Biggest Winners and Losers from Men's College Basketball with 1 Month to Go

From Pat Kelsey putting Louisville back on the map to John Calipari looking like he made a big mistake in leaving the state of Kentucky, the 2024-25 men's college basketball season is full of winners and losers with a little over one month remaining until Selection Sunday.

For each of the five major conferences, we've identified the biggest winner and the biggest loser at roughly 75 percent of the way through the regular season.

Also included are four wild-card winners and four wild-card losers from outside the ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten and SEC.

Winners are players or coaches/teams who have drastically exceeded expectations.

And, well, the Losers haven't.

Unless otherwise noted, statistics are current through the start of play Monday, Feb. 3.

Biggest Winner: Pat Kelsey, Louisville

Yes, it has been Cooper Flagg this and Cooper Flagg that for three months at Duke, as he might make the Blue Devils the first team to run the table in the ACC since they did it in 1998-99.

But Flagg and Duke were supposed to be very good. Maybe they're a bit better than expected, but it's not exactly a shocking development, given the amount of hype that preceded Flagg's arrival in Durham.

Louisville emerging as arguably the second-best team in this conference in Pat Kelsey's first year on the job, though?

That's the type of Winner we're looking for here.

Do you remember how hopelessly, irredeemably awful the Cardinals were in recent years?

They fired Chris Mack in late January 2022 en route to a 13-19 record, and that was more wins than they would tally in the next two seasons combined, going 12-52 under Kenny Payne, damn near not even ranking top 300 on KenPom in 2022-23.

But Kelsey swoops in from Charleston, brings Reyne Smith and James Scott with him, completely overhauls the roster via the transfer portal and instantly puts this program back on the pedestal where it used to reside; a legitimate threat to make a deep NCAA tournament run if Smith and Co. are stroking it from distance.

He might not win National Coach of the Year, but he really should.

Biggest Loser: Miami Hurricanes (and this conference in general)

Miami might be as bad as Louisville was two years ago.

Prior to a rare win over Notre Dame this past Saturday, the Hurricanes had lost 17 of their last 18 games, the lone win coming at home against Presbyterian.

At least they used to put up a fight before Jim Larranaga's decision to retire from coaching in late December. But there was a three-game stretch in mid-January where Miami lost to Duke, SMU and Stanford by a combined score of 294-179. That's an average margin of -38.3 PPG.

The 'Canes were borderline top 50 on KenPom to open the season, and now they're barely top 200.

Boston College is in the same boat, though. Virginia Tech doesn't crack the top 150 at the moment. All of Virginia, Syracuse, Georgia Tech and California rank outside the top 100. And, of course, North Carolina's current spot on the tournament bubble is all anyone can talk about lately.

This league put nine out of 15 teams in the NCAA tournament in each of 2017 and 2018, but it might be lucky to get four out of 18 in this year.

Biggest Winner: Darian DeVries, West Virginia

DeVries' revival of West Virginia hasn't been quite as drastic as what Kelsey has done for Louisville.

It's pretty close, though, as this Mountaineers program was in complete disarray after Bob Huggins' strongly encouraged resignation in the summer of 2023.

Josh Eilert did what he could as the interim coach, but they went 9-23 before plucking DeVries away from Drake.

Perhaps most remarkable about WVU looking good for a trip to the NCAA tournament is that it has had to do most of this without DeVries son, Tucker.

Tucker DeVries led the Missouri Valley Conference in scoring in each of the past two seasons and was sensational in West Virginia's Battle 4 Atlantis victories over Gonzaga and Arizona. But he has been out with an upper-body injury since early December, WVU getting its marquee victories over both Kansas and Iowa State without one of its brightest stars.

Good thing Darian DeVries also snagged former Oklahoma State lead guard Javon Small from the transfer portal. At roughly 20 points, five assists, five rebounds and two steals per game, he has been keeping this team afloat and has played his way into the conversation for first-team All-American.

Biggest Loser: Kansas State Wildcats

Could definitely make the case for Cincinnati in this spot instead. The Bearcats opened the season at 20th in the AP poll and trekked up to 14th after going 6-0 in November, but they have relentlessly plummeted since then, sitting at 2-8 in Big 12 play and needing to put in some serious work in February to get back into the at-large mix.

But at least Cincinnati maybe could play its way into the tournament picture.

And at least Cincinnati didn't invest a reported more than $2M in Coleman Hawkins while putting together one of the most expensive rosters in the country before losing 11 of its first 18 games.

No, that dubious distinction belongs to Kansas State, which is presently 10-11 overall even after a recent string of three consecutive wins. They would need to stay that hot for another month, as they probably need to go at least 8-2 the rest of the way for any hope of a bid.

The Wildcats haven't been outright terrible and were never expected to be a particularly serious contender this year, so their shortcomings have somewhat flown below the national radar. Make no mistake about it, though: This experiment has been a colossal disappointment.

Biggest Winner: Thomas Sorber, Georgetown

247 Sports had Sorber graded as the 46th-best recruit in this year's class. ESPN was even less optimistic, slotting Sorber at No. 56. And in our Jonathan Wasserman's 2025 mock draft from late October, Sorber was not projected as either a first-round or second-round pick.

Now, he's a borderline lottery pick, landing at No. 16 in Wasserman's Jan. 28 mock.

At roughly 15 points, nine rebounds and a combined six assists, blocks and steals per game, Sorber has been Mr. Everything for the Hoyas. In fact, when he scores at least 14 points, they are 10-1, including wins over Villanova, Butler and Syracuse.

Even with the big man's heroics, though, Georgetown most likely isn't headed to the NCAA tournament. At least the Hoyas are a top-100 team again. That's a nice change from how bad things had been over the past three seasons.

Biggest Loser: Seton Hall Pirates

With all due respect to DePaul—which is definitely better in year No. 1 under Chris Holtmann than it was during last year's 3-29 debacle—ranking a good 65 spots behind the Blue Demons on KenPom is quite the statement on the current state of Seton Hall hoops.

Prior to now, the Pirates had never finished a season ranked worse than 117th on KenPom, that previous low point coming in 2013 before Kevin Willard finally started to turn things around.

But finishing top 150 this year feels like a pipe dream for a team that is 6-16, its only win in the past two months coming in a home game against DePaul in which Seton Hall had to rally from an 11-point deficit in the final five minutes to force overtime.

Biggest Winner: Michigan State Spartans

Heading into the season, Michigan State felt like the clear "one of these things is not like the other" team for the Champions Classic, and not in a good way. Though the Spartans did put up a solid fight against Kansas, they ultimately didn't cover the 5.5-point spread.

Two weeks later, they lost to Memphis by eight in the Maui Invitational semifinals, falling to 5-2 overall, their best win a relatively meaningless one on a neutral floor against Colorado.

It looked like their streak of playing in every NCAA tournament dating back to 1998 could be in danger of being snapped.

Then they reeled off 13 wins in a row, dating back to the overtime victory against North Carolina in the Maui third-place game.

The Spartans did lose to USC on Saturday. And it is quite notable that Michigan State has thus far played just one game (vs. Illinois) against the top eight teams in the Big Ten. We'll see if they can keep the good times rolling with two games left against Michigan, road games against Maryland, Illinois and UCLA, and home games against Oregon, Purdue and Wisconsin.

At this point, though, they could darn near lose every game left on their schedule and still be in decent shape for a bid.

Biggest Loser: Mike Woodson, Indiana

Indiana hasn't been bad.

Had the Hoosiers won the back-and-forth battle at Purdue this past Friday, they almost certainly would have been back in the projected field right now.

But go back in time three months and ask Indiana fans if a season spent flirting with the bubble cutline would be even remotely good enough to satisfy them.

The Hoosiers were supposed to be the second-best team in the Big Ten and a top-20 team in the nation. Save for a chaotic OT win at Ohio State, though, they have yet to beat anyone that would be in the projected field today.

The Buckeyes are only barely in the at-large picture in their own right. And in several of those losses, Indiana was simply blown out of the gym, including against Iowa and Nebraska who likely won't be dancing.

The conversation about head coach Mike Woodson has gotten so caustic that the Hoosiers might make a change this offseason, even if they do find their way into the NCAA tournament.

Biggest Winner: Vanderbilt Commodores

This one is going to ring a bit hollow fresh off a 30-point loss to Oklahoma.

Nevertheless, if the NCAA tournament began today, Vanderbilt would almost certainly be in it.

Not too shabby for a team that was picked to finish dead last in the SEC.

The Commodores haven't been to the dance since 2017, and they fired Jerry Stackhouse after a 9-23 mess of a 2023-24 season. But they hired Mark Byington away from James Madison and he completely revamped the roster; a nine-man rotation consisting of eight new transfers and a freshman.

That Frankenstein's monster started out 13-1, the only loss coming in the Charleston Classic championship game against a very good Drake team. And their two most recent SEC wins have been extremely valuable, coming against Kentucky and Tennessee.

It could be brutal sledding to the finish line. Three of Vandy's next four are against Auburn, Alabama and Florida, and each of their next eight opponents currently ranks top 30 on KenPom. To this point, though, the 'Dores have been big winners.

Biggest Loser: John Calipari, Arkansas

This, too, rings a bit hollow just days after Calipari waltzed back into his old stomping grounds in Lexington and came away with a colossal 10-point victory.

Even after that resume booster, though, Arkansas still is not projected to make the NCAA tournament, likely needing to go 6-4 the rest of the way to have a legitimate case for a bid.

Maybe it happens. Perhaps there's a bit of a Ewing Theory in play here, as Arkansas has won two of its three games since losing star freshman Boogie Fland to a season-ending injury. Johnell Davis' return to the starting lineup may have been just the spark they needed.

Even if they do turn things around, though, it's still going to be quite the far cry from Calipari's first season at Kentucky, when John Wall, Boogie Cousins and Co. went 35-3 and played in the Elite Eight.

Drake Bulldogs: The first team to 20 wins this season? You're looking at 'em. Drake got there Saturday afternoon, about half an hour before Auburn also joined the club. And they've done it with a starting five consisting of one big man who transferred in from Wyoming and four players who were playing D-II or JUCO ball last season. Bennett Stirtz is playing darn near every minute of every game, and he had another 30-point performance in the Bulldogs' latest W.

PJ Haggerty, Memphis: From TCU to Tulsa to Memphis to...first-team All-American? Next stop, NBA? Haggerty has been impeccable for the Tigers, ranking top five in the nation in points per game while also providing a ton in the rebounds, assists and steals departments. Memphis hasn't been a No. 5 seed or better in the NCAA tournament since John Calipari's final season at the helm in 2009. That might be changing.

Utah State Aggies: Jarrod Calhoun is Utah State's third coach in three years, and its sixth coach since 2015. Somehow, though, all that flux never matters. The Aggies aren't just a strong candidate to win the Mountain West. They're as good as they've ever been, at least as far as Sports Reference's simple rating system is concerned. The tandem of Ian Martinez and Mason Falslev could be a real, second-weekend problem in March.

UC Irvine Anteaters: UCI is a fringe at-large candidate, at best. But the Anteaters have been good enough that it isn't out of the question. They won eight road/neutral games in nonconference play, seven of those against top 200 foes. They are a certified menace on defense, and Bent Leuchten is the do-it-all 7-footer that the bandwagoners will flock to if this team becomes this year's Cinderella story.

Dayton Flyers: Dayton was fantastic early on, starting out 10-2 with home wins over Marquette and Northwestern, a neutral-site victory over UConn and a pair of close losses to Iowa State and North Carolina. Looked great for an at-large bid. Since then, however, the Flyers have played .500 basketball, suffering four losses in an A-10 that now appears destined to be a one-bid league.

AAC in General: Memphis has been very good, and North Texas is maybe an at-large candidate if you cross your eyes and squint hard enough. That league as a whole, though, continues its steady decline, presently with just two top 100 teams after having five top 90 teams last year. Even with the Pac-12 out of the picture, the AAC has trickled down from the sixth-best conference (per KenPom) in 2019 to now the 10th-best.

Vermont Catamounts: Vermont winning the America East has simply been the status quo for a while, going a combined 134-15 (including conference tournaments) in league play over the previous eight seasons. These aren't the Catamounts of yore, though, sitting at 12-11 overall with three losses already in league play, even snapping what had been a 36-game winning streak at home against AE foes.

Princeton Tigers: With four of the six leading scorers returning from a Princeton team that went 24-5 last season, the Tigers were supposed to be one of the best mid-majors in the country. Instead, they've already suffered six losses, including home games against Cornell and Yale that leave them looking like not even a top-two team in the Ivy League. Xaivian Lee and Caden Pierce have been great, but the whole hasn't been anything special.