College Basketball Weekly: Feast Week delivers, SEC dominates November

Feast Week delivered in glorious fashion, providing electric matchups, complete unpredictability, an awesome Maui, and plenty of overtime. So, here’s the menu for this weekend’s college basketball recap:

• A full list of Feast Week winners
• Blurbs on Dan Hurley, Maui, Oklahoma and Oregon
• Crazy numbers on the SEC’s dominant November
• The November efficiency landscape
• Notable results!

In that order, too. There’s just a hoard of important game scores from the last week, so you can see all of those at the bottom. But let’s start with the list of winners from Feast Week’s multi-team events, ranked from the best team to the worst.

Feast Week Winners

1. Auburn (Maui Invitational)
2. Purdue (Rady Children’s Invitational)
3. Oregon (Players Era Festival)
4. Florida (ESPN Events)
5. Oklahoma (Battle 4 Atlantis)
6. Arizona State (Acrisure Classic)
7. Michigan (Fort Myers Tip-Off)
8. Clemson (Sunshine Slam)
9. Butler (Arizona Tip-Off)
10. SMU (Acrisure Holiday Invitational)
11. Washington (Acrisure Invitational)

The Hurley Boys and Feast Week Takeaways

Let’s rapid-fire some major takeaways.

A complete meltdown for Dan Hurley. UConn fans may love it, and two straight titles may sort of excuse it, but Coach Hurley’s behavior towards the referees and his immaturity at the podium, especially following the Memphis loss, is wholly unacceptable. Let’s stop making excuses for collegiate head coaches who can’t control their emotions. Plus, it’s hard to blame the refs for a 0-3 week in Maui, no? Thought so.

Auburn to the top. Auburn and Kansas have clearly put together the best resumes to date, and the Tigers have looked like a juggernaut in wins over Houston and then Iowa State, North Carolina and Memphis in Maui. It’s thanks to the similar combination of depth and positional size/versatility they won with last year but with more juice on the perimeter and a Wooden Award candidate anchoring the paint in Johni Broome.

Quack Quack. The Oregon Ducks are flying under the radar, probably to their own fans, who are wrapped up in an undefeated football season. But Dana Altman is back in the spotlight after winning the Players Era Festival by beating Texas A&M, San Diego State and Alabama to advance to 8-0 with a senior-laden team. These guys are certainly players in what’s looked like a weak Big Ten this season.

Boomer Sooner. Porter Moser just completed the best week of his Oklahoma career, sweeping through Providence, Arizona and Louisville to win the Battle 4 Atlantis and advance OU to 7-0. If you haven’t seen the Sooners or watched his highlight reel, make sure to catch some Jeremiah Fears action, because the freshman point guard is one of the top players in the SEC with the best handle in the league.

SEC’s Dominant November

At last, there’s room for debate on the football field as to whether the SEC is actually the dominant conference this season. However, on the basketball court, in the month of November, the SEC just put its foot down to leave zero doubt that they are head and shoulders above the rest.

Unlike football, basketball provides ample non-conference matchups between teams from different power conferences. So, in November alone, the 16 SEC teams played in 44 matchups against teams from other power conferences (Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, and Big East). The SEC went 31-13 in those games. That’s a 70% win rate.

For fun: Who has the worst record in those games this season? Good ol’ John Calipari and Arkansas at 0-2 as the only SEC team who has faced power conference competition and not won at least one game.

Analytically, the case is even stronger for the SEC as the top dog. KenPom has the SEC rated as its top conference so far by a fairly wide margin — and the league is on historic trajectory. Plus, KenPom’s top two teams hail from the SEC (Auburn & Tennessee) while five SEC teams populate KenPom’s top 12 and 13 of 16 fall inside the top 50.

It’s the SEC we always dreamed of on the basketball court. Like the Old Big East and the recent Big 12, you’re running through an absolute gauntlet with high-profile matchups seemingly every time out once the calendar flips. Let’s not overlook that this season’s SEC is likely to be the strongest in the history of the league.

Efficiency Landscape

Stolen straight from two guys: Kirk Goldsberry and Bart Torvik. Goldsberry for the idea, since he often posts the NBA “efficiency landscape” showing a chart of how the best teams look when rating purely by offensive and defensive efficiency. We’ll do the same here, using a chart produced by the great Bart Torvik and his incredible website.

So, here’s how the picture shakes out:

If that’s blurry for you, as it is to me, this tweet might have a clearer picture.

Writing about this later, but here is the efficiency snapshot for college hoops in November, via @totally_t_bomb

Also will be writing about the SEC and its five teams in the ELITE tier so far pic.twitter.com/h9J5GEkWnX

— Alex Weber (@alexhweber) December 1, 2024

Notable Results

(AP Ranking)

Memphis 99 vs. (2) UConn 97
(4) Auburn 83 vs. (5) Iowa State 81
San Diego State 71 vs. (21) Creighton 53
Oregon 80 vs. (20) Texas A&M 70
(9) Alabama 85 vs. (6) Houston 80
(1) Kansas 75 vs. (11) Duke 72
(4) Auburn 85 vs. (12) North Carolina 72
Louisville 89 vs. (14) Indiana 61
West Virginia 86 vs. (3) Gonzaga 78
Colorado 73 vs. (2) UConn 72
(4) Auburn 90 vs. Memphis 76
(20) Texas A&M 77 vs. (21) Creighton 73
Michigan 78 vs. (22) Xavier 53
Michigan State 94 vs. (12) North Carolina 91
(9) Alabama 95 vs. Rutgers 90
Dayton 85 vs. (2) UConn 67
Louisville 79 vs. West Virginia 70
(3) Gonzaga 89 vs. (14) Indiana 73
Illinois 90 vs. (19) Arkansas 77
Oklahoma 82 vs. (24) Arizona 77
(23) Ole Miss 96 vs. BYU 85
Saint Mary’s 71 vs. USC 36
(20) Texas A&M 81 vs. Rutgers 77
San Diego St. 73 vs. (6) Houston 70
Oregon 83 vs. (9) Alabama 81
West Virginia 83 vs. (24) Arizona 76
Oklahoma 69 vs. Louisville 64
(13) Purdue 80 vs. (23) Ole Miss 78
Butler 87 vs. Mississippi State 77
Arizona State 68 vs. Saint Mary’s 64