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KenPom Rankings Place Illinois Basketball Inside Top 25 ... But Do They Matter?

The Illini are better appreciated by Ken Pomeroy's rankings than by the AP Top 25, for what it's worth

Jason Langendorf

Mar 23, 2024; Omaha, NE, USA; Illinois Fighting Illini head coach Brad Underwood leaves the court after the game against the Duquesne Dukes in the second round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament at CHI Health Center Omaha. Mandatory Credit: Dylan Widger-Imagn Images
Mar 23, 2024; Omaha, NE, USA; Illinois Fighting Illini head coach Brad Underwood leaves the court after the game against the Duquesne Dukes in the second round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament at CHI Health Center Omaha. Mandatory Credit: Dylan Widger-Imagn Images / Dylan Widger-Imagn Images
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The AP 2024-25 Preseason Top 25 college basketball poll was released earlier today, and Illinois was left on the outside looking in – though just barely. As the team leading the “others receiving votes,” the Illini are, for all intents and purposes, currently considered by poll voters to be the 26th-best team in the nation.

While Illinois didn’t land in the official AP rankings, it did make one top 25 list, debuting at No. 23 in the preseason KenPom rankings.

KenPom, created in 2002 by Ken Pomeroy, is a metrics-based ranking system that has heavy sway on the NCAA committee come March and Selection Sunday.

KenPom rankings have consistently been more accurate in predicting the NCAA Tournament landscape than the AP Poll has. For example, one analysis by the NCAA comparing the two rankings found that KenPom had the eventual national champion from the 2012-2021 seasons ranked the same or higher than the AP Poll eight out of nine times.

The KenPom system relies on box score and play-by-play data, along with numerous other metrics, from every single college basketball game played throughout a season. Which, of course, begs the question:

With exactly zero 2024-25 games having been played, do the KenPom preseason rankings even matter?  

Here’s one reason to support the idea that they do: 

The preseason metrics influence the rankings all the way up until a team plays its 27th game (according to KenPom). In other words, these preseason rankings matter not only right now but will influence teams’ rankings through nearly the entire season. 

If a computer-driven formula has shown better results than the AP Top 25 in predicting college basketball’s national champion even when heavily influenced by an imperfect preseason assessment, it’s probably a good sign that KenPom is higher on the Illini than AP voters seem to be.

After last March’s Elite Eight run and having reloaded with an absolutely stacked recruiting class, coach Brad Underwood and the Illini have higher aspirations than top-25 status. As Underwood himself has said, “We want to play two more.” Translation: A national championship game.

Illinois will get its first opportunity to begin proving that it has that kind of potential in its Nov. 4 opener against Eastern Illinois.

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Jason Langendorf
JASON LANGENDORF

Jason Langendorf is a longtime journalist who has covered football and basketball, among other sports, for ESPN, Sporting News, the Chicago Sun-Times and numerous other publications.

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