Welcome to the final installment of our first look at the new Big Ten in men’s basketball next season. We’ve wrapped up talking about teams 18 through 13 here and most recently teams 12 through 7 here. If you’re looking for Washington and can’t find them below, go back and check out the previous articles.
6. Ohio State Buckeyes
Projected Adjusted Efficiency Margin: +19.41 (+15.19 last year)
Coaching Info: Jon Diebler +0.0 (t-45th)
5 Highest Rated Players: 6’2 G Bruce Thornton (15.7 pts, 4.8 ast), 7’1 C Aaron Bradshaw (Kentucky- 4.9 pts, 3.3 reb), 6’2 G Meechie Johnson (South Carolina- 14.1 pts, 4.1 reb), 6’9 F Sean Stewart (Duke- 2.6. pts, 3.2 reb), F Devin Royal (4.7 pts, 2.4 reb)
This one is an interesting circ*mstance. Normally, I give coaching credit for a season to whichever coach started out the year. They put together the roster and usually they coach the majority of the games even if they get fired midseason. But Ohio State was 14-11 when Chris Holtmann was fired and then finished the year 7-2 to climb 22 spots at KenPom with Jon Diebler as the interim coach. Diebler was then retained. I don’t have a built-in way to give him credit for that 9-game stretch and it might not even be right to do so but if Ohio State is great again this year then it will look like that was the wrong decision.
The roster seems set up for instant success. Diebler’s best job as head coach so far was getting star PG Bruce Thornton to stick around and not enter either the draft or the portal. He will be a preseason 1st team all-B1G selection. Joining him in the backcourt will be South Carolina transfer Meechie Johnson who helped lead the Gameco*cks to a surprise NCAA tournament berth and now transfers back to his original school.
The frontcourt is a bet on elite talent. Both Aaron Bradshaw and Sean Stewart were former 5-star recruits playing reserve roles on Kentucky and Duke respectively. If both were simply boxed out by other 5-star talent then this roster has a chance to be special. If it turns out that they weren’t playing much because they’re not nearly as good as that 5-star label suggests then suddenly there’s a major hole on the roster.
5. Iowa Hawkeyes
Projected Adjusted Efficiency Margin: +19.47 (+12.51 last year)
Coaching Info: Fran McCaffrey +7.89 (8th)
5 Highest Rated Players: 6’7 F Payton Sandfort (16.4 pts, 6.6 reb), 6’5 G Josh Dix (8.9 pts, 42.1% 3pt), 6’10 F Owen Freeman (10.6 pts, 6.6 reb), 6’3 G Drew Thelwell (Morehead St- 10.0 pts, 6.2 ast), 6’6 F Pryce Sandfort (2.3 pts, 1.1 reb), 6’9 C Evan Brauns (0.6 pts, 0.9 reb)
McCaffrey is right behind Wisconsin’s Greg Gard in the coach rankings in the top ten and somehow every year he emerges with exactly one NBA player. Luka Garza won a national player of the year award. Then he had the Murray twins (Keegan and Kris) lead the team for a year each. It looked like half of another brother duo, Payton Sandfort, was off to the NBA but he decided at the last second tonight to come back to school and pair with Pryce for one more season.
That vaulted Iowa from 12th to 5th in these rankings as now they have a legitimate star to build around. Also, they haven’t finished below .500 in conference play in 7 years and that’s why McCaffrey is an elite coach even if he’s easy to make fun of for his outbursts. A trio of returning major pieces led by Sandfort is reinforced by a few low major transfers. Drew Thelwell averaged 6+ assists last season while Seydou Traore is a great rebounding wing. Without Sandfort this would be a bottom-3 roster in the conference that McCaffrey would elevate to the middle of the pack. Now it’s a middle of the pack roster and gets elevated to just outside the top tier.
4. Indiana Hoosiers
Projected Adjusted Efficiency Margin: +20.77 (+18.74 last year)
Coaching Info: Mike Woodson -6.60 (73rd)
5 Highest Rated Players: 6’9 F Malik Reneau (15.4 pts, 6.0 reb), 6’8 F Mackenzie Mgbako (12.2 pts, 4.1 reb), 7’0 C Oumar Ballo (Arizona- 12.9 pts, 10.1 reb), 6’5 G Trey Galloway (10.6 pts, 4.6 ast), 6’3 G Myles Rice (Washington State- 14.8 pts, 3.8 ast)
Hey, fun fact. Do you know the last time Indiana finished inside the top-25 at KenPom? Way back in 2016 which is also the last time the Hoosiers made the Sweet 16. Since then Tom Crean flamed out, Archie Miller never achieved liftoff, and Mike Woodson has put together talented rosters that just haven’t ever quite come together.
This looks to be another season where the pieces don’t fit but the collection of talent may be so overwhelming that it doesn’t really matter. Indiana absolutely feasted on the death of the Pac-12 bringing in Arizona’s Oumar Ballo, Wazzu’s Myles Rice, and Stanford’s Kanaan Carlyle. Ballo and Rice were both all-conference selections while Carlyle had a solid season as a four-star freshman. The thing all 3 have in common? They can’t really shoot. Carlyle shot just 32% from outside but was the best of the bunch as Rice was below 30% and Ballo can’t make anything but dunks.
That trio will join returning starters Malik Reneau and Mackenzie Mgbako who are both former top-30 recruits and are big forwards that each shot ~33% from deep last year as Indiana’s 2nd and 3rd leading scorers. All 5 of those players have the potential to be 1st team all-conference either this year or in the future. Mike Woodson hasn’t provided a lot of evidence though that he can turn that group into a Final Four contender.
3. Rutgers Scarlet Knights
Projected Adjusted Efficiency Margin: +21.13 (+7.56 last year)
Coaching Info: Steve Pikiell +1.21 (35th)
5 Highest Rated Players: 6’8 F Ace Bailey (5* Freshman), 6’6 G Dylan Harper (5* Freshman), 6’4 G Tyson Acuff (Eastern Michigan- 21.7 pts, 3.6 reb), 6’5 G Jordan Derkack (Merrimack- 17.0 pts, 6.0 reb), 6’6 G PJ Hayes (San Diego- 10.5 pts, 39.7% 3pt)
Rutgers is a tough job but Steve Pikiell has handled it as well as anyone has in a long, long time. There had been 5 coaches in 19 years before Pikiell took over and none of them made an NCAA tournament. Pikiell has done it twice and was just short of a 3rd straight year in 2023 but was one of the first teams out thanks in part to a terrible non-con strength of schedule. This past season was a backslide as Rutgers saw heavy portal losses result in actual losses as they kept up a top-ten national defense but had a putrid 298th ranked offense.
Somehow though Pikiell convinced a pair of local top-3 prospects to stay home and so Rutgers of all schools has the most recruiting star power of any school in the country this fall. If both Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper play like top-3 recruits normally play then Rutgers has an extremely high baseline level of performance.
The problem is the supporting cast. Last year’s starting center transferred to Alabama and so his 6’10 backup who played 81 minutes all season is projected to start instead since they struck out with big men transfers. There are several smaller school transfers who came in and should help with the scoring punch. Tyson Acuff and Jordan Derkack are both guards who lit up weaker competition. PJ Hayes is a great shooting wing. Zach Martini was a great role player at Princeton. But if either Harper or Bailey fail to play like premium top-5 NBA draft picks then this roster’s ceiling falls off dramatically and they end up way short of this projection.
2. Purdue Boilermakers
Projected Adjusted Efficiency Margin: +21.92 (+30.62 last year)
Coaching Info: Matt Painter +9.17 (5th)
5 Highest Rated Players: 6’4 G Fletcher Loyer (10.3 pts, 44.4% 3pt), 6’9 F Trey Kaufmann (6.4 pts, 4.0 reb), 6’0 G Braden Smith (12.0 pts, 43.1% 3pt), 6’10 F Caleb Furst (2.2 pts, 2.4 reb), 6’5 G Myles Colvin (3.3 pts, 41.4% 3pt)
Purdue came within 40 minutes of ending the Big Ten’s title drought but just couldn’t compete with Connecticut in the championship game. Then this offseason they lost two-time national player of the year Zach Edey. So how did Matt Painter respond? Did he go out and replace Edey with an All-American type center?
Nope. Purdue added 0 (zero) transfers through the portal. They brought in the 40th ranked recruit so that’s something at least. But Purdue also lost #3 scorer Lance Jones to graduation while #5 scorer Mason Gillis transferred to Duke. It’s not often you see a team lose 3 of their top-5 scorers these days and just choose not to bring in a single transfer.
Matt Painter is one of the best coaches in the country. He has finished in the top-25 at KenPom for 9 straight seasons. Clearly, he thinks the roster is good enough with internal development to get to that level again this season. Painter knows what it takes to win so just by having him on the sideline this is a tournament team. But even so, it would be a shock at this point for this team to win yet another Big Ten title almost entirely on the backs of a trio of really good shooting guards who won’t have Edey in the middle to draw the attention of defenses anymore. This looks like a rebuilding year which still means probably at worst a #8 seed because Matt Painter is fantastic.
1. UCLA Bruins
Projected Adjusted Efficiency Margin: +26.26 (+7.96 last year)
Coaching Info: Mick Cronin +3.11 (26th)
5 Highest Rated Players: 6’2 G Dylan Andrews (12.9 pts, 3.7 ast), 6’9 F Tyler Bilodeau (Oregon State- 14.3 pts, 5.7 reb), 6’1 G Skyy Clark (Louisville- 13.2 pts, 3.0 ast), 6’3 G Sebastian Mack (12.1 pts, 3.6 reb), 7’3 C Aday Mara (3.5 pts, 1.9 reb)
Last season’s UCLA was maybe the crowning achievement for my model’s ability to pick a team everyone thought would be good and point out some glaring flaws. It was the worst finish at KenPom for a Mick Cronin team since 2009 despite coming off three consecutive top-15 seasons.
This year though is the opposite as my model likes UCLA to get back into the top-5 in the country and thinks they’re the frontrunners for the B1G title in their first season in the conference. Why? Let’s start with the depth. No one has a better bottom of the roster than this Bruins squad. Seven players on the roster were top-75 recruits. Of those that weren’t, four scored 10+ points per game last season. The 5th played 17 minutes per game last season for UCLA. And for their last scholarship they added a four-star freshman (who was outside the top-75).
But wait, there’s more! Because UCLA flipped top-30 recruit Trent Perry from USC after Andy Enfield left and got him to pay his own way so that UCLA has 14 players who all would likely be in the rotation at Washington.
There are downsides here. There’s no way to keep 14 players happy. Plus factor in that they’re being coached by Mick Cronin so they’re likely already miserable. If UCLA gets off to a rough start then this absolutely has potential to blow up in Cronin’s face with just abominable team chemistry.
If they win though, and they should given their roster, then it probably keeps those 5 guys who aren’t playing quiet and means they can withstand any injury or pair of injuries and still feel like their team didn’t get all that much worse.
Despite being the Big Ten favorites, I don’t know that I’d have UCLA as a true title contender. They’re a clear tier behind Gonzaga, Houston, Baylor, and Kansas in my model. It’s entirely possible that UCLA doesn’t have a single player average more than 15+ points per game. The elite NBA level star power is missing here. But they also have probably 11 guys capable of averaging 10+ points per game on a good team if given the chance this season and no one in the country can match that.
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Way Too Early All-Conference Teams*
1st Team
6’0 G Jackson Shelstad (Oregon
6’2 G Bruce Thornton (Ohio State)
6’6 G Dylan Harper (Rutgers)
6’8 F Ace Bailey (Rutgers)
6’9 F Malik Reneau (Indiana)
2nd Team
6’2 G Dylan Andrews (UCLA)
6’6 G Desmond Claude (USC)
6’7 F Payton Sandfort (Iowa)
6’8 F Mackenzie Mgbako (Indiana)
6’11 F Dawson Garcia (Minnesota)
3rd Team
6’2 G Kylan Boswell (Illinois)
6’4 Roddy Gayle Jr. (Michigan)
6’6 F Brooks Barnhizer (Northwestern)
6’9 F Julian Reese (Maryland)
7’0 C Aaron Bradshaw (Ohio State)
*I always try to make the teams look like a real roster. So no more than one post-only center on each team and no 5-guard lineups. The placement is otherwise based on how my model rates each player. So I can’t take a guard lower on my list and put them over a guard above but I could do so to meet positional requirements.
