Looking at the Big East preseason KenPom rankings

The college basketball season tips off in less than two weeks. We are ever so close to watching preseason tournaments and matchups featuring some of the top ranked teams in the nation. This is also the time to look at the preseason rankings and make conjectures on where teams and conferences line up against each other. The Associated Press already released their top 25 rankings. Along with that, the 2020 KenPom preseason rankings were released as well. And as you would expect, there are quite a few teams from the Big East conference.

The teams are sorted by Adjusted Efficiency Margin (AdjEM), which is the difference between a teams adjusted offense and adjusted defense efficiency. KenPom has a glossary on their website which explains how these two are calculated. It is preseason so there is a lot of time for teams to move up and down in the rankings but as of right now, the Big East certainly has a good number of teams near the top. In fact, there are four teams inside the top 20 of KenPom’s rankings and seven in the top 40.

As expected, the Villanova Wildcats is the best team in the Big East according to KenPom. They are ranked eighth in the nation with a AdjEM of +22.68. They have a top ten adjusted defense ranking at 89.5 with their offense ranking 14th. The next three Big East teams are found near the end of the top twenty. The Marquette Golden Eagles and Xavier Musketeers are 17th and 18th respectively. Both are in the top twenty for adjusted offenses with the Musketeers at 13rd but both of their defensive rankings are in the late 30s. The Seton Hall Pirates is 20th with both their adjusted offense and defense rankings inside the top 25. They are expected to be one of the best defensive teams in the conference and have a superstar player in Myles Powell who will surely be the offensive focal point again.

There are no Big East teams in the 20’s but again there are a trio of teams inside the 30’s. The Providence Friars and Butler Bulldogs are 31st and 32nd with Creighton at 36th overall (side note: the BlueJays have the 12th ranked adjusted offensive rankings).

The rest of the rankings has Georgetown at 56th, DePaul at 77th, St. John’s at 95th to round out the top 100.