Below are ESPN’s College BPI rankings as of Monday. For an explanation of BPI and how it works, please read this article.
In summary, college BPI is a forward-looking power rating designed to measure team strength and project performance going forward. In the simplest terms, BPI answers the question, “If two teams met on a neutral court, which one would win, and by how many points?”
Each team's rating represents its projected point differential against an average Division I team on a neutral court. Subtracting any two teams’ ratings equates to a predicted point margin between those teams (all else equal). BPI looks beyond a team’s win-loss record to determine the strongest teams based on how they won their games, whom those wins came against and where they came.
On to the rankings:
West Virginia returns to the top of BPI after beating Baylor (No. 14 in BPI) by 21 points in the Bears' first game as an AP No. 1 team. The Mountaineers are the top team in adjusted net efficiency as well as the only team in the top six in both adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency, making a case that despite having two losses, the Mountaineers may be the strongest team in the nation.
Duke has fallen to No. 3 in BPI, its lowest point after losing to Florida State (No. 19 in BPI) and Louisville (No. 9 in BPI) in consecutive games. Duke is loaded with talent, and has played very well at different points in the season, including its 53-point win against Georgia Tech two weeks ago in which the Blue Devils averaged 1.5 points per possession, which is the fifth-most efficient offensive game against any Division I opponent this season. If the Blue Devils continue to struggle, expect them to continue to fall in their BPI rank as Kentucky and North Carolina are projected as being just 0.1 points per game worse than the Blue Devils on a neutral court.
Before the matchup between Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s last week in Spokane, Washington, BPI projected just a 0.1 points per game difference between the teams on a neutral court. The Zags' dominating victory at home was the ninth-best team game performance of the season, according to ESPN’s Game Score. Gonzaga is now the clear front-runner in the West Coast Conference, and as the only remaining unbeaten in the country, it has an 11 percent chance of winning the rest of its regular-season games, according to BPI.
The top game of the week, according to ESPN’s matchup quality metric, is Louisville (No. 9 in BPI) at Florida State (No. 19 in BPI) on Saturday (2:00 p.m. ET on ESPN). The race for the ACC regular-season championship has six teams with at least an 8 percent chance of winning, including both the Cardinals and the Seminoles. BPI views the Cardinals' defense as the third best in the nation, while the Seminoles have the 12th-best offensive BPI in the country. This is the only time we will see these two teams meet in the regular season.
Visit www.espn.com/bpi for up to the date BPI rankings and other ESPN College Basketball metrics including Strength of Record (SOR). For more content like this visit espn.com/analytics.