Rauf Report: January 31, 2025

The Rauf Report breaks down the biggest takeaways from the week of college basketball, including a look at the ceilings of a pair of top teams.

The first college basketball weekend without football features a handful of truly elite games. Four matchups between top-10 teams will be played, and first place is on the line in several conferences.

This week’s games have served as a nice appetizer for the weekend entrée. Four teams ranked in the top 10 lost this week, including three of the top six. Wisconsin blew an 18-point lead at Nebraska, Tennessee fell to South Carolina, and North Carolina snapped a 10-game win streak in a loss to Georgia Tech.

Those results set the table for this weekend. Wisconsin’s loss means its matchup with Purdue on Sunday is for sole possession of first place in the Big Ten. If UNC loses again to Duke on Saturday, the Blue Devils and Tar Heels would be tied in the ACC loss column. Meanwhile, Tennessee and Kentucky now meet with both trying to avoid a second consecutive loss.

February is when the real national championship contenders start to separate themselves. As college basketball assumes the spotlight in the overall sports landscape for the next two months, big games will become the norm.

Consider Houston’s first Big 12 trip to Allen Fieldhouse on Saturday. The league’s two premier programs will square off, with Kansas currently sitting a game behind the Cougars for first place in the conference. The Jayhawks currently occupy a rare position — fourth in the Big 12 and potential underdogs at home.

That’s a testament both to KU’s recent struggles and to the strength of Houston’s metrics. However, I’m not sure Houston is a juggernaut that belongs in the same conversation with UConn and Purdue atop the sport. That is where we start this Rauf Report.

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Is Houston’s postseason success inevitable?

The Cougars have certainly proven to be a good team this season. They are posting incredible defensive efficiency metrics that would be the best in college basketball history, and that defense has already led to seven Quad 1 wins.

The resume itself can’t be debated. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some flaws that could limit this team’s ceiling.

Specifically, those issues are on the offensive end. Put simply, Kelvin Sampson’s squad isn’t filled with tremendous offensive players. Houston currently ranks 201st nationally in effective field goal percentage, per KenPom, largely due to inefficient shooting around the rim and inside the arc.

The Cougars have never been a great shooting team under Sampson, who has built this program on defense and rebounding. Still, this team is poor even by Houston’s standards. This is the third-worst shooting team of the Sampson tenure; the worst was Sampson’s first season, followed by the 2019-20 season when Houston was projected as a 7-seed in the canceled NCAA Tournament.

Unsurprisingly, those shooting troubles are most evident when Houston plays its toughest competition. It’s harder to overwhelm good opponents with defense. The Cougars are No. 41 in adjusted offensive efficiency against top-50 opponents, per Torvik, with no shooting stats that rank in the top 100 nationally.

That style — elite defense supported by an OK offense — doesn’t traditionally produce great results in the NCAA Tournament. Here are Houston’s three most similar resumes, per Torvik:

• 2016 Kansas, No. 1 seed, lost in Elite Eight
• 2010 Kansas, No. 1 seed lost in Second Round
• 2018 Virginia, No. 1 seed, lost in First Round

Meanwhile, the most similar efficiency profiles (per Torvik) include the last two Houston teams that had mixed tournament success.

• 2023 Houston, No. 1 seed, lost in Sweet 16
• 2022 Houston, No. 5 seed, lost in Elite Eight
• 2019 Texas Tech, No. 3 seed, lost in National Championship
• 2018 Cincinnati, No. 2 seed, lost in Second Round

That 2019 Texas Tech team outperformed expectations largely due to Jarrett Culver’s individual efforts. Culver was able to produce high-level offense when that Red Raiders team needed it. As a result, the team overcame a lot of inefficiency on that end.

Jamal Shead has the potential to be that guy for Houston. His 25-point performance against Texas on Monday was a prime example. It would help if LJ Cryer re-found his early season form, too, but he has scored eight points or fewer in four of Houston’s last seven games.

Barring those two becoming legitimate offensive superstars, I’m not sold on this Cougars team being a true title contender.

Stephon Castle’s emergence raises UConn’s ceiling

UConn has cemented itself as a real threat to repeat as national champs. The Huskies are 11-2 against the top two quadrants, with the only losses coming on the road at Kansas and Seton Hall. Those losses highlighted a somewhat shaky December, but the Huskies have turned into a buzzsaw in the new year.

The emergence of five-star freshman Stephon Castle is a big reason why. A knee injury caused him to miss six games in November and early December, and it took him a while to fully get his feet back underneath him. Over the past few weeks, the promising wing has become a high-level, all-around contributor and has taken the Huskies to yet another level.

Castle’s potential impact was on full display in Wednesday’s victory over Providence. The freshman dropped a career-high 20 points, showcasing his ability to score from all three levels. It was a perfect example of how his athleticism can put pressure on opposing defenses.

“Obviously, [Tristen Newton] brings us that element of being able to get downhill and create in the paint, but you can see the element that Steph can bring to this team,” Dan Hurley told reporters postgame. “When we’re clicking on all cylinders, he brings that missing element of that physical driver and finisher.”

Newton’s emergence as an All-American candidate has taken the pressure of Castle being the go-to option in this offense. That setup has allowed the youngster to come along at his own pace — and that may result in the Huskies peaking at the right time once again.

Miami’s recent struggles put Canes in tough spot

The team UConn beat in the national semifinal last season, Miami, looked like a Final Four team at one early point in the season. Jim Larrañaga’s squad was 11-2 with wins over Clemson, Kansas State and Georgia, and the Hurricanes look poised to compete with UNC and Duke atop the ACC.

Since then, the wheels have completely fallen off for Miami. The Canes have lost five of the past eight, headlined by a Jan. 10 home loss to Louisville that might go down as one of the worst losses in Division I this season. Bad results against Florida State, Syracuse and NC State have followed, pushing the Canes out of the projected NCAA Tournament field entirely, per Heat Check CBB bracketologist Lukas Harkins.

Miami’s defense has waned during this stretch, yet the bigger concern is the offense’s sudden downturn.

The good news (or bad news, depending on your allegiances) is that February provides plenty of opportunities for Miami to get back on track. Five of its eight games are currently in Quad 1, with two more falling in Quad 2. Two dates with North Carolina and a home game with Duke highlight this stretch.

Things will either spiral quickly on the Hurricanes, or they will be able to turn their season around. A season ago, Miami was able to pull off the latter. After 3-4 during a seven-game stretch in January, the Canes went 13-3 down the stretch to reach the Final Four.

A similar run is unlikely this year, but Miami needs a quick turnaround if it wants back in the Big Dance.

South Carolina’s surge led by defense

South Carolina’s victory over Tennessee on Tuesday put a newfound air of legitimacy on the Gamecocks’ gaudy 18-3 record. In just two weeks, they have now beaten both Kentucky and Tennessee. South Carolina now looks like a surefire NCAA Tournament team — which was a longshot in the preseason, when the Gamecocks were picked to finish last in the SEC.

South Carolina’s assist rate and 3-point rate both rank in the top 50 nationally, but this team is thriving because of what it has done defensively.

Though they rank 47th in adjusted defensive efficiency on the season, the Gamecocks have been at their best recently — especially when they play top competition. South Carolina has trotted out a top-10 defense over its past 10 games, and they rank 11th against top-50 opponents this season, per Torvik.

“I think you’ve got to grind,” head coach Lamont Paris said of his team’s defense after the Tennessee game. “It’s a possession-by-possession situation. Guys have to know that. They have to believe that. There’s no 24-point shot out there. They have to manage the game on a possession-by-possession basis, and they did a really good job of staying in the moment.”

The Gamecocks have thrived in that grind all season. Only four opponents have scored more than 70 points against them, including all three losses so far. Conversely, South Carolina is a perfect 17-0 when holding opponents below that threshold. Doing that against teams as explosive as Kentucky and Tennessee, though, is no small feat.

“They’ve got a lot of heart,” Paris said of his team. “They want the spoils of whatever happens when you do what we’ve done, what we’ve done already. They want the spoils of that. But they’re fighters. They’re tough. They want to win badly as a group … We’ve got a team full of guys where everybody wants to win, and they do whatever they can. It’s a resilient group.”

South Carolina now finds itself a game out of first place in the SEC with an interesting stretch upcoming. A road trip to Athens to face Georgia, which already beat the Gamecocks, comes on Saturday. That game is followed by a home tilt against another 18-3 team in Ole Miss. Then, after a home date with Vanderbilt, South Carolina faces Auburn at Neville Arena.

If the Gamecocks want to keep things rolling, the defense must continue to lead the charge.

Louisiana Tech emerging as dangerous mid-major

Back in November, I highlighted a pair of Conference USA teams in Liberty and UTEP. However, no team in that league has played as well as Louisiana Tech this year.

The Bulldogs currently rank 67th on KenPom, 64th on Torvik and 69th in the NET, all strong metrics for a mid-major program. They are just 1-4 against the top two quadrants, though, and did suffer a Q4 loss to Saint Louis. However, that game also highlights why the metrics are so high on this team.

Simply put, Louisiana Tech has been competitive in every game it has played. Three of its losses came against projected NCAA Tournament teams (Colorado State, New Mexico, Grand Canyon), and all three came by single digits. There was also an overtime loss to Seattle and a loss to Sam Houston State by four. Additionally, Louisiana Tech blew a six-point lead with 36 seconds left against Saint Louis. All six losses came on the road, too.

The Bulldogs played well during that stretch, but there was a feeling they just couldn’t get over the hump. That has changed during the current six-game win streak. Louisiana Tech has put forth elite defensive efforts alongside an improved offense.

Texas Tech transfer Daniel Batcho has teamed with Isaiah Crawford to form an elite two-way frontcourt. Both players average over 15.0 points, and they are combining for roughly four blocks every night. Batcho is filling up the stat sheet (15.0 ppg, 10.5 rpg, 2.4 bpg), while Crawford’s versatility (2.4 apg, 2.0 spg, 42.4 3P%) makes him a matchup nightmare at the 4.

Those two anchor a top-40 defense that perfectly complements the team’s 3-point shooting prowess. Crawford is one of four Bulldogs shooting over 42 percent from long range, making this group a tough matchup for anyone.

Louisiana Tech will have to win the C-USA Tournament to get into the Big Dance, and that’s no sure thing given the strength at the top of that league. If the Bulldogs do get there, though, this team is more than capable of pulling an upset.