Where Does Oklahoma State Hoops Rank Nationally In Last 10 Years?

There has been a lot of discussion lately about how OSU basketball ranks as a program against Illinois and our Big 12 peer group. There are almost as many ways to rank programs as there are D-1 basketball teams: tournament success, conference championships, W/L records, athletic department strength, etc.

Here’s the method I used. I took Ken Pomeroy’s rankings over the last 10 years and weighted them so that 2017’s results count twice as much as 2012 and 10x as much as 2008:

2017 – 18.2%
2016 – 16.4%
2015 – 14.5%
2014 – 12.7%
2013 – 10.9%
2012 – 9.1%
2011 – 7.3%
2010 – 5.5%
2009 – 3.6%
2008 – 1.8%

Before we get into OSU and the Big 12, let’s take a look at the national top 10 just to make sure this method passes the eye test:

Kansas
Duke
Louisville
Kentucky
North Carolina
Wisconsin
Gonzaga
Michigan State
Florida
Villanova

I think we’re good — 7 out of the 9 championships covered in the 10 years are represented in this list, and UNC and Gonzaga are both in position to grab the 8th.

UConn is the team that won the 2 national championships that is not in the top 10 list (2011 and 2014), but they suffered in the rankings thanks to some poor recent results — 23 out of the 40 Final Four teams in the last decade are also on this top 10 list.

Now, let’s take a look at the Big 12 and see where OSU stacks up in the conference and nationally.

1) Kansas
13) Baylor
T-16) West Virginia
T-16) Iowa State
28) Kansas State
32) Texas
40) Oklahoma State
42) Oklahoma
101) Texas Tech
122) TCU

OSU is 7th in the Big 12 in these 10-year program rankings. It’s not good — there’s no way around it. But given that the last 10 years of OSU basketball have been mostly miserable for long-time OSU fans, I suppose that No. 40 in the country isn’t so bad.

I was surprised to see OU below OSU in these rankings. OU’s 2016 Final Four trip alone seems like it should push them above OSU. If these were 5-year program rankings, they would be well above OSU (OU would be 23rd, OSU 37th). But it’s easy to forget how bad they were from 2010-12 — an average KenPom ranking of 118 over those years weighs them down, even though those years aren’t weighed as much as recent ones.

Baylor is 2nd in the league whether I ran this for 5 years or 10 years. It’s more fair to say that they are the top of the 2nd tier (Baylor-WVU-ISU), because all of those teams are bunched together no matter how I run this analysis. I hate to say it, but you have to hand it to Scott Drew.

K-State and Texas both rank above OSU in the 10-year rankings but below OSU in the 5-year rankings. Both schools were much stronger in the 2008-12 periods, which seem like a distant memory now but do manage to keep them afloat in these rankings. Since 2012, the two schools have combined for one top 25 KenPom finish (OSU has 3 in that time period).

Former Big 12 teams:

52) Texas A&M
61) Colorado
80) Nebraska
84) Missouri

Missouri averaged a No. 21 KenPom ranking from 2009-13. Their last 3 KenPom rankings are 192, 160, and 159, an average of 170. To put that in context, the worst Big 12 average over the last 3 years is Texas Tech at 84. If you thought OSU had a bad stretch under Travis Ford, this is a reality check. Missouri has become completely irrelevant in college basketball.

Other teams of interest:

36) BYU
53) Illinois
88) Tulsa
112) Houston
145) Saint Louis
161) Oral Roberts

I included BYU and Houston because of their interest in the Big 12. BYU would be a great hoops addition, and my guess is that Houston would see a nice bounce just like TCU is experiencing now – although it might come at the expense of some other Big 12 schools.

Illinois at No. 53. Let’s take a closer look. They are actually quite a bit lower (No. 64) in the 5-year rankings — Illinois had its best years in 2009-13, averaging a KenPom ranking of 43 over that stretch (OSU averaged 51 over that time period).

Illinois is weighed down quite a bit by its last four years (KenPom rankings of 52-60-125-67, avg 76). That’s a bad stretch. OSU went 21-38-98-23, avg 45). Looking at it through the lens of tournament success, Illinois has only made 3 NCAA Tournaments in the last 10 years; OSU has made 6.

Still, an AD willing to shell out $3 million on a hot coach put Underwood on a private jet to Champaign. That’s a different, perhaps more meaningful measure of program strength.

One last thing: let’s take a quick look at OSU’s neighbors in the 10-year and 5-year rankings

10-year rankings

37) UConn
38) Maryland
39) Vanderbilt
40) Oklahoma State
41) Indiana
42) Oklahoma
43) Marquette

5-year rankings

34) Creighton
35) Utah
36) Vanderbilt
37) Oklahoma State
38) Dayton
39) Providence
40) Kansas State