Latest / The Jake Wimberly Podcast / Kelley Ford Talks College Basketball at About the Halfway Point of the Season

Transcript

Kelley Ford Talks College Basketball at About the Halfway Point of the Season · The Jake Wimberly Podcast

• 0:00
  Let's step off into some college basketball. We'll talk about this last question this
• 0:03
  segment, then get into some more of it, and I may come back
• 0:05
  to college football before the end. You've got your k Forward ratings for basketball
• 0:09
  out and you look at the odds courtesy Penn Gaming and others to win the
• 0:12
  national championship in basketball at you know it's it's a cluttered field. You've got
• 0:16
  Houston as the number one team in the k Ford ratings for basketball perdue,
• 0:21
  Arizona, Tennessee, and Auburn, followed by Alabama, Yukon, North Carolina,
• 0:25
  Iowa State, and BYU. How deep of a field could we be
• 0:29
  looking at this year? I think it's open this year, Jake, as
• 0:34
  it's been in recent years and the NABA Tournament. With college basketball, it's
• 0:40
  such a it's such a unique setup because it really is all about matchups and
• 0:44
  the chaos of just the one off game. That's why everyone loves March Madness,
• 0:48
  why we call it March Madness. It's hard to really pinpoint and identify,
• 0:52
  you know, how it's going to play out. I do think the
• 0:54
  teams that you just mentioned certainly are going to be at the forefront of those
• 0:58
  odds have the best chance to make a potentially in March, but there's tons
• 1:02
  of teams outside of that that you didn't mention who you know, if you
• 1:06
  discount, then you do it at your own risk. And you know,
• 1:07
  Duke is a team that's got the upper end to go out and win six
• 1:11
  games in March. Kansas. Outside the top to top ten right now of
• 1:15
  my power ratings, there's you could go on and on about teams that have
• 1:19
  a chance. There is some proven there's some proven recent history here about where
• 1:23
  you need to be and kind of adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency by ten pounds,
• 1:27
  so you can kind of whittle it down through that. But at any
• 1:30
  given year, teams can come out of We just saw last year with yukon
• 1:34
  it. I believe there were four seeds. You don't have to be a
• 1:37
  top one, two, three seeds to make a deep run in the tournament.
• 1:40
  It's all about peaking at the right time and getting favorable matchups in March.
• 1:42
  But yes, from a power rating standpoint, those teams you mentioned,
• 1:46
  they're certainly the ones that you can expect to be playing late in the March
• 1:49
  and then into early April. Kelly, when you look at the conference averages.
• 1:52
  I like what you've done here, conference average k Ford rating points per
• 1:55
  game above or below Division one average, Big Ten are Big twelve. Skins
• 2:00
  comes in at twelve point two, the Big Ten right behind him at ten
• 2:02
  point four, moving up the SEC ten point three, Big easton then the
• 2:07
  ACC And of course we know this when you get into college basketball, you
• 2:09
  get into you know, as much as what you've got thirty three different conferences
• 2:13
  here. It really is interesting that how many I think we forget how many
• 2:16
  people play Division one basketball. They could get into the tournament. But let
• 2:20
  me ask you about the SEC. How deep is this league? You know,
• 2:23
  we have those conversations down here. Is this a seventeen league to the
• 2:27
  tournament as an eighteen league, ninth league team? How deep is this is
• 2:30
  this league? In your estimation? Yeah, the SEC is obviously the Kings
• 2:36
  of the grid Iron, but very good in men's basketball as well. I
• 2:39
  think you can go seven, eight, nine deep into the tournament this year.
• 2:43
  Of course, the bubble starts getting murky. You get your bid Steelers,
• 2:45
  But in terms of the best teams in the SEC, for me,
• 2:49
  it kind of starts with a top tier of grouping Tennessee, Auburn, Alabama
• 2:53
  all very similarly power rated up there in the top five, the top ten
• 2:57
  in the country. So to me, that's kind of the class of the
• 3:00
  SDC. If you will, Kentucky, it's probably in that next kind of
• 3:02
  tier, that next grouping of teams Texas, A and M Florida, Mississippi
• 3:08
  State right there in your backyard, Jake. Those are also some teams that
• 3:13
  from a power rating standpoint, are performing at a very very high level,
• 3:15
  at top forty level nationally. You talk about next year what the SEC is
• 3:21
  going to look like. Both Texas and Oklahoma right now in the top thirty
• 3:23
  five of my power ratings on the basketball side, So I think you can
• 3:28
  get all the way down into the middle, maybe even that third quartile of
• 3:31
  the conference where you've got resumes that put you in a position to be under
• 3:37
  consideration on selection Sunday, because that's what the committee's looking at. And if
• 3:40
  someone who works in a conference office and overseas basketball in the Horizon League,
• 3:45
  I can speak pretty detailed on what the committee's valuing and what they don't value.
• 3:50
  When you play in a conference like the SDC or like the Big Twelve
• 3:53
  where Night in and night out. These games that you're playing, they're Quad
• 3:57
  one, their Quad two opportunities. You get rewarded by the committee for winning
• 4:01
  those games. You do not get punished for losing those games. So even
• 4:06
  if a team has collected some losses that and that lost columns really piling up,
• 4:11
  if all of those losses are in Quad one and Quad two, in
• 4:14
  the eyes of the selection committee, you actually still have a pretty good resume.
• 4:16
  And that's how you can see, you know, eight nine teams from
• 4:19
  a single conference get into the tournament. Which conference, in your estimation are
• 4:26
  we sleeping on this year? That that could be you know, somewhat of
• 4:29
  a surprise. I mean, obviously we know about the Big twelve, of
• 4:30
  the ten, the SEC, the Big East, the ACC. I mean,
• 4:32
  were looking at the you know, Mountain Valley Conference. Are we looking
• 4:35
  at the West Coast Conference? Are we looking at maybe a WAC? I
• 4:40
  mean, where are you looking that? Maybe a lot of people aren't looking.
• 4:44
  Yeah, I think you know, outside the Power six if you will
• 4:46
  in college basketball, that'd be your your traditional Power five plus the Big East.
• 4:50
  For me, it's easy to go right to the Mountain West. I
• 4:54
  think the Mountain West, they might get four teams in the tournament this year.
• 4:57
  And you know for a for a high MI, mid major, high
• 5:00
  major, whatever you want to call them. They do play FBS football of
• 5:02
  course in the Mountain West, but typically not a basketball powerhouse that comes to
• 5:06
  mind the Mountain West Conference. I also think the A ten is a conference
• 5:11
  to keep an eye with some good teams the WCC, you know, the
• 5:14
  West Coast Conference. Usually they've got Gonzaga and then you know Saint Mary's will
• 5:17
  be a strong team too. In recent air of San Francisco has made a
• 5:20
  tournament out of the WCC. Gonzaga is down this year. This is not
• 5:26
  the Gonzaga type team that you're used to seeing from the last twenty five years.
• 5:30
  So I'm not sure how much the WCC is going to be a big
• 5:32
  player come March this year, but definitely the Mountain West, the APEN,
• 5:36
  that's where you need to be looking if you're looking outside the traditional power six