What Predictive Metrics Think Of Florida Entering 2020-21 Season

Right now in the world of college basketball, analytics are as big as ever. Computer metrics are referenced by broadcasters and coaches alike when evaluating performances (you’ll hear Mike White reference numbers from analytics tool KenPom on nearly every press conference) and they play a key role on Selection Sunday with which teams make the cut and which don’t.

The reason college basketball has led multiple thinkers to come up with metrics to evaluate basketball teams is simple–there are over 350 D-I basketball teams who obviously can’t all play each other, so coming up with a true way of evaluating them is a constant struggle.

By now, with the season just a few days away, many metrics have released preseason rankings based on their system’s prediction algorithms. Some of these have been historically more accurate than others, but they’re all an interesting look at how the Gators might do in the 2020-21 season.

Expectations for the Gators vary greatly from place to place and person to person. Some people think it’s a team that lost two of their most valuable pieces from a year ago in Kerry Blackshear and Andrew Nembhard, and possibly think something like their evaluation of coaching would keep the team from being a top-25 performer. Others see the returning pieces as well as the additions of Tyree Appleby and Anthony Duruji and expect them to make the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament or beyond.

With expectations all over the place, looking at popular analytic tools for their idea of how the season might go for Florida is an interesting exercise and may just give you an idea of what this team could do. Here is where Florida stands going into the season.

KenPom

Florida Prediction: 24th

KenPom is the godfather of college basketball analytics. It’s the most popular analytics site by far, and hundreds of coaches and broadcasters visit daily to get a temperature of how teams are really performing.

As popular as KenPom is, it is not known for the accuracy of it’s preseason predictions, something that it’s operator Ken Pomeroy has admitted to. His preseason predictions are largely based on historical conference data (in this example, he projects Florida 3rd in the SEC which has historically meant the 24th overall team) and when you look at past predictions, they haven’t been very accurate.

KenPom also, quite eerily, has the Gators as the 24th rated offense and 24th rated defense in the country to go along with their overall 24th prediction.

Barttorvik

Florida Prediction: 7th

Earlier I mentioned that there have been a lot of people trying to come up with accurate college basketball prediction metrics to quantify a sport with over 350 teams, and while this might not be particularly savory in a lot of circles there is a massive reason why people want to do this.

Gambling.

Sports betting is bigger than ever and people trying to get an edge have always looked to these kinds of metrics to get an inside scoop. If you talk to serious college basketball betters who track the effectiveness of different metrics they’ll tell you–the best site in recent history has been Barttorvik.

For that reason, seeing Florida 7th in his ranking is extremely interesting. One of the things that makes Barttorvik’s rankings so advanced is that he has algorithms for the improvement or regression of individual players. That means his team predictions are a true “sum of its parts” evaluation, something far beyond what something like KenPom does.

He has Florida as the 10th best offense and 14th best defense and if they hit those marks, they’ll definitely be in the mix for a Final Four.

With Barttorvik so historically accurate, this is an extremely interesting prediction.

Something else that’s interesting is that according to their proprietary evaluation tool for individual players, they expect Noah Locke to be the second most impactful Gator.

…behind Keyontae Johnson, as if there was any question.

Evan Miya

Florida Prediction: 9th

Evan Miya gained a lot of steam last year as one of the most accurate predictors in college hoops and that meant I had to check out his prediction for how Florida will do. This metric, like Barttorvik, is plenty high on the Gators and has them 10th offensively and 17th defensively. Considering how much better the Gators were offensively than defensively last year that breakdown seems like it could be accurate, and let’s face it–seeing another metric high on the Gators is encouraging.

Haslametrics

Florida Prediction: 12th

Haslametrics is another extremely popular predictive tool used heavily by betting folks as well as college basketball statisticians and boasts a lot of unique shot proximity information. Haslametrics has been one of the most accurate predictions of Florida’s performance over the last few seasons (it was one of the few metrics that didn’t expect Florida to be that good last year) so I was particularly interested to see what they’d say about the Gators.

Something interesting about their prediction is that they have Florida 14th offensively and 13th defensively. That’s a bit hard for me to believe considering how much further ahead the offense was from the defense last year, but at the same time the Gators have been far better defensively than offensively up until last season under White so there might be a return to that DNA this year.

Sagarin

Florida Prediction: 25th

Sagarin might not be the godfather of predictive analytics, but they likely belong on the Mount Rushmore of predictive analytics. It was one of the first predictive metrics to get popular and it’s one of the analytics looked at by the NCAA Tournament selection committee.

As you can see, Sagarin is the lowest on Florida entering the season.

When it comes to commenting on this…there really isn’t anything for me to say. All the other tools have specific breakdowns of the offensive and defensive side of the ball, and some have individual player breakdowns of how the predictions work. Sagarin, on the other hand, doesn’t give out any information about how they get to their prediction. They give you the ranking, and that’s it.

What I will say is this–if we’re looking at all the major players of predictive analytics and the lowest we can find is Florida being ranked 25th by one site–this team could be very, very good. When I started looking through all these analytics I was expecting there to be a couple that would have the Gators much lower, but the consensus seems to be that analytically this is a strong roster of proven, returning talent that could do some damage this season.

Predictive metrics are just that–a prediction. Obviously it should be taken with a grain of salt, but if you were looking for a measured look at what expectations should be for this Florida team looking at what these metrics say is a good start.

Eric Fawcett
Eric is a basketball coach and writer from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His work has been found at NBA international properties, ESPN, Bleacher Report, CBS Sports, Lindy's and others. He loves zone defenses, the extra pass, and a 30 second shot clock. Growing up in Canada, an American channel showing SEC basketball games was his first exposure to Gator hoops, and he has been hooked ever since. You can follow him on Twitter at @ericfawcett_.