Southern Nights

---

Written by Sean Murawski // SM Sports 

December 6th, 2024

College basketball is one of the hardest sports to break down into numbers or lists. There are 364 division one schools that are separated into 31 conferences. Each of these leagues have different skill sets, recruiting prowess, and media coverage— not to mention different NIL allowances and reputations. Injuries, strength of schedule discrepancies, and pure luck also all play into how the results of any given college basketball season play out.

This is all to say that college basketball, more than any other sport, is far and away the most difficult to rank. There is no singular, objective way to rank the best teams in a lineup of 1-364, or even 1 to 50 or 25. There are hundreds of different metrics, numbers, and narratives to paint with over any one particular ranking system. Whether it is the KenPom, the Torvik, or the good ole AP Top 25, there are probably 100+ different incarnations of the listed “best teams in college basketball.”

What adds to the chaos is that the NCAA actually uses a specific set of these rankings as very definitive and integral factors when deciding who qualifies for the NCAA tournament. By taking standings, performance, and a whole lot of metrics into account, the NCAA selection committee decides, as objectively as possible, the 68 best-deserving teams to compete in the NCAA tournament. As a result, these rankings made and updated all season become incredibly important by March. 

Here at SM Sports, I have decided to throw my hat into the rankings game with two separate lists: the SM Top 25 and the SM Index. I believe it is a good idea to be transparent about the way I rank, how I rank, and what my rankings actually mean. 

SM Top 25 (“25 Hard”)

Released: Every Monday of the season

Colloquially called the “25 Hard,” (named after a fitness regimen I long to partake in, but likely never will), the SM Top 25 is the SM Sports equivalent of the AP Top 25. 

In the pre-season, my top 25 was outlined as the teams I believed to be the 25 best teams in college basketball, solely on prediction. I release them weekly, every Monday of the season around 12 or 1 pm, for the entire season. 

From the pre-season poll, the rankings are constantly updated. I place all 25 teams into an ongoing table, while also keeping tabs on anywhere from 5-12 teams outside the top 25 that have the potential to make the jump into the next week’s rankings. This table keeps track of: 

• Where the team is ranked, and where they were ranked last week: 1-25, or “in the hunt” (equivalent to the AP Poll’s “Receiving Votes” section)
• Who they play this week (home or away included), and the results of those games 
• Where they trended compared to last week’s poll, and where they will trend going into next week’s poll 

At the end of each week, I take all of these factors into account and compile the next week’s rankings. I also filter in the new teams from the “In the Hunt” section, and move teams in and out of that section as they succeed or fall off the ladder. 

The essence of this ranking is that it is a power ranking. To be clear, I do not necessarily believe that whoever I rank the in #1 spot (at the time of this writing, Tennessee) is the definitive best team in the country for the season, and that they should be ranked #1 overall in March. Rather, I believe they are the best team right now. 

The SM Top 25 is more of a “what have you done for me lately?” than a “remember what you did for me months ago?.” What I mean by this is, I am rarely taking into account previous months’ performances or overall resumé analysis that the NCAA tournament might use for seeding when selecting the field of 68. The SM Top 25 is about the recent success of a team, and how “hot” they are. 

As an example, at the time of this writing, it is safe to say that Auburn has the best-looking resumé in the country: wins against Houston, Memphis, Iowa State, and North Carolina. However, they lost last week to Duke when they were ranked #1 in the poll. As a result, this week, I dropped them down to #3 and moved Tennessee up to #1. 

The Volunteers have yet to lose, and are playing great basketball. Auburn, despite the wins they have, did not perform to the same level as Tennessee last week, so they moved down. However, if we were to rank the teams for the NCAA tournament, Auburn would still likely be the #1 overall seed, due to their resumé as a whole, going further back than just their very recent performance. This is where the SM Index comes in. 

SM Index 

Released: Every first and third Monday of the season 

The SM Index is a ranking from 1-50 that is released bi-weekly, and is more akin to a KenPom type ranking. It is ranked very differently from the SM Top 25, as it encompasses performance over the entire season, rather than just recent performance. This top 50 is more of a “body of work ranking,” and it connects directly to my bracketology, which is also released every two weeks, in conjunction with the SM Index. The SM Index includes several other ranking factors: 

• Record
• Conference record 
• Strength of schedule (SOS)
• Net wins: Quad 1, Quad 2, Quad 3, Quad 4
• Key wins, notable losses 

This body of work takes a lot more than just week-to-week wins and losses into account. The SM Index, for the most part, will match up with my bracketology seeds, at least for the top 16. They take the entire season as a whole, judging a team’s resumé against the rest of the country. 

The SM Index is a more complete ranking that tells the story of the season more accurately. Although Tennessee is ranked #1 in the SM Top 25 and have been playing very well, it is likely accurate that Auburn has been the best team overall this year. They have great wins, not to mention an overall SOS ranked 1st overall at the time of the last SM Index. As a result, Auburn sits at the top of the SM index. 

While the SM Top 25 is essentially a vacuum ranking for each week’s samples, the SM index essentially takes on the notion of “If the tournament started today…” The bracketology released alongside the index also follows this formula. 

Liner Notes 

It’s important to note that I am just one man compiling all of these rankings and data. I do not have the resources of an entire media company, or even the time to really delve any deeper than I already do. I don’t go as deep into analytics as metrics like the KenPom or the Torvik, and a lot of my analysis also relies on the eye test. I am not a computer, and before anything, I am a devoted fan of college basketball. My eyes see what they see, and whether or not I can control it, the eye test definitely comes into play as well. 

The reason I felt compelled to write this was the fact that I see plenty of commenters online at several media outlets with comments such as “How is X ranked higher than Y, when X beat Y!” or “X beat A, B, and C last month. How have they dropped down the rankings?” These comments are obviously based on a fatal misunderstanding of the system. The SM Top 25, and by extension, the AP Top 25, is not a body of work poll. It does not take into consideration what happened months, or even weeks, ago. A team that won games last month does not necessarily have to be ranked this month. The poll, as aforementioned, is more a power ranking than anything else. If you want a body of work, the SM index has that for you. 

The fundamental misunderstanding of the polls is that people believe they take past results into account, and because of this, they become enraged at some poll results. Whether or not you agree with how the polls are assembled, it is imperative to at least comprehend how they are assembled. This way, devoted fans can be a little less blindsided when they don’t understand why their team got moved, and hopefully, they can make an effort to truly understand how the system works. 

Sean Murawski is a writer for his own personal sports website, smsports.net. He publishes weekly columns and rankings on men’s college basketball, as well as coverage columns for the MLB.