Continuity Check-In
A break from the action to revisit college basketball's trendiest myth.
Way back during the September days when apples were ripe and UConn was a national title contender, I wrote a piece about the role of team continuity in predicting future success. Originally, this was going to be a fairly sharp rebuke of overused commentary lines unsupported by data, but some of what I found presented interesting counterpoints. While there wasn’t an overall trend of roster continuity causing year-to-year improvement, teams with an extreme level of continuity last season did seem to jump up quite a bit in comparison to their ranking the season prior. With 2024-25 ramping up into the heat of the season, I want to take a step back and write a dry data analysis piece analyzing how this season adds to the continuity narrative, rather than covering the electric action out on the court as conference regular seasons finish up. Self-publishing has its perks.
There was no major correlation this season between team success and player continuity from last season. The “head start” that analysts imply these teams hold is either nonexistent, or far outweighed by factors such as talent, coaching, or fit. Being generous, I can assume that they mean familiar teams play better during the early season than teams recently assembled in the transfer portal, before that advantage dries up later on in the year. Comparing analytical performance during the first two months of the season versus the most recent two, teams with a high amount of experience do not play significantly better during the early season. The idea that the transfer portal has lowered the quality of early season basketball, prevented coaches from implementing their systems, and left opportunity for continuous teams to run roughshod over confused newcomers is complete hogwash.
Outliers?
These were the top and bottom ten teams to keep an eye on this season, as they returned nearly everybody or nearly nobody, supposedly a decisive factor in the transfer portal era where teams take so long to gel.
Credit where credit is due, the top teams in continuity have almost universally improved their relative standing, leveraging their intimate familiarity to jump ahead of teams forced to cobble together a roster in the perilous transfer portal. While Columbia’s collapse has been well-documented by Ivy League devotees, Towson, American, and Bucknell have won their respective leagues, hitting the ground running from day one with experienced squads. Navy, Wofford, and East Tennessee State have all made respectable improvements, raising the profile of the program and building a foundation for postseason success. It’s all very impressive until you look at the teams with the least returning minutes and find out that they improved even more.
While the median impact might not be as positive, two dramatic outliers revived their programs by shipping out the old and bringing in the new. That isn’t just on the floor, as Louisville and DePaul, along with Kentucky, UTSA and IUPUI, made coaching hires that changed the composition of the bench just as much as the hardwood. Somehow, Louisville’s extremely talented, previously successful, and well-coached transfers weren’t completely out of their depth in November, as they smashed mid-majors into oblivion before beating West Virginia and Indiana. Mark Madsen’s Cal Bears were so bewildered by their flurry of transfer portal activity that they only managed to beat USC in LA and lead Mizzou by 16 at halftime in Columbia. Many of these teams are still not very good, to be certain, but the idea that this is because they didn’t keep the same pieces from last season is completely bunk. As long as the new players, coaches, and fit are solid, it doesn’t really matter how long they’ve been around the block.
While I’m sure many readers would rather another exciting tale of crunch time basketball, and last night’s BYU - Iowa State double overtime thriller was certainly deserving, I do think it’s important to revisit these discussions at some point during the season, rather than reviving the same tired debates every offseason. With the NIL Transfer Portal Era still in its infancy, every season’s dataset is crucial new evidence in cracking the case of where college basketball has landed and where it’s headed. In my view, this season’s results are a decisive indicator that teams can be rapidly assembled without much consequence. So long as the coaches, players, and chemistry are up to snuff, college basketball teams can immediately challenge those at the top. As the fan of a team sitting in last place of their conference, that’s an exciting proposition. No wonder I don’t want to talk about the games.
Poor Dawgs. :(