Kentucky basketball is getting no love in the ESPN BPI rankings

There's lots of love being thrown at the 4-0 Kentucky Wildcats basketball team. The ESPN BPI is not one of those sources. Those rankings have Kentucky at 13th with a BPI score of 17.2. The Wildcats are ranked lower in this system than Duke, Arizona, Alabama, and Tennessee, among others. Why?

First, here is a quick refresher: the ESPN BPI, according to its own definition: "The College Basketball Power Index (BPI) is a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of performance going forward. BPI represents how many points above or below average a team is. Strength of Record (SOR) is a measure of team accomplishment based on how difficult a team's W-L record is to achieve. Game predictions account for opponent strength, pace of play, site, travel distance, day's rest and altitude, and are used to simulate the season 10,000 times to produce season projections."

It says that the BPI score comes from the following: "Basketball Power Index measures a team's true strength going forward; expected point margin per 70 possessions vs. an average opponent on a neutral court. BPI = BPI OFF + BPI DEF."

The problem with this ranking is clear. At the beginning of the season, experts have to start all the teams with some sort of base projection, especially in the new era where teams are dramatically different from year to year. Thus, for the rest of the season, it's slowly getting to an actual representation of who the team is and could be. To start the season, it's hard for BPI to be accurate.

The case and point is Duke and Kentucky's BPI ranking. Duke is ranked second in this system with a BPI score of 22.2, five points higher than Kentucky (which is a pretty strong margin). However, the definition of the BPI says that the score comes from "the point margin per 70 possessions vs. an average opponent on a neutral court." Imagine that Duke and Kentucky play each other on a neutral court, and Kentucky wins and has a score differential of 5 points. This would assuredly propel them over the Blue Devils, right? Not the other way around. This is where the BPI struggles in the early parts of the season because it has to start with a guess and can't adjust quickly even after games are played like Duke and Kentucky.

Kentucky is actually 5 points better than Duke on a neutral floor, not the other way around. This has been proven. Over the course of the year, the BPI will become more accurate in its projections, but since Kentucky was such an unknown, it started the year with a low enough score that it's slowly climbing the rankings. It's not a perfect system, as you can see, but it will eventually showcase how good the Kentucky Wildcats are.