HHS Top 25: The Big Ten is Upside Down; Syracuse and Harvard Are Right Side Up

It wasn’t quite 16-seed Harvard over 1-seed Stanford in the 1998 NCAA Tournament, but on Saturday, Harvard upset AP No. 14 California for its first win over a ranked team since that day 20 years ago. On Sunday and Monday, the upsets continued in the Big Ten as each of the media’s top three preseason teams fell: Maryland lost to Rutgers, Iowa lost to Michigan State, and Minnesota lost to Michigan. On Tuesday, the first day of 2019, just seven undefeated teams remained.

We ranked three of those undefeated teams (UConn, Louisville, and North Carolina State) in the top ten on the ballot that we submitted to the STI/Hoopfeed Top 25 Poll for Week 8. This week’s poll covered games played from Tuesday, December 25 through Monday, December 31. Movement up or down from our Week 7 ballot is denoted in parentheses.

1. UConn
2. Louisville
3. Notre Dame
4. Oregon
5. Stanford
6. Mississippi State
7. Baylor
8. Tennessee (↑1)
9. North Carolina State (↑2)
10. Oregon State
11. Maryland (↓3)
12. Syracuse (↑1)
13. Minnesota (↓1)
14. Iowa
15. Texas (↑1)
16. Marquette (↑1)
17. Michigan State (↑4)
18. DePaul (↓3)
19. Kentucky
20. Gonzaga (↑2)
21. Drake (↓2)
22. California (↓2)
23. Texas A&M
24. South Dakota
25. Iowa State
Also considered: Rutgers

Michigan State had the biggest jump this week, up four spots to No. 17, after its impressive 14-point win over Iowa. We elected not to penalize the Hawkeyes for a respectable loss, keeping them at No. 14. But the most difficult decision this week happened a few spots higher. After Minnesota, our No. 12 team last week, lost to unranked Michigan, it made sense for the Gophers to drop a spot or two. But Minnesota beat last week’s No. 13 team, Syracuse, on November 29.

In this case, we decided that Syracuse’s body of work outweighed the road loss to Minnesota, so we gave the No. 12 ranking to the Orange. Syracuse has played a much stronger schedule to date: its opponents are winning 62.8% of their games and outscoring teams by 7.2 points per 100 possessions, whereas Minnesota’s opponents are winning only 44.8% of their games and getting outscored by 5.5 points per 100 possessions. By these metrics, Syracuse’s schedule is one of the 40 toughest in the country, while Minnesota’s is one of the 100 weakest.

Crucially, Syracuse has also gotten wins against that tough competition: the Orange are 11–2 and have already beaten six teams with a top-100 Her Hoop Stats rating, including top-25 teams Texas A&M and DePaul. Minnesota is 12–1 with three wins over HHS top-100 teams, compared to four wins over teams outside the top 300. Minnesota has lost only to Michigan (HHS #40), while Syracuse has lost to Minnesota (HHS #56) and Oregon (HHS #4).

The takeaway is not that we think head-to-head wins don’t matter. Head-to-head wins absolutely matter, but they are not always indicative of which team would win a best-of-seven series on a neutral court. Minnesota beat Syracuse by four at home over a month ago, and it’s reasonable to think that Syracuse could win a neutral-site series starting today based on its accomplishments to date.

It’s also too simplistic to say that Minnesota is suddenly a bad team based on the Michigan loss. There is still a lot that we don’t know about Minnesota, and about any team that has played a relatively weak nonconference schedule. Minnesota’s schedule will certainly get tougher as it continues Big Ten play, and it’s easy to envision Syracuse and Minnesota swapping places again if Minnesota pulls off some top-100 wins and Syracuse struggles with a daunting ACC slate.

Syracuse begins conference play on January 3 against Clemson, and the ACC will give the Orange several chances to get a win over a HHS top-10 team like the Gophers have over the Orange. In February alone, Syracuse will face three of the top ten teams on this week’s ballot in Louisville, NC State, and Notre Dame. I wrote a few weeks ago that Syracuse is a better team than they were a year ago, but their ACC slate will tell us by how much.

Do you agree with how we handled the upsets in the Big Ten this week? What teams are we underestimating or overrating as conference play gets underway? Let us know in the comments section below or on Twitter (@herhoopstats), and keep an eye out for our rankings on the Hoopfeed website throughout the season.

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