If you take a look at the early preseason top 25 lists for the 2024-2025 college basketball season, you won’t see Virginia on them. Given that the Cavaliers barely made last year’s NCAA Tournament and were eliminated in a play-in game, it’s hard to justify a preseason ranking for them. With key players like Reece Beekman and Ryan Dunn departing, it’s understandable why college basketball analysts aren’t particularly optimistic about Virginia heading into this season.
However, for those wanting a bit more optimism about Tony Bennett’s team, barttorvik.com offers some promising insights. This college basketball analytics site, similar to KenPom, provides projections for the upcoming season based on various statistical factors.
One notable category is “Projected Effective Talent,” which assesses the talent level of each roster and its potential on-court impact. In this metric, Virginia is ranked as the fourth-most talented team in the nation for the 2024-2025 season, scoring an impressive 81.3, the best in the ACC. UConn, the two-time reigning champions, sits at No. 1, followed by Illinois, Indiana, and Virginia, with North Carolina and Duke close behind.
The graphic shared by College Basketball Report on Twitter on Wednesday compiles the Bart Torvik projected effective talent rankings into a top 50 list. It gained significant traction on Twitter, particularly due to the notable omissions of Alabama, Iowa State, and Auburn, which sparked considerable criticism. Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that CBK Report mistakenly listed Texas A&M twice—at 17th and 35th—when they should only be at 17th, with Texas intended for the 35th spot. Aside from that error, the graphic accurately represents the Bart Torvik rankings.
It’s important to clarify that these projected effective talent rankings are just one statistical measure and do not reflect Bart Torvik’s actual forecasts for team performance this season. These predictions can be found in Bart Torvik’s well-known T-Rank projections, which, along with the “wins above bubble” metric, will be used for the first time this season by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee when deciding the tournament field in March. Thus, these statistics serve a real purpose in determining team selections, seedings, and matchups for March Madness in 2025.
The most talented teams in college basketball for 2024-25, via https://t.co/BisYiyTP7k 👀 pic.twitter.com/egvtl7Cjia
— College Basketball Report (@CBKReport) September 4, 2024
The T-Rank is a complex calculation that evaluates offensive and defensive efficiency, along with points scored and allowed per possession, ultimately producing a number between 0 and 1 that indicates a team’s likelihood of winning against an average Division I team. This is similar to KenPom’s rankings and will be used alongside them this year to help guide the Selection Committee’s choices.
These metrics will evolve and become significantly more relevant once games begin in November. In Bart Torvik’s preseason projections, Virginia is ranked 64th, with a 79.06% chance of defeating an average DI team. UVA’s T-Rank is impacted by a subpar expected adjusted offensive efficiency—reflecting the program’s recent offensive challenges—and a low percentage of returning minutes and possessions on this year’s roster. Currently, Bart Torvik predicts Virginia will finish with a 17-13 record, including a 10-10 mark in the ACC, which would mark their worst season since Tony Bennett’s second year at the university.
Given the strong indications of a “down year” and skepticism surrounding the Cavaliers this season, it’s surprising to see them ranked so highly in terms of talent, being considered a top five roster in college basketball according to this metric.
Virginia may have lost Reece Beekman and Ryan Dunn to the NBA, along with seasoned frontcourt players Jake Groves and Jordan Minor, but they still boast seven former ESPN Top 100 recruits—more than any UVA team in the Tony Bennett era:
- Jalen Warley, No. 61 (2021)
- Isaac McKneely, No. 72 (2022)
- Blake Buchanan, No. 63 (2023)
- TJ Power, No. 32 (2023)
- Dai Dai Ames, No. 58 (2023)
- Elijah Gertrude, No. 99 (2023)
- Jacob Cofie, No. 59 (2024)
Unfortunately, Elijah Gertrude is expected to miss the entire 2024-2025 season due to a knee injury from a scooter accident. It seems Bart Torvik has accounted for this, as Gertrude is not included among Virginia’s Top 10 Projected Contributors for next season. Even without him, the Cavaliers still have six former Top 100 recruits slated to play, along with Taine Murray, Andrew Rohde, and Elijah Saunders. They also have some potential wild cards, including redshirt freshmen Christian Bliss and Anthony Robinson, Vanderbilt transfer walk-on Carter Lang, and true freshman sharpshooter Ishan Sharma. While any of these players could significantly impact the season, the group as a whole lacks experience.
This raises the question: is untapped talent more valuable than the known advantage of experience? We recently explored this topic in an article by William Smythe, analyzing data from the past decade of Virginia men’s basketball to assess the connection between returning experience and team success. You can find that article here: Virginia Basketball Roster Analysis: Balancing Youth vs. Experience.
In my opinion, while Virginia’s 4th-place ranking in expected effective talent may slightly overestimate the current roster, the projection placing them 64th overall and predicting a .500 record in the ACC seems to significantly undervalue both this team and Tony Bennett’s established success. Only time will provide the answers.
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