Auburn basketball cracks top 15 in preseason KenPom ratings

The 2022-23 KenPom ratings have officially been released.

KenPom is a math-based ratings system that provides a hierarchy for all Division I college basketball teams. KP also provides advanced stats and analytics, schedule predictions, and personnel breakdowns.

According to the ratings, Auburn comes in at No. 13 to begin the season. The Tigers finished at No. 12 after going 28-6 last year.

KenPom also projects out (before there is data to be collected) how efficient offenses and defenses will be - Auburn has the 11th best offense and the 14th best defense, while also projecting to have the 37th best adjusted tempo (possessions per 40 minutes) in the nation.

The ratings separate teams by tiers. Tier A, Tier B, and untiered. The NET ratings do something similar by dividing Division I into four quadrants. The Tigers will play 14 Tier A squads (only three in non-conference play) and eight Tier B teams (two in non-conference play).

Perhaps the most interesting stat from Auburn's preseason KenPom stats is the schedule prediction. The overall projected record is 21-9 (11-7 SEC), but the system says the Tigers are currently favored to in their first 21 games before likely suffering a loss at Tennessee on February 4th. If we go by the individual odds for each game, Auburn finishes 27-3 (15-3 SEC).

There are 10 games where the Tigers have less than a 65% chance to win, which indicates a couple of things. First, there's no way to predict whether or not Auburn at LSU on January 18th is truly going to be competitive three weeks before the season even tips off. Second, right now there seems to be a clear floor set for the Tigers at about seven or eight conference losses, which should be good for a top half finish in the league standings.

Some final interesting KenPom notes:

- Neville Arena is the 108th largest arena in Division 1 (there are 358 D-I teams).

- Auburn's "home court advantage" is the 47th best in the nation (before jumping on this stat note that everything on KenPom is a data driven rating - this one specifically includes eight years of training data and eight years of target data, and Pomeroy also notes in his explanation of this that "home-court advantage and team quality do not have to be related" and that this stat is not entirely perfect but close).

- KP predicts Auburn to win all of their non-conference games, seven of them by double digits.

Engage with Auburn Daily on Socials!

Join the Discord

Follow Auburn Daily on Twitter

Like Auburn Daily on Facebook

Subscribe to Locked On Auburn on YouTube

Buy Auburn Daily Merch