump into it!

DePaul Blue Demons: +125

Record: 8-2, 0-1 Big East
Scoring Leader: Jacob Meyer, 15.2 ppg
Rebounding Leader: David Skogman, 6.8 rpg
Assists Leader: Conor Enright, 7.5 apg
Best NET Win: vs #92 Wichita State, 91-72
Worst NET Loss: vs #74 Providence, 70-63, in overtime
NCAA Projection: No

To the surprise of absolutely no one, DePaul possesses the top two differential numbers amongst any team in the league, either positive or negative. No one improved or got worse more than DePaul jumped up in both categories. I say “to the surprise of no one” for a few reasons. There’s DePaul’s 8-2 record of course, but the fact of the matter is that DePaul was the team that had the most possibility to improve this season. They were last in the league in the preseason rankings in both systems, and they were more than 50 spots behind the next worst team on KenPom. I’m not trying to detract from what new head coach Chris Holtmann has done in 10 games here, but we can all admit that it’s easier to move up a combined 125 spots when you start lower than 110 in both categories. That happened because last year’s DePaul team was historically awful, and even though the Blue Demons return not a single player from last year’s roster, you still have to start the algorithmic prediction somewhere and “generally close to their history for the last few years” is as good a place as any.

None of this is to say that DePaul is great. As you can see, they don’t have anything that resembles a useful win when it comes to an NCAA tournament profile, but they also only played one non-conference game that would qualify in that regard… but that’s also 100% on purpose by Holtmann, I’m sure. If I was coaching a team that had never met each other before the first day of classes on campus, I wouldn’t sign myself up to run a gauntlet, either.

But, and this is important: They’re also not a joke. Using that filtered Torvik data, they’re fifth in the Big East in adjusted offensive efficiency so far this season, and sixth in the defensive version of the same metric. They’re #10 in the country in effective field goal percentage because they’re also #10 in three-point shooting percentage, and they take A TON of threes. Take the Blue Demons lightly at your own peril this season.

Georgetown Hoyas: +33

Record: 8-2
Scoring Leader: Jayden Epps, 15.5 ppg
Rebounding Leader: Thomas Sorber, 8.2 rpg
Assists Leader: Malik Mack, 4.3 apg
Best NET Win: at #146 Syracuse, 75-71
Worst NET Loss: vs #99 Notre Dame, 84-63
NCAA Projection: No

The good news is that Georgetown is better than expected in Ed Cooley’s second season in charge. The bad news is two-fold. Part 1 is that 28 points of their positive movement is just from KenPom.com’s rankings, and Part 2 is that Georgetown was able to make that upward movement because everyone ignored how bad the Hoyas were last season because DePaul was historically awful. It’s like if a flaming dumpster rolled down a hill, fell into a 25 foot wide pothole, and exploded. DePaul is the flaming and exploding dumpster, Georgetown is the pothole. That pothole’s a real problem, but no one’s talking about it because a dumpster just exploded.

Anyway, here they are now, attempting to celebrate a road win over a going nowhere fast Syracuse team because it’s their best win of the season. Whippity ding. The Hoyas are a reasonably competent defensive team, ranking #50 in the country in that Torvik filtered adjusted defensive efficiency, but they can’t score worth a dang. Yes, they have four guys averaging at least 12 points a game, including Thomas Sorber who’s probably within spitting distance of being regarded as a double-double threat whenever he steps on the floor. But the only two times this season that they’ve played a KenPom top 100 opponent, the Hoyas have ended up with an effective field goal percentage under 46%. BREAKING NEWS: There are a lot of top 100 teams in the Big East. All they have to do is beat three of them to have a better record than last year….. but they beat Historically Awful DePaul twice to get those two wins, and there’s no one in the league this year that’s that bad.

Marquette Golden Eagles: +24

Record: 9-2
Scoring Leader: Kam Jones, 20.1 ppg
Rebounding Leader: David Joplin, 5.4 rpg
Assists Leader: Kam Jones, 6.4 apg
Best NET Win: at #16 Maryland, 78-74
Worst NET Loss: at #23 Dayton, 71-63
NCAA Projection: #4 seed

This is a Marquette blog, and so you’re familiar with everything that the Golden Eagles have done so far this season. All I will do is point out that yes, Marquette is still 24 points up on their preseason expectations after Goof Trooping through the second half against Dayton. And so, we move on to the last team in the league that’s on the plus side to this point of the year……..

St. John’s Red Storm: +5

Record: 8-2
Scoring Leader: RJ Luis, 16.9 ppg
Rebounding Leader: Zuby Ejiofor, 7.7 rpg
Assists Leader: Kadary Richmond, 4.9 apg
Best NET Win: vs #89 New Mexico, 85-71
Worst NET Loss: vs #24 Georgia in the Bahamas, 66-63
NCAA Projection: #7 seed

The Red Storm are the Big East’s least interesting team in terms of what they’ve done since the start of the season. They’re up 4 spots in KenPom and up 1 in Torvik, which means they’re effectively exactly the team that the computers thought they would be this season. Luckily for them, that means they’re pretty good, as they were top 20 to start the season in both metrics.

Even better for the Johnnies, they know how to defend now. That was the catch when they went on that heater to end the regular season in 2023-24: They were lights out on offense but miserable on defense. Both metrics have the Red Storm as a top 30 team on both ends of the floor, and that’s going to be a pretty solid mixture for a good team.

The question remains about what exactly St. John’s ceiling is. They’re 0-2 against the NET top 88, with both losses coming in the top 25 and both came while they were in the Bahamas. You can easily argue that they shouldn’t have lost to Baylor since they threw away a lead late in regulation and got beat the buzzer in double OT. Then they compounded that problem by letting Georgia slip past them in the final couple of minutes.

With nothing particularly notable on their NCAA tournament profile at the moment, they’re going to need to find a way to stack up wins in Big East play. They’ll have a pretty solid set of opportunities, and they look like a team that can take advantage of enough of them to get that done. They open with DePaul and Providence, and it’s probably in their best interest to start out Big East play 2-0, at the very least. They don’t have wiggle room, and weird losses will just open the door to the Johnnies slipping closer to the NCAA bubble.

Butler Bulldogs: -5

Record: 7-4
Scoring Leader: Jahmyl Telfort, 16.2 ppg
Rebounding Leader: Andre Screen, 6.0 rpg
Assists Leader: Jahmyl Telfort, 3.0 apg
Best NET Win: vs #25 Mississippi State in Tempe, AZ, 87-77
Worst NET Loss: vs #265 Austin Peay, 68-66
NCAA Projection: No

Butler is the confusing team on the docket. They’re up nine in KenPom’s rankings since the start of the season, but down 14 from where Torvik had them in the preseason calculations.

Let’s be honest about it: They’d be a lot better off if 1) they hadn’t lost to Austin Peay and/or 2) they weren’t on a three game losing streak which included a home defeat at the hands of North Dakota State. The Austin Peay loss cost Butler 18 spots in KenPom’s math and eight spots over on Torvik when you keep the preseason prognostications involved. The current losing run has cost Butler 15 and 17 spots in the two computer rankings respectively.

For what it’s worth, it’s not like the AP and NDSU losses are keeping Butler out of the NCAA tournament conversations all by themselves. Yes, they’d obviously be in a much better position if those were victories, but even if you flip them, Torvik’s Ranketology still projects BU as the #12 team out. That’s not a great sign for Thad Matta’s third year in charge of the program, but the fact that this year’s team is worse on the defensive end so far than last year’s squad was……. and Year 2 was worse than Year 1….. well, that’s a worrying trend that can’t make anyone in Indianapolis thrilled about how this is going. One reason why they struggle on that end? Eighth lowest defensive turnover rate in the country. When your opponents are shooting it on 88% of possessions, hoooooboy, it’s just hard to keep up with them, y’know?

Connecticut Huskies: -10

Record: 8-3
Scoring Leader: Alex Karaban, 15.6 ppg
Rebounding Leader: Tarris Reed, Jr., 8.0 rpg
Assists Leader: Hassan Diarra, 5.7 apg
Best NET Win: vs #4 Gonzaga at MSG, 77-71
Worst NET Loss: vs #75 Colorado at Maui, 73-72
NCAA Projection: #3 seed

The lesson to be learned from the Huskies so far this season is probably not one that can be applied to every other team in the league. Yes, UConn lost all three games in the Maui Invitational. Yes, they dipped from #6 at the start of the season in the KenPom rankings to #26 and from #12 to #28 in the Torvik unfiltered rankings. It was a huge drop for a team that was coming into the season at worst as an outside candidate for the national championship. The NET debuted right in the wake of those three Maui losses, and the Huskies were even worse off there than they were in the computers at #39, and they even drifted to #41.

And now, after wins over Baylor, Texas, and Gonzaga, they’re pretty much right back where they started from, just a combined 10 spots down from where they started the season. If that #3 seed NCAA projection comes in — and it’s going to be hard for them to climb the mountain and overcome those three Maui losses in terms of seeding — no one’s going to look at Connecticut as a #3 seed and say “well, obviously they can’t win the tourney from there.” Was it fun? Probably not so much for UConn fans, but the end result of 11 games means they’re still kind of on target for what this season looked like it was supposed to be.

And hey, after back-to-back national championships, as an outside observer, “merely very good” is a pretty good way to spend a season.

Xavier Musketeers: -48

Record: 8-3
Scoring Leader: Zach Freemantle, 16.9 ppg
Rebounding Leader: Zach Freemantle, 7.7 rpg
Assists Leader: Dayvion McKnight, 3.7 apg
Best NET Win: vs #98 South Carolina in Fort Myers, 75-66
Worst NET Loss: at #94 TCU, 76-72
NCAA Projection: 24th team out

Who remembers where Xavier was picked in the Big East preseason poll? Anyone? Anyone? How does #3 grab you? I think it’s important, in discussing how far Xavier has dropped so far this season, to point out that the computers didn’t like Xavier as the #3 team in the league in the first place. Both computers had the Musketeers sixth in the Big East, and Xavier has dipped pretty notably in both systems from what they were expected to be.

Xavier’s a fun example of “hey, you gotta blow out the not-so-great teams on your schedule.” Partially because you can squint and still see an NCAA future for them. You have to imagine that XU’s computer numbers would be a lot better off if they didn’t struggle with Texas Southern on opening night or barely escape with a win over South Carolina State. A 14 point win over IU Indy doesn’t jump off the page as a real problem for you, but it did turn into a problem for them in the computer numbers….. partially because they let the Jaguars slice points off the margin after Xavier went up 22 with less than five minutes to go.

Why do three “hey, we won, maybe not cleanly, but it’s a win!” games matter so much? Because the Musketeers got absolutely sandblasted by Michigan in the championship game of the Fort Myers Tip Off. They gave up a 19-3 first half run to fall behind by 17, cut it down to eight with seven minutes left, and then gave up a 19-2 run to end the game. That’s bad, and their data package suffered a whole bunch because of it. Had they won those games where they were heavily favored by more notable margins, they’d probably be better off than they are now, even with the Michigan blowout, but they didn’t, and they’re not.

QUICK REMINDER: Xavier has eight guys on this roster who are running out of eligibility after this season and no scholarship freshmen. I asked this question in September:

What’s worse for Xavier: Sean Miller does enough with this mashup of guys who won’t be here next year so he won’t be here next year either….. or Sean Miller is still in Cincinnati on April 1st and needs somewhere between five and eight new transfers to fill the empty spots on his roster?

Which one seems more likely to you right this second?

UPDATE: Not long after this published, Xavier announced that Zach Freemantle is out indefinitely with a leg injury.

Villanova Wildcats: -57

Record: 7-4
Scoring Leader: Eric Dixon, 25.8 ppg
Rebounding Leader: Wooga Poplar, 6.3 rpg
Assists Leader: Jhamir Brickus, 5.6 apg
Best NET Win: vs #30 Cincinnati, 68-60
Worst NET Loss: vs #101 Columbia, 90-80
NCAA Projection: 15th team out

Okay, let’s play a round of “Credit Where Credit Is Due.” Villanova is on a four game winning streak, including a home win over a ranked Cincinnati team. Since November 25th, Villanova is playing like a top 20 basketball team and like the best team in the Big East to be honest, mostly because their offense is nearly unstoppable. They can’t get stops on the other end of the floor, but again: This is “Credit Where Credit Is Due,” so thumbs up to what the Wildcats have done in their last four contests.

Because before that, they were atrocious on the defensive end — see, I had a reason for bringing it up a second ago — and that’s how they started off the year 3-4, including that loss to Columbia, not to mention a rivalry game loss at Saint Joseph’s and a neutral site loss to a Virginia team that is clearly going nowhere in a hurry this year.

This looks an awful lot like what we saw from Villanova a year ago. 7-4 in non-con, three terrible non-con losses combined with a squeaker against a high major opponent, and an otherwise inexplicable victory over a very good high major team. That completely shot Nova’s chances at the NCAA tournament in the foot a year ago before they even started Big East play with a 4-6 mark last March, and there’s no other way to assess this year’s 7-4 non-con slate than doing the same thing to them now. The Columbia and Virginia losses are Quadrant 3 losses right now, which means VU has to essentially get two Quadrant 1 wins before they can start saying they actually have any quality wins at all just to balance it out.

Do you have faith in Kyle Neptune to figure that out after he couldn’t figure out how to avoid the same awful start as last year? I don’t. Do you trust Eric Dixon to just keep putting up 25-30 points a game and drag Villanova into the postseason? I don’t.

Creighton Bluejays: -64

Record: 7-4
Scoring Leader: Ryan Kalkbrenner, 16.3 ppg
Rebounding Leader: Ryan Kalkbrenner, 8.3 rpg
Assists Leader: Steven Ashworth, 6.2 apg
Best NET Win: vs #17 Kansas, 76-63
Worst NET Loss: vs #56 Nebraska, 74-63
NCAA Projection: #9 seed

Things are actually so much worse for Creighton than they look, and they look real bad.

There was so much attention given to “OMG, RYAN KALKBRENNER PUT UP 49! ON 20-FOR-22 SHOOTING! A DOUBLE-DOUBLE WITH 11 REBOUNDS!” in their opener. And for good reason, by the way. That’s pretty crazy numbers. However, those of us that at least entertain the UConn Internet Joke of “Kalkbrenner’s Just Big” looked at that performance and only saw Creighton holding a five point lead on UTRGV with two minutes and change to go. They needed that from Kalkbrenner to hold off the Vaqueros. Sure, they didn’t really try to do that much else on offense, other than watch Steven Ashworth sink all 17 free throws he attempted, but that’s worrying, right? At least a little?

Turns out, it was a little more worrying than we realized, but not for the reason we thought. At the time, it was a quiet thing that Pop Isaacs sat out the opener. Given that Isaacs is now done for the year because he needs another hip surgery after the one he had in the spring, Isaacs missing the opener where Creighton had nothing going for them other than Kalkbrenner running wild and UTRGV getting touchy feely with Ashworth looms large over the rest of the season for the Bluejays.

That’s not the bad part. The bad part is that the selection committee can, to a certain extent, just ignore the eight games that Isaacs played. More accurately, they can ignore the wins. The losses to San Diego State and Texas A&M in the Players Era Festival and at home to Nebraska? The Bluejays still have to wear those, because “well, if they lost with Isaacs, they’d obviously be worse off without him, right?” The last game Isaacs played? 76-63, Creighton knocks off #1 Kansas, behind 27 points, seven rebounds, and four assists from — you guessed it — Pop Isaacs.

And now, for the selection committee’s purposes, that kind of didn’t happen. Which makes their best win….. at home against NET #154 UNLV? And they were already much worse than expected this season with Isaacs on the court?

Providence Friars: -65

Record: 7-5, 1-0 Big East
Scoring Leader: Jayden Pierre, 12.7 ppg
Rebounding Leader: Oswin Erhunmwunse, 4.9 rpg
Assists Leader: Bensley Joseph, 3.3 apg
Best NET Win: at #69 DePaul, 70-63 in overtime
Worst NET Loss: vs #112 Davidson in the Bahamas, 69-58
NCAA Projection: They’re not even in the first 64 teams out.

We have two things to discuss when it comes to Providence. The first is the status of Bryce Hopkins, who shredded his knee back on January 3rd of this year and made his season debut for the Friars on December 3rd. He missed precisely 11 months of action, and immediately made an impact on PC. Officially, he’s their leading scorer and rebounder on the stat sheet, at 17.0 points and 7.7 rebounds per game since returning to the lineup. However, I’m listing Jayden Pierre and Oswin Erhunmwunse as the leaders above for two reasons.

The first reason is because Hopkins has only played three games since returning, so Pierre and Erhunmwunse have been leading the team for the majority of the season. The second reason is more important to Providence’s season….. and that’s the fact that Hopkins missed their loss to St. Bonaventure with knee soreness. Yes, the knee he had surgery on 11 months ago. It’s great news that they had him, putting up 16/5/4 against BYU is clearly why they got that signature non-conference victory, and his 19/10/3 against DePaul has the Friars alone in first place in the Big East until Tuesday.

But they also lost, 69-63, at Rhode Island in between those two wins. It’s not Hopkins’ fault, as he had 16/8/2 and three steals. Okay, maybe a little, since he shot 6-for-15, but sum total, he was not THE problem here.

And that brings us around to the other thing that we have to discuss. Last year, Providence head coach Kim English was particularly vocal about the Friars getting left out of the NCAA tournament after they went 6-7 down the stretch against teams not named DePaul or Georgetown. That includes giving up a 24-4 run in an 11 point home loss to a Villanova team that wasn’t making the NCAA tournament. Here’s what English said about his team that really didn’t have a good reason why they should be in the field other than “but we won games in November with a guy who is now out for the year” at the time:

“Scheduling to beat teams by 40 or 50 might be a thing to do.”

And now, a list of Providence’s guarantee game opponents by KenPom.com rank at the moment, and Providence’s margin of victory in those games.

#210, won by 4
#308, won by 27 (Marquette beat this team by 35, and covered a 34.5 spread!)
#261, won by 9
#325, won by 14
#342, won by 30

Hey, Kim? If you’re going to talk a big game about scheduling to pound on what appear to be back end of the rankings teams, you should, y’know, actually pound on those teams. You’re not doing that, and so when you combine squeaking your way through those games with going oh-fer at the Battle 4 Atlantis and then trading “hey, good win!” with “hey, negating loss!” then yeah, you’re a team that’s not even a tournament hopeful at this point. It’s a bad look overall for a program that was so caught up in their feelings about being left out of the field of 68 just nine months ago.

Oh, a bonus thing, because I love my readers: Turns out, it’s more important than you realize that Kim English coached teams need to pound on their guarantee game opponents becauuuuuuuuuuuse………..

Seton Hall Pirates: -90

Record: 5-6
Scoring Leader: Isaiah Coleman, 12.0 ppg
Rebounding Leader: Chaunce Jenkins, 4.3 rpg
Assists Leader: Garwey Dual, 3.1 apg
Best NET Win: vs #63 VCU in Charleston, 76-60
Worst NET Loss: vs #311 Monmouth, 63-51
NCAA Projection: They’re not even in the first 64 teams out.

Time for another round of “Credit Where Credit Is Due!” It is going to be an absolutely miserable experience to play Seton Hall this season. Using the Torvik filtered data, the Pirates are the #17 defense in the country in terms of efficiency. They get there by forcing a bunch of turnovers and rebounding your misses incredibly well. Minus Five Stars, will not enjoy.

So, why are they down 90 combined spots in the computer rankings with that outstanding defense? For the obvious reason: The offense is putrid. Can’t shoot, especially inside the arc, and they give the ball away way too much, and that second part effectively negates whatever advantage they get from being great at takeaways on the other end.

Seton Hall is currently projected to go 5-15 in Big East play by both computer rankings, and that would have them in last place by multiple games. KenPom.com goes one step further, as SHU is not favored in a single one of their 20 conference contests. I guess the good news is that they probably won’t be as cartoonishly awful as Georgetown and DePaul were last season? Probably? I would personally like it if they didn’t convince me to refuse to actually preview a game like I did with DePaul last year.