Quote from: SpringSt7 on February 27, 2024, 02:22:11 PMIn D1 basketball, all but 1 of the national champions since 2002 have had a combined KenPom adjusted offensive and adjusted defensive efficiency that adds up to less than 50, i.e, the 1st ranked offense and the 48th ranked defense, or the 24th ranked offense and the 25th ranked defense.
As I did last year (when 3 of the qualified teams made the Final Four, including Christopher Newport), I took Matt Snyder's rankings and applied the same thing to this year's field---offense is listed first, followed by defense, and then sorted by the total:
1. Hampden-Sydney 2-3-5
2. Randolph-Macon 3-5-8
3. Trinity (CT) 12-2-14
4. Keene St. 10-8-18
5. Guilford 16-6-22
6. Widener 13-19-32
7. John Carroll 25-10-35
Just missing out:
-Oswego St. 11-41-52
-Catholic 8-50-58
Last year 11 teams made the cut and a few more narrowly missed out. This year, the top 7 teams in overall adjusted efficiency are the only 7 that make the cut. I'd feel pretty confident that the national champion will be one of them.
This is a great KenPom stat. Another one is that no D1 national champion in the KenPom era (since 1999) has had an adjusted defensive efficiency worse than 22nd (Baylor in 2021). However, I am pretty sure that the same cannot be said for D3 champs. It applies to CNU last year, but I don't have the data to see where R-MC ranked in 2022 and where Oshkosh ranked in 2019 (but something makes me think they were worse than 22nd).
Also, it's wild that 3 of the 7 teams on your list are all in the Widener bracket, along with Oswego. IMO that's the deepest bracket of the 4.