The Pac-12 has been suffering through a long dark period. The Big Ten has been dominant (at least in the pre-conference schedule) for the last few years. Should we expect a change this year? Is the Pac-12’s slump over? Is the Big Ten’s boom about to come to an end? Let’s take a quick look at some basic roster data and see if we can uncover any trends.

Part of predicting the season is noting the number of elite high school prospects on each roster. Not only are these players more likely to play well as freshmen, but they are also more likely to breakout later in their career. Recall, for example, Michael Snaer of Florida St. Snaer was a former Top 20 recruit, and while it took him three seasons, he broke out in a big way in 2011-12. After adding up the numbers…

- The Big East has the most former RSCI Top 100 prospects on rosters heading into the season with 58.

- But the Big East has more teams, and the Big East has only 3.9 elite recruits per team. The ACC has the most former Top 100 recruits per team with 4.6 per team.

- But James McAdoo is the only former Top 10 prospect in the ACC this season. That seems like an unprecedented lack of super-elite talent for the conference. If you want super elite talent, you probably want to watch the SEC, assuming everyone is declared academically eligible. John Calipari never lets us down on the recruiting trail.

- The SEC, however, is only welcoming ten Top 100 freshmen this year as a whole. Even the Big Ten, the land of typically poor recruiting, is welcoming more Top 100 freshmen than the SEC this season. And yes, the slumping Pac-12 brings in quite a few elite recruits this year.

The next table isn’t really roster data, but it does reflect some of my preliminary projections about playing time.

- The ACC is going to be the youngest conference in the nation this year, according to my projections.

- The Big East has a startlingly low number of key seniors on rosters this year.

- As usual, the MWC and A10 have more mature rosters. They lose fewer players to the NBA and that helps the top MWC and A10 teams compete, even without a plethora of blue chip talent.

The Pac-12 is getting older in a hurry, thanks in no small part to an influx of transfers. Note that your transfer numbers may vary slightly. I’m excluding transfer walk-ons and a few JUCOs who seem unlikely to play in the next table.

The transfer table doesn’t mean the Pac-12 has suddenly become the conference of transfers. This is all a natural consequence of recent league history. The Pac-12 teams have struggled the last few years making those teams particularly attractive places for transfers to matriculate. If you want to transfer and PLAY in an elite league, you would have chosen the Pac-12 too.  On the other hand, the Big Ten has been on an upswing and few coaches have needed to dip into the JUCO ranks as a quick fix. Deverell Biggs of Nebraska is currently the only incoming JUCO player projected for the Big Ten this year.

Overall, the Pac-12 was a depleted league, but it is adding a number of impact freshmen and key transfers this year. The days of the league failing to field a Top 25 team are over. As for the Big Ten, the jury is still out. The teams at the top still have plenty of talent, but programs like Purdue could be in for a bit of a slip without an influx of can’t miss players coming in.

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Many people believe the season is won (or lost) in February. Some teams get better, the rest get left in the rear view mirror.

But looking at win-loss records in the Last 10 can be misleading because of different schedule strengths. Here are the teams whose opponent adjusted margin-of-victory numbers are trending in the right direction:

ChOff = Change in Adjusted Offense From January 31^st to February 27^th

ChDef = Change in Adjusted Defense From January 31^st to February 27^th (I changed the sign so that positive is good.)

TotalCh = Change in Offense plus Change in Defense

Rank = Monday’s Pomeroy Rank

Perhaps TCU won’t be a cellar-dweller in the Big 12 next year after all. After beating New Mexico on Saturday, TCU is one of the most improved teams in the nation over the last month. Notre Dame’s losing streak may have come to an end at St. John’s, but February was still a very good month for the Irish. And Michigan St. has staked its claim as one of the top teams in the nation.

Here are some teams trending the wrong direction:

Here are some teams that are surging on offense, but whose defense has slipped recently:

And here are some teams that are surging on defense, but haven’t seen enough offensive improvement to make a big jump in the Pomeroy Rankings:

So much for Travon Woodall salvaging Pitt’s season.  The Panthers offense continues to trend in the wrong direction.  Here are the teams with sagging offense that are not listed above:

And here are the teams whose defense has gone in the tank:

Trends can be reversed in a moment.  A breakout player will lead to a boost in offense until the scouting reports catch up.  Thus I wouldn’t necessarily believe these are permanent changes.  But if you believe that teams that get better in February win in March, these lists provide plenty of ammunition.

There are a lot of complicated ways to evaluate coaches. (If you want a more complicated measure, here is something I wrote about this back in the Fall.) But sometimes the simplest measure is the best measure. Who has the most NCAA titles? Who has the most wins? And using the Pomeroy Rankings we can break it down to an even simpler level. Who wins the most possessions? If you outscore your opponent on more trips down the floor, eventually good things will happen. 

Today, I look at the coaches with the best per possession numbers over the last five years. If you’ve followed my writing for the last few years, you’ve seen this table frequently. But I thought it was time to update the table with the data from the 2011-12 season. I’ve also decided to focus on the last five years to allow some of the recent success stories to climb the list. (I include the 10-year table at the end for the curious.)

The following table shows the

AAO = Average Adjusted Offense

AAD = Average Adjusted Defense

AEM = Average Efficiency Margin (Offense – Defense)

Here are the coaches with the top efficiency margins over the last five years:

For the first time since I’ve been tracking these stats, Bill Self has taken over the top spot in the coach rankings. And this season might be Self’s finest performance. Thomas Robinson has always been an explosive player. But Self has groomed him from an inconsistent freshman into the national player-of-the-year favorite. Tyshawn Taylor’s emergence as a polished player is equally remarkable. But it is Self’s consistent commitment to defense that has allowed his team to win conference titles year after year.

Bo Ryan remains a bit of an enigma on this list due to a lack of postseason success, but other coaches have posted great regular season numbers without post-season success too. Rick Barnes teams are frequently viewed as NCAA tournament disappointments. And John Thompson III is an even more extreme example. This table includes data from 2007-08 to 2011-12, and JT3 is the 13^th best coach in that span. But John Thompson III has one NCAA tournament win in that span.

Because the college basketball postseason is single-elimination, the best teams frequently do not advance. But you have to believe the coaches at the top of this list, by winning the possession battle consistently, won’t be disappointed in the postseason forever.

I decided to cut the list off at 40 coaches because the list was starting to look a lot less elite. Tubby Smith has been more of a compiler at Minnesota than a winner. His teams have been ranked in the 40s, 50s and 60s nationally in his five-year tenure with the Gophers. Because they’ve never been terrible (even beating North Carolina and Purdue before things went south last year), his average places him at 39^th nationally over the five-year span. But he has yet to have a single dominant season. Coaches with single great years (think Tom Crean) have too many losing years dragging down their numbers. But the coaches listed above have been remarkably consistent over the last 5 years.

Who to Hire?

You might think this type of list would be a good roadmap to hiring a new coach. But the problem is that many of these coaches are not in a hurry to leave. Mark Few is quite happy at Gonzaga thank you very much. And Brad Stevens has almost certainly turned down some attractive opportunities to stay at Butler. 

Still, I think if I had a BCS opening, I would be running to offer BYU’s Dave Rose a huge contract. Not only has Rose posted great efficiency stats, his teams almost always play at a fun fast-pace. BYU’s trip across the country to beat Virginia Tech on Wednesday night might not mean a lot if Virginia Tech continues to struggle in the ACC, but it impressed me immensely.  How many coaches could take their team from coast-to-coast and win a game where they shot 33%?

Steve Alford might also deserve another shot at a BCS gig. It isn’t that he can’t win at New Mexico or that the Lobos don’t pay well enough, but given the unstable membership in the MWC, he might welcome another opportunity to show his stuff in a top league once again.

Offense or Defense

As I have noted in previous years, there are a number of one-dimensional coaches on the list. Leonard Hamilton, Tony Bennett and Bruce Weber have all succeeded almost entirely by teaching defense. Meanwhile Mike Brey and Scott Drew depend on their offenses to carry their teams. Jamie Dixon is also a bit of a one-dimensional offensive coach. But it is still surprising how bad Dixon’s defense has been this season. 

Here are the coaches with the top efficiency margins over the last 10 years: