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.

Follow @DanHanner

Syracuse finished the regular season with a 17-1 record and were predictably significantly better than any Big East rival when strictly looking at the statistics. There was no other great Big East team this season, which makes judging how good the Orange actually are incredibly problematic.

Interestingly, the drop-off between Seton Hall and Pitt at No. 10 and No. 11 is vast and makes the bubble here a little easier than it has in prior seasons. 

In order to determine our team rankings, we calculate the difference between a team's own FIC per game and their opponents' FIC for the entire conference season.

The FIC is a single statistical measurement that encompasses things such as scoring efficiency, rebounding, blocked shots, etc. Its purpose is to combine the box score into one statistic, both on a team level and for players.

1. Syracuse: 21.58  
2. Marquette: 10.85  
3. Georgetown: 10.60  
4. Notre Dame: 8.34  
5. Louisville: 7.18  
6. Cincinnati: 5.62  
7. South Florida: 4.53  
8. Connecticut: 4.31  
9. West Virginia: 3.09  
10. Seton Hall: -0.63  
11. Pittsburgh: -10.19  
12. Villanova: -10.55  
13. Rutgers: -11.01  
14. Providence: -11.26  
15. St. John's: -15.37  
16. DePaul: -17.09

In-season improvements are common for freshmen. After all, freshmen make more dumb decisions early in the year, so they have more room for improvement. And as Harrison Barnes showed last year, by getting in a rhythm and taking fewer questionable shots, a freshman can improve dramatically between November and March. 

That also means that teams that play a lot of freshmen are the most likely to improve as the season goes on. Last year, we had hard evidence as Memphis, Michigan, St. Joseph’s, and Kentucky were all substantially better in March than they were in January.

But who are the young teams this season? You might think you know the answer if you read the preseason magazines and saw everyone’s returning minutes. But minutes lost are not a perfect predictor of freshmen playing time. San Diego State and Rhode Island both lost 69-71% of their minutes this off-season. But while Rhode Island has started over with a new group of young players, San Diego State has chosen to fill the lineup with transfers and bench players. In fact, the Aztecs aren’t giving any playing time to freshmen.

And that maturity has mattered a lot to the teams’ performances. While Rhode Island has struggled to a 1-10 start, San Diego St. has beaten Arizona and California. The teams with the most and fewest freshmen minutes are not always who you expect. 

Most Minutes to Freshmen

(Playing in a Top 11 Conference or Pomeroy Top 50)

- It may be a bit of a surprise to see Virginia Tech's Seth Greenberg play such a young team. He normally likes tight, experienced lineups. But Dorien Finney-Smith, Robert Brown, and CJ Barksdale are too good to bench. This is easily one of Greenberg’s best recruiting classes.

- Percentage of minutes usually matches percentage of possession’s used, but not always. While freshmen Otto Porter, Greg Whittington, and Jabril Trawick are playing a lot of minutes for Georgetown, the Hoyas’ veterans Hollis Thompson and Jason Clark get the majority of the shots.

- Texas Tech is terrible, but freshman Jordan Tolbert is the real deal.

- Alabama’s inability to make three-pointers and score against a zone defense is really holding the team back from becoming an elite team. Freshmen Levi Randolph, Trevor Lacey, Rodney Cooper, and Charles Hankerson have all missed a lot of open perimeter shots at this point in the season. But if the team can find other ways to score against zone defense, the Crimson Tide can still be great. And if one of these young players develops a jump shot, look out.

- I think Mike Rice is doing a fabulous job, but if you expect Rutgers to be a sleeper in the Big East, be aware how young his team is this year. They’ll be better eventually (especially after Kadeem Jack returns), but it is hard to win with this many freshmen in the lineup and no veteran stars.

- Yes, Kentucky has the best recruits, but could anyone other than John Calipari beat Kansas and North Carolina while working that many freshmen into the lineup?

- West Virginia is exceedingly young, but the formula seems to be working for them. Notice how the freshmen get 53% of the minutes, but only 42% of the possessions? This team is staying competitive by feeding the ball to Kevin Jones and watching Truck Bryant do his thing.

- Texas has been playing a weaker schedule in order to get its freshmen more confidence, but they were not ready to play on the road, looking outmatched against North Carolina on Tuesday. And Texas is going to have to go on the road regularly once Big 12 play starts. But as the team figures out who has the confidence to score against good defense, I expect they will be better. On Wednesday, it was freshmen Sheldon McClellan and Jonathan Holmes stepping up against the Tar Heels. (Interestingly, prized recruit Sterling Gibbs, the player who backed out of a commitment to Maryland, has the worst efficiency stats for Texas right now.)

- We knew St. John’s and Boston College were going to have a rough season with so many young players, and now Nurideen Lindsey has left St. John’s.

Fewest Minutes to Freshmen

(Playing in a Top 11 Conference or Pomeroy Top 50)

- Thanks to a host of transfers, San Diego State and UNLV have maintained veteran lineups despite losing players to graduation. And that’s why the MWC is having another great season.

- Oklahoma has gotten off to a fine start under new head coach Lon Kruger, but keep in mind that he is not breaking in any freshmen. Much like Mike Rice at Rutgers last year, he’s trying to ring some victories out of the current roster before loading up with recruits next season.

- I can’t remember a time when Kansas didn’t have a marquee freshman playing a big role.

Predictions 

My guess is that the teams relying heavily on freshmen will struggle in January. It is hard to go on the road in a hostile environment for the first time with a young team. But if you give them time, I would guess that at least some of these teams will show shocking improvement. Don’t be surprised if Villanova goes on a surprise run in the Big East tournament or if Arkansas suddenly starts springing upsets in February.

On the flip side, I’d be cautious about a team like Missouri. Are they peaking in December? And for a team like Arizona St., things are even more depressing. With a roster filled with older players, but few wins, there is not much hope.

By Conference 

If Wisconsin is always ranked high in the computer rankings, why isn’t Bo Ryan a regular in the Final Four? One hypothesis is that Bo Ryan doesn’t recruit the type of athletes you need to be successful in the tournament. I’m sure that matters to some degree, but Wisconsin hasn’t exactly been losing to North Carolina in the tournament. The last five years the Badgers have been knocked out by UNLV, Davidson, Xavier, Cornell, and Butler. The simplest and most correct answer is that the NCAA tournament represents a small sample of games, and anything can happen in a small sample.

But while that is right, it is not very satisfying. So let me throw out another explanation: Bo Ryan’s teams are over-rated in the margin-of-victory calculations because he always has a veteran team on the floor. Bo Ryan’s lineups are consistently more mature than his opponents. Not only does Bo Ryan depend a lot on upperclassmen, he also red-shirts a ton of players. That means Bo Ryan’s team typically features, at most one or two players under 20 on the floor at all times, and that means his team doesn’t have the same dumb freshmen mistakes as other teams. But it does not mean that we should predict Wisconsin will beat North Carolina or Kentucky on a neutral floor. 

Let me put it another way. Ryan Evans is a relative newcomer to the Badger lineup, but as a red-shirt junior, he’s been through a ton of Wisconsin practices. Compare him to Michigan St. freshman Branden Dawson who sees similar playing time at a similar position for the Spartans. Evans’ efficiency stats are better than Dawson’s at this point in the season. But if you had to wager, would you pick Dawson or Evans to thrive in March?

The problem for the Pac-12 isn’t that the teams are playing too many freshmen. (If you get out a slide rule, the Pac-12 actually averages 18% of minutes given to freshmen which is lower than the D1 average and lower than the Big Ten.) The problem is that because so many players have left early for the NBA in recent years, the players who have stuck around are not good enough.

On a lot of teams, the freshmen defer to the upperclassmen. See Wake Forest, Maryland, Clemson, and Virginia Tech where the percentage of minutes exceeds the percentage of possession’s used. But that isn’t happening at North Carolina. PJ Hairston and James Michael McAdoo take more than their fair share of shots when on the floor. 

Earlier this year, I talked about how Marquette’s Buzz Williams and Notre Dame’s Mike Brey refuse to play freshmen. And while Marquette is still below the D1 average, this season is the most minutes Buzz Williams has ever given to freshmen in his entire career. On the other hand, Mike Brey refuses to break the long-term trend. 

It is hard to believe that “team transfer” aka Iowa St., is actually giving more minutes to freshmen than three other Big 12 teams.

LSU freshmen PG Anthony Hickey has been an extremely pleasant surprise, but he’s taken a few too many dumb shots this year. If he improves his shot selection, the win against Marquette can be more than a fluke.