The biggest mystery of the 2021-22 college basketball season is the Providence Friars. There are the usual questions like "who is really #1?" and "who will be the top 4 seeds?" but the Providence mystery is greater than the typical speculation. How is a team that is so pedestrian according to the numbers winning so many games? Many teams have a divergence between their perceived quality and their performance in the Win-Loss column—look at Auburn's 19-1 slate—but none diverge as much as the Friars.
As of this writing (January 28) Providence stands at 17-2 overall and 7-1 in the Big East. This puts them at #2 in our Success rankings, just behind Auburn. But in our Strength power rating the Friars are just #51. Their strong Success ranking powers them to #6 in the Combined power rating.
No one knows quite what to make of them; Kenpom has them at #47. ESPN's BPI puts them at #39 while pegging their projected seed-line at #2 if Selection Sunday were today. The Bracket Project's Bracket Matrix members seed them anywhere from #3 to #12.
The obvious culprit for a lower-Strength team having a solid Win-Loss record is Strength of Schedule, but it's not like they're just beating bad teams. Their SOS is #43 by our measure, #52 in Pomeroy, #49 in the BPI. They're #5 in Strength of Record in the BPI, which means they're beating good teams, as our #2 Success rating indicates.
And they have beaten good teams: 16-3 Wisconsin, 15-5 Texas Tech, 14-4 UConn, and on Wednesday night 14-5 Xavier. It's not a case where they're just a great home team: Wisconsin, UConn, and Xavier were road wins.
How can we figure this team out?
Let's look at some other stats.
Our Median Performance rankings have the Friars at #27, 24 spots higher than their Strength. This suggests that the Friars' Strength (and Pomeroy and BPI) are being weighed down by poorer performances in wins against bad teams. It seems that they are able to "rise to the occasion" to beat good teams but can't be bothered to get blowouts against poor teams. They beat Fairfield by 7 points, New Hampshire by 11, and Central Connecticut—#340 in Strength—by just 15. Their only losses came in very bad performances, too, as they lost to Virginia by 18 and Marquette by 32. Clear these out by only using their median performance and they look a lot better—but still not even top 25 worthy.
The Friars rank #293 in our Consistency measure, meaning their average performance is all over the place. This fits the narrative of "playing to their competition" where they get fairly close wins over opponents whether those opponents are bad or good. They followed their 15-point home win over Central Connecticut with a 4-point road win over Connecticut; they're certainly more than an 11-point difference between those teams and locations; the Friars should have either beaten Central Connecticut by 41 or lost to UConn by 22 to play consistently over the 2-game span.
Their inconsistency is not a product of improvement as the season goes on, as they've been pretty much the same in the first half and second part of the season. Their upset wins are distributed throughout the season so far.
Pomeroy's explanation would look at Luck. Luck is "the deviation in winning percentage between a team’s actual record and their expected record" and Providence is a solid #1. This doesn't necessarily mean that Pomeroy thinks they've gotten lucky, just that they've won more games than chance would expect. Again, if the team really does play to its level of competition, they would win some games they shouldn't. Right now they've scored five upsets: Wisconsin, Texas Tech, UConn, Seton Hall, and Xavier. These were all close games, with wins by 5, 4, 4, 5, and 3 points, so either the team has the elusive "gut-check" gene or they've had some luck winning close games. If that luck runs out, they'll start losing some of these and their record will more closely match their quality.
So where should they be ranked?
Our Markov Chain ratings put them at #22, which might be a good compromise. The Markov Chain method is meant to factor in winning, strength of schedule, and dominance all into one package. It seems to split the difference between their stellar record and pedestrian average performance.
Meanwhile the AP poll has them at #17. The pollsters are uncertain about them, but as Providence's results become harder to ignore, they move up in the poll. This is a rare instance where the AP poll might have the best take on a team. Sometimes voting by human brains is the best solution after all, especially when the computers and algorithms are split or seem confused.
NCAA performance: How will they do in the Big Dance?
If Providence keeps winning like they have been they'll get a very high seed in the NCAA. And then they'll probably be a popular upset pick assuming their power ratings don't catch up. They'll certainly be an X-factor, capable of beating many of the top teams while looking as if they could exit in the first round just as easily. It will be an interesting test case for teams with lots of upset wins, and for those teams seeded higher than their power ratings would indicate.
It won't take very many losses for Providence to come back to earth. Just a few here and there in the remaining Big East season would put their record in line with most other teams. Pomeroy projects them to finish 22-6, still a great record but probably not among the elite at season's end. Yet quite a bit better than, say, 18-10 which is what you might expect from an allegedly borderline top 50 team.
A 22-6 finish might result in a seed from #4 to #6, spots that are ripe for upset picks or perhaps a deep run. Your own analysis of the Providence phenomenon will have to guide your hand in deciding whether they make a run to the Final Four or exit in the first round.