Flopfest: Analyzing College Basketball’s Biggest Busts
Everyone loves to hate! While generally an unhealthy emotion, being able to contemptuously cringe at the worst teams in college basketball is a benign way of releasing an oftentimes corrosive, repressed emotion. As a result, From Downtown is here to list the most underperforming team from each Power 5 conference! While From Downtown does not personally hate these teams, they nonetheless have gotten off to rough starts to begin the season. In addition, I will check back with my preseason predictions to see whether or not we were right about these teams in the preseason. Enjoy!
As a note, thanks for being patient with the lack of articles in the past week. From Downtown took a break to take final exams, and we are very appreciative of our readers’ patience! Thanks again!
ACC
Team: Louisville Cardinals
Record: 0-9
Prediction: CORRECT
Few expected Louisville to make it to the big dance in year 1 under new Head Coach Kenny Payne, but few expected such a drastically bad start. After losing their first 3 games by 1 point, Louisville has been molly-whopped in their last 6 games. They are consistently losing by a 20 point margin, which is a far-cry from any reasonable expectation. Louisville will not benefit from many more easy non-conference games, as their only future opponents currently below .500 are FAMU and a Florida State team that just obliterated them to reach their 2nd win (FSU is terrible in their own right at the moment, but the Cardinals graciously took this spot from them and spared them embarrassment). Louisville will have a lot to evaluate at the end of year 1 under Payne, as in their current form, their postseason hopes are dashed.
Big 12:
Team: Oklahoma State
Record: 6-4
Prediction: CORRECT
As From Downtown predicted, Oklahoma State has looked limp and unenthusiastic to start the season. Head Coach Mike Boynton’s squad was banned from the postseason last year, and the culture has not really departed from that mindset in the 1st month of the season. Oklahoma State has yet to defeat a top 95 team at KenPom, and has looked shaky against some competition they were expected to easily handle. Their loss to Southern Illinois marks one of the worst in the season thus far. All hope is fortunately not lost for the Cowboys - Moussa Cisse is averaging a machine-like 10.4 rebounds a game - but they desperately need to turn around their climate in order to turn around their season.
Big East:
Team: Creighton
Record: 6-5
Prediction: WRONG
Creighton was off to a hot start in their highest-projected season in program history. They defeated Arkansas, and played Arizona and Texas close to get to a very strong 6-2. However, they have accentuated those losses with 3 more losses, including a 10 point loss to Nebraska, and losses to BYU and Arizona State (who themselves have been surprisingly fantastic, so this itself is not a bad loss). Creighton is still a good team commanded by Ryan Kalkbrenner and Baylor Scheierman, but they are not at all performing to their preseason hype. Creighton will hope to correct their course in Big East play, and they still have postseason hopes so long as they can climb out of their self-made hole.
Big Ten
Team: Michigan State
Record: 7-4
Prediction: WRONG
The Spartans were one of the most exciting teams in the beginning 2 weeks of the season, but have quickly fallen off the hype train. After their marquee win against Kentucky and almost-win against Gonzaga, Michigan State had a quaint Phil Knight appearance where they lost to Alabama and skirted past Oregon and Portland. Things looked good for the Spartans, but Head Coach Tom Izzo’s squad got blown out by Notre Dame and lost to Northwestern in their subsequent games to fall to 5-4. They have since improved to moderate 7-4, but for a team that was ranked as highly as 5th in the CBS Top 25&1, they are not performing nearly as well as that ranking would imply.
Pac-12:
Team: Cal
Record: 0-11
Prediction: WRONG
This is quite possibly From Downtown’s single worst prediction. After an entire section of the Pac-12 preview was dedicated to Cal’s underatedness, they thanked our publication by tanking to the one of the worst starts in college basketball history. 0-11 is simply atrocious. Granted, Cal has lost to a plethora of strong teams, such as TCU, Butler, Kansas State, and Arizona. However, they have also dropped ugly games to Texas State and Eastern Washington. As predicted, Devin Askew has been the standout. However, he is surrounded by negligible production, and his ceiling is significantly hampered as a result. Cal will not be making the postseason this year, and Mark Fox likely leaves Cal after this year.
SEC:
Team: Texas A&M
Record: 6-3
Prediction: CORRECT
There is a tried and true proverb “always bet against the Aggies.” Buzz Williams has been terrific throughout his career, but his tenure as head coach at A&M has been less than spectacular. The Aggies have failed to reach the big dance under Williams, and this year looks no different. The Aggies were trounced by their 2 most highly rated opponents at KenPom, and their strongest win was against DePaul. To make matters worse, their next opponent, Memphis, just soundly defeated a much more highly ranked Auburn team that had yet to drop a game to that point. Texas A&M definitely has a strong roster, but the SEC is loaded with talented teams this season. It looks like the Aggies may fall behind yet again if they do not get their act together by league play.
