With the #1 high school recruit Andrew Wiggins in the fold, Kansas is once again the Big 12 favorite. Just look at the high school recruiting ranks of Kansas’ potential starting lineup:

PG Naadir Tharpe (RSCI #91 player in 2011)

SG Wayne Selden (ESPNU #14 in 2013)

SF Andrew Wiggins (ESPNU #1 in 2013)

PF Perry Ellis (RSCI #31 in 2012)

C Joel Embiid (up to #6 in ESPNU Top 100, though lower in other rankings).

Bench: Brannen Greene (ESPNU #47 in 2013), Conner Frankamp (ESPNU #46 in 2013), and Andrew White (RSCI #52 in 2012)

That’s a pretty special group of talent. But we need to be cautious before we label Kansas a Final Four favorite. This team is exceptionally young. None of these players have ever played more than 15 minutes per game at the college level.

And unlike Kentucky (where the recruiting class is filled with Top 10 recruits), many of these guys are more likely to produce down the road. Guys at Greene and Frankamp’s level of the rankings are more likely to become stars as sophomores or juniors than as freshmen. Embiid would appear to be a “sure thing” as a Top 10 recruit, but even the people who are raving about Embiid have described him as a raw talent. They expect him to blossom in 2014-2015, not dominate right away. When you add in the fact that PG Naadir Tharpe struggled with his shot last season, it is clear that Kansas doesn’t have the perfect lineup.

But it might be the perfect lineup for Andrew Wiggins. With so many young players, he will be the clear leader. Much like Texas with Kevin Durant, Kansas players will realize that the team can only achieve its lofty goals by getting Wiggins the ball. And he should be able to carry the team to another Big 12 title.

Of course, Kevin Durant lost in the second round of the NCAA tournament in 2007. And with its physical play, college basketball is not a sport that always showcases transcendent players. And after crunching the numbers, my model projects Kansas as the 8^th best team in the nation.

Vegas will likely give Kansas better odds than what I have below. But Vegas is calculating the odds of winning a title. I am interested in measuring the quality over the full season, including November and December when Kansas’ young players will struggle with the adjustment to the college game. The model concludes that with Bill Self at the helm, Kansas will have an elite defense. He is the best in the business at getting new players to commit on that end of the court. But with so many young players, there will be offensive mistakes. Players will take bad shots. Players will commit silly turnovers. And the model projects Kansas’s offensive efficiency to be worse than some of the other elite teams.

My model’s revised Top 25 Standings look like this:

Pred Off, PredDef, PredPythag: The predicted points scored and allowed per 100 possessions, and predicted winning percentage against an average D1 team on a neutral floor.

Returning Minutes, Possessions: The loss of high possession players can be a larger detriment to the offense, thus I list percentage of returning possessions in addition to returning minutes.

T100: Number of players who were Top 100 recruits out of high school. People focus on Top 100 freshmen, but Top 100 players are also more likely to become breakout stars later in their career.

Last Pythag: Last year’s Pythagorean winning percentage according to Kenpom.com. This is essentially a measure of each team’s margin-of-victory in 2012-13.

The addition of Andrew Wiggins isn’t the only thing to shake up my model’s Top 25 since the end of April. Yesterday I documented how the addition of Eli Carter moves Florida up to the Top 3 in my model. And I wrote about how the loss of Trae Golden dropped Tennessee out of the Top 25. But here are some details on some other teams that have changed since my late April update.

Into the Top 25

Memphis continues to be one of the bigger movers in the rankings. When I first ran the projections model in early April, I assumed Memphis would have Tarik Black, Shaq Goodwin, and Top 40 recruits Austin Nichols and Kuran Iverson in the front-court. And the model projected Memphis at 16^th nationally. But then Tarik Black transferred, and that had multiple consequences. First, Nichols and Iverson had slightly lower expectations than Black, who was an efficient player for three years with the Tigers. With Black gone, Nichols and Iverson would each have to play more minutes. And second, it became more likely that Memphis would have to give some backup front-court minutes to a player like HippolyteTsafack. Tsafack was not a Top 100 recruit out of high school and has had multiple knee injuries limiting him to less than 20 total games in his career. Both these factors lowered the projected offense and defense for the Tigers.

When I re-ran my model (without Black and Antonio Barton who also transferred,) Memphis fell to 29^th. But when Memphis added George Washington forward and graduate school transfer David Pellom, the Tigers immediately upgraded their front-court depth and the model moved Memphis back up to 24^th.

Meanwhile, guard Allerik Freeman was one of the only uncommitted Top 100 high school recruits at the end of April. He recently committed to Baylor. Baylor guard Deuce Bello (who struggled mightily last season posting an ORtg of 86) saw the writing on the wall with Freeman coming in, and elected to transfer. The upgrade from Bello to Freeman moved Baylor from 28^th to 25^th in my model. Even though the model remains skeptical of Baylor head coach Scott Drew, the Bears have reached the point where even an inconsistent coach should have Top 25 expectations.

In my initial Top 25 and post NBA early entry Top 25, I have profiled all of the other Top 25 teams, but I haven’t discussed Baylor yet, so allow me to do that here:

Baylor’s front court remains one of the strongest in the nation with Isaiah Austin and Cory Jefferson. But the team also welcomes back rising sophomore Ricardo Gathers who was seriously under-utilized last year and could easily become a star in his own right. And prized forward recruit Dominic Woodson should also provide solid post minutes off the bench.

The biggest question is the point guard position. And while no single player can replace Pierre Jackson, Baylor does have three fairly nice options. First, even though Gary Franklin hasn’t been efficient throughout his career, he was a Top 100 recruit out of high school and remains a high potential player. Second, JUCO transfer Kenny Chery should be steady, even if he doesn’t dominate. And third, Brady Heslip may be able to provide some minutes at the position. Heslip may not be able to create much, but paired with a player like Freeman in the back-court, he could certainly be counted on for basic ball-handling duties. Throw in prized recruit Ishmail Wainwright and the possible late development of LJ Rose (a highly ranked high school player who still has high potential), and the model can no longer keep Baylor out of the Top 25.

Moving Up

Recently VCU added Florida St. graduate transfer Terrance Shannon. Shannon was not super-efficient at FSU, but the step down in completion should help some. And he makes a difference for VCU because Jarred Guest and Justin Tuoyo were not impressive last year and may not be ready for expanded roles this season. Shannon can help stem the tide until those players improve offensively. In net, VCU improves from 24^th to 21^st with the addition of Shannon.

Pittsburgh also jumped up from 19^th to 15^th with the addition of Marshall graduate school transfer DeAndre Kane. Most college basketball experts have Pittsburgh much lower. In fact, I’ve seen experts write how Kane’s addition “could” make Pittsburgh an NCAA tournament team, suggesting they are closer to 45^th in the nation than 15^th. But the tempo free numbers love James Robinson, Lamar Patterson, JJ Moore, Top 100 recruit Mike Young, and Talib Zanna. And Kane’s efficiency should improve now that he will need to shoot less.

That said, I believe you can make a case that the tempo free numbers are wrong here. Kenpom.com may have had Pittsburgh 11^th last season, but they only received an 8-seed in the NCAA tournament. And even though Pitt finished 12-6 in the Big East last year which made all of their numbers look good, they didn’t really beat quality teams late in the year to justify a strong seed.  For example, Pitt’s big win at Georgetown which helped inflate their margin-of-victory numbers came early in the conference season before Georgetown figured out its offense. I understand why the numbers like Pitt at #14, but I also understandwhy most experts are skeptical of that rank.

The team that should have “could” make the tournament attached to it is Oregon. While adding graduate school transfer Mike Moser improves the Ducks expectations substantially, they still seem to be missing the pieces they need to be a winning team in the Pac-12. I will have more to say about Oregon and the Pac-12 in a future week.

At the beginning of April, I used my lineup-based model to project the 2013-14 college basketball season. If you would like a brief capsule on all these teams, please click on that link.

At that time, I had to guess which early entrants would declare for the 2013 NBA Draft. Now that the NBA’s early entry deadline has passed, I thought I would update the Top 25 projection:

My predictions about who would declare for the draft were surprisingly accurate. (I even pegged Russ Smith correctly.) But a few surprise entrants and transfers have altered the rankings slightly. Here is what has changed:

Out of Top 25

Colorado: The unexpected departure of Andre Roberson drops Colorado out of the Top 25. Don’t let Roberson’s poor efficiency in 2012-13 fool you. He was much better as a freshman and sophomore and the model fully expected him to bounce back and have a dominant senior year. Without him, Colorado will still be good, but not quite Top 25 material.

Memphis: Losing Tarik Black and Antonio Barton in addition to Adonis Thomas was enough to knock the Tigers out of my Top 25, but they are still close.

Alabama: The transfer of Trevor Lacey hurts. Alabama seems destined to remain a football school.

Creighton: While I was right about Doug McDermott returning, I was wrong about another player. I was under the impression that Grant Gibbs would return. Gibbs has only played three seasons of basketball. But because he didn’t play one year at Gonzaga and then transferred and sat out again, it does not look he will be eligible for a sixth year. Without Gibbs, Creighton will still be good, but not quite a Top 25 squad.

Into Top 25

Oklahoma St.: I did not expect Marcus Smart to return. His return single-handedly boosted Oklahoma St. from outside the Top 25 and into the Top 10.

Gonzaga, VCU: They move up because other teams dropped out.

Maryland: In the early April projections I had already projected Alex Len to leave, so Maryland moves up as other teams lose players. Several things suggest that Maryland will make a big leap this season. First, the team gave a ton of minutes to freshmen last year (namely 34%). The typical sophomore leap in efficiency for those players should improve the team’s performance. And Maryland can avoid a lot of those first-year mistakes this year because of its depth. Six quality rotation players return and those players will be joined by Michigan transfer Evan Smotrycz and highly hyped freshmen PG Roddy Peters. Among teams at this level of the rankings, that kind of depth is rare.

More importantly, none of the team’s losses will be impossible to replace. The loss of Pe’Shon Howard is really addition by subtraction. Howard was incredibly inefficient at the PG spot and #52 recruit Roddy Peters should be able to easily eclipse Howard’s efficiency. And even if Peters isn’t ready to dominate from day one, Seth Allen and Dez Wells are great ball-handlers and passers and can help ease Peters into the ACC. Alex Len will be harder to replace, but not impossible. Shaquille Cleare is the most natural choice to step in at the center spot. Cleare won’t quite take as many shots as Len, but he was efficient in limited time last year and as the #34 recruit out of high school, he is exactly the type of player who will typically become a star as a sophomore. Smotrycz’s ability to stretch the floor with his three point shooting can also take up some of the scoring load. Finally, the main reason to be high on Maryland next season is that the Terrapins have a true superstar in Dez Wells.

Note: I don’t disagree with anyone who has Harvard in the Top 25 next year. The model is skeptical of the team’s defense after the poor performance last year, but it is likely that the two players returning from suspension will upgrade that unit substantially. But the defensive stats just don’t have much predictive power, and the model doesn’t generate that result. I may think about a way to account for this (for example pretending last year didn’t happen), but this is a very unusual circumstance to say the least.

It also seems like most experts have Wichita St. in their Top 25 for next year. Even with the Final Four run, Wichita St. still only had the 17th best margin-of-victory numbers last year and the Shockers return just 48 percent of their possessions from last year. The good news is several tournament stars are back and they have a potentially dangerous lineup, but they lack the depth and incoming talent to project them for the Top 25 right now.

Finally, with the players returning, Baylor absolutely has the talent to be a Top 25 team. But the model does not respect Scott Drew as a coach at this point. Even with talented teams, he far too often fails to generate a dominant offense or defense.

Falling, but still in the Top 25

North Carolina: Reggie Bullock’s departure knocks the Tar Heels down from third to eight in my projections.

Michigan: Tim Hardaway Jr.’s departure caused Michigan to drop below Arizona and Duke. But Hardaway was the least efficient rotation player for the Wolverines last year and Michigan fans should still count themselves lucky that Mitch McGary and Glen Robinson are back. Probably the most efficient lineup for Michigan would be Jordan Morgan, McGary, Robinson, Nik Stauskas and elite PG recruit Derrick Walton on the floor at the same time. (Walton has a trivially higher expectation than Spike Albrecht according to the model but both should play major minutes.) But John Beilein seemed reluctant to play Morgan and McGary together this year, and it isn’t clear Robinson can play the wing spot in a perimeter-oriented offense. The lack of depth on the perimeter is really the only question mark on this team as the development of McGary and Robinson should help offset the loss of Trey Burke.

Marquette: The loss of Vander Blue is devastating as Marquette falls from eighth to 18th in my model. Vander Blue was projected to play the most minutes, take a ton of shots, and do so in efficient fashion. While the Golden Eagles still have plenty of good players, he was the clear star. I have also adjusted the rankings to account for Chris Otule’s return for a sixth year, but this is a mixed blessing. Otule was supposedly a substantially better defender than Davante Gardner, but by the measured statistics (namely defensive rebounds) Otule was not very good last season.

Georgetown: I had already forecast Otto Porter to leave at the start of April. But I decided to lower the projected minutes for transfer Josh Smith. The model expected that since Smith was a clear star early in his career that he should be able to play major minutes after joining Georgetown mid-season. But in his career, Smith has never been able to play 75 percent of his team’s minutes because of his conditioning. While he could get in shape, I decided his minutes’ projection was too optimistic and manually lowered his minutes to something more plausible. Without Smith’s offense, Georgetown’s projection looks worse. They still have all the pieces for an elite defense, especially with Greg Whittington coming back.

Not Falling

Arizona: With so many talented forwards, no team was probably as better prepared to lose a player like Grant Jerrett than the Arizona Wildcats.

Virginia: The transfer of Paul Jesperson is not meaningful to Virginia’s expectations next year. He never shot last year and when he did, he only posted a 91.7 ORtg. He was projected to play substantially fewer minutes in the upcoming season and that is exactly why he transferred.

A few other notes:

I cleaned up some roster issues with walk-ons which may explain why some of the numbers seem slightly different.

Also, I ran my initial projections before the Final Four was over. I have now updated the numbers to reflect the final stats. Louisville’s defensive projection fell because of what happened in the final two games. Similarly, some other teams were impacted because they had played the Final Four teams. For example, Ohio St.’s defense improved trivially on Kenpom.com over the last weekend. I wouldn’t even mention this, but it explains why Ohio St. went from being percentage points behind Iowa to being percentage points ahead of Iowa in my projection.

Finally, I had to correct one major error. My code included several “if 2013” statements to project the 2013 season. And I had to change them to “if 2014” to project the 2014 season. In my rush to get this done on Final Four weekend, I missed one line of code where I multiply each returning player by a standard player development factor. This impacts every team and essentially didn’t change the rankings, but it does explain why the offensive projections are higher here than they were a month ago. I apologize for any confusion.

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Integrity and Credibility

Almost all forms of entertainment have their casual fans and their hardcore fans. Often, particularly in the music industry, hardcore enthusiasts will start to dislike a musician when that musician becomes popular. Hardcore fans love bands when they are regional, talented, and under-appreciated. But the moment a band has a pop hit and starts to sell records nationally, they’ve sold out.

Somehow over the weekend the Masters managed to make a decision that irritated both hardcore and casual golf fans. Hardcore golf enthusiasts were disappointed that Tiger Woods was not disqualified for signing the incorrect scorecard on Friday. Woods admitted that he made a mistake with his drop, and in the eyes of golf insiders, that admitted rules violation should have led to the end of his participation. The age-old adage in golf is that “being unaware of the rules is not an excuse”.

But casual fans were not happy with the 2-stroke penalty Tiger received either. Casual fans of sports want to see the athletes that are playing the best be rewarded. They hate to see capricious, random, or bizarre rules prevent the better athlete from succeeding. This is why basketball fans hate flopping so much. You can argue that flopping is part of the game, that acting is part of practicing great defense. But fans don’t watch basketball to see the best actors. They pay to see players with incredible body control do amazing things.

Similarly in golf, no casual fan tunes in to see a bunch of players win or lose based on minor rule minutiae. And yet golf continues to insist that minor unknown rules should have a major impact on its championships. In 2010, it was Dustin Johnson, playing the best golf in the PGA championship, who was disqualified for not knowing about some course-specific rule. And on Friday, it was Tiger Woods who took a 2-stroke penalty for not knowing the proper way to drop the ball. But Tiger wasn’t the only one. When I heard about the violation, I still had the event on my DVR and re-watched the call of the action on the 15^th. Before Tiger dropped, David Feherty noted that what Tiger should do is drop the ball “about two yards back from the original spot he hit it from”. In other words, Feherty’s instinct was to do exactly what Tiger did. Meanwhile, Feherty tried to read through several pieces of paper on whether it was a red or yellow drop, and still couldn’t figure it out in real time. Yes, giving Tiger Woods a two-stroke penalty protected the integrity of the game. But to the casual fan, it continues to destroy the credibility of the game. It shows that golf is more about knowing rules, than about rewarding the player making the best shots and putts.

This isn’t to say that college basketball doesn’t have its own credibility problem. Last year the NCAA added a rule that an unintentional elbow is an automatic flagrant foul. This is exactly the same type of rule that destroys the NCAA’s credibility and turns off casual fans. It rewards acting over basketball, and it must be changed.

Of course we’ve now reached the point of the year where the casual basketball fans have moved on to the NBA. The folks who started caring about college basketball the day the NCAA tournament bracket was released are now long gone. By the time we get to the Jordan Brand Classic, the only people who are trying to read the tea leaves for next season are true high school and college basketball enthusiasts. Even the McDonald’s All-American game attracts some casual fans. But if you are watching the Jordan Brand Classic on a Saturday night in April, you’ve earned some street cred.

2013 Jordan Brand Classic

1) Let me start by praising a player who should NOT have NBA scouts salivating, the player with a 4.0 GPA who considered going to Harvard and playing for Tommy Amaker. As Paul Biancardi put it, Nigel Williams-Goss doesn’t have the athleticism of some of the other top recruits. And to the extent he has a more polished game, that is because he has needed it. Williams-Goss had a pair of beautiful floaters in this game, the kind of shots that players like Andrew Harrison haven’t had to work on yet, because Williams-Goss can’t depend on beating his man and getting to the basket.

But what sets Williams-Goss apart is that he is a leader and a consummate winner. And with the Jordan Brand Classic tied with 35 seconds left and the ball in the other team’s hands, Williams-Goss proved it. He stole the ball, drove to the hoop, and his bucket and one clinched the victory for the West team.

Somehow despite making the game-winning play and leading the victorious West team in scoring, Nigel Williams-Goss was not one of the co-MVPs. But that is so perfect for his game. Williams-Goss was not nearly the most exciting player on the floor on Saturday night. But he is the kind of player that as Jimmy Dykes put it, “when he subs out of the game, your team gets substantially worse.” And for fans of the college game, the Washington Huskies might have hit the recruiting jackpot. Like Ohio St.’s Aaron Craft, Williams-Goss is the kind of player that will do whatever it takes to win, and who will probably be around for more than one year too.

I need to stop raving about him, but I also loved Jimmy Dykes other story about Williams-Goss. Williams-Goss was not a great three point shooter in high school. But when he heard he was going to be participating in a high school three point shooting contest, he spent a month shooting basketballs off a rack. He won the three point contest. We haven’t even reached November yet, and this kid is my favorite freshman in the country.

2) One of my big questions for Arizona next season is how it is going to work out to have so many forwards on the team. But Biancardi and Dykes hit the nail on the head with their description of Arizona recruit Rondae Jefferson. He may be 6’7”, but he’s a versatile defender, capable of defending any position from 1-5. And in this game, he spent some time defending Florida’s super-PG Kasey Hill just to prove his quickness. Next year that versatility may make him the most valuable player on an Arizona roster full of talented front-court players.

3) With 11:10 to go in the first half, Memphis recruit Kuran Iverson had the ball on a 3-on-1 break. Despite having two open teammates to pass the ball to, he kept it himself and converted the lay-up. It seemed like bad ball-hawking etiquette, even in an all-star game. But as the announcers noted, Kuran is Allen Iverson’s cousin. Sometimes, you just can’t make this stuff up.

4) Paul Biancardi did a nice job contrasting Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker. In his eyes, Parker is the polished player who can impact the college game immediately, while Wiggins is rated so high because of his potential. I think this is an important fact to remember next year. Wiggins is bound to be a bit of a disappointment no matter where he goes. We’ve seen it before with players like Harrison Barnes who are small forwards but who don’t have a developed outside shot yet. While the NBA scouts will be drooling at the height he gets on his second offensive rebound attempt, college fans will be left scratching their head why such a prized recruit isn’t a more efficient scorer.

5) It is really hard to learn much from the action in these all-star games because of the lack of defense. Jabari Parker looked much better than he did in the McDonald’s All-American game and Julius Randle was a force. So if you are a fan of Duke or Kentucky, maybe you want to watch the replay on ESPN3.com. But, I’m not sure if either of them made a legitimate post move all game. Yes, we saw lots of scrappy scoring around tall defenders. But Florida’s Chris Walker was the only guy who I saw catch the ball in the paint and make a legitimate back-to-the-basket move.

6) Three players missing in the McDonald’s All-American game did stand out some though. First, Syracuse recruit Tyler Ennis played like he had a chip on his shoulder at the earlier snub. He knocked down a three, had some great drives to the basket, had a nice steal on standard ball-pressure, and he even dove on the floor for a loose ball. Syracuse vitally needs him to play well next year given the lack of depth on the perimeter, and nothing in this game suggested he won’t be an instant impact recruit.

Meanwhile, Kansas recruit Joel Embiid was everything Paul Biancardi promised. According to Biancardi, Embiid is the senior center with the most potential, but his game isn’t polished enough yet. And Embiid showed his potential with an athletic early block of Julius Randle. But shooting 1-6 on the day, Embiid needs a couple years of seasoning before he can dominate at the college level. He’ll be a nice defensive player off the bench for Kansas next year, but he isn’t ready to play more than 15 minutes per night his freshman year.

Finally, I am now very intrigued to see forward Kennedy Meeks next year for North Carolina. According to Biancardi he has the best hands of anyone in his class, but the question will be his conditioning. He could be North Carolina’s version of Davante Gardner or Josh Smith. If he can get in shape and run the floor with North Carolina, his finishing ability will be spectacular. And he is apparently particularly good at outlet passes. But it should be fun to see whether he can get in shape enough to dominate for the Tar Heels.