Rather than winning games, Doug Gottlieb takes aim at KenPom rankings with absurd rant

Doug Gottlieb is in his second year as the head coach of Green Bay. This time around, coaching the Phoenix is his only full-time job, but just because he stepped away from radio for however brief his tenure ultimately proves to be, doesn’t mean he’s stopped spewing nonsense into a microphone. 

Gottlieb’s latest diatribe, after losing four of Green Bay’s last five games in Horizon League play, was directed at a college basketball institution, KenPom. Ken Pomeroy’s ranking system has been held up as something of the gold analytical standard in the sport, but to the head coach of the team ranked 239th in the country, the rankings are “bullshit.” 

Doug Gottlieb’s excuse-filled rant lacks context… How ironic

You can watch the entire four-minute clip, which is mostly filled with Gottlieb making excuses for his team’s losses while ripping an analytical system that’s designed to strip out bias and opinion, for its lack of context. The purpose of his rant is not to take down everyone’s beloved KenPom, but to argue that the Horizon League is worthy of higher than a 16-seed in the NCAA Tournament. 

A fairly good argument in favor of that was Robert Morris’s impressive showing as a 15-seed last year against Alabama in the first round. 

The Horizon League is certainly not the worst league in college basketball. Oakland, the league’s highest-rated team by Kenpom slots in at 117th. The highest-rated team in the MEAC is Howard at 251, the highest-rated in the America East is Vermont at 223, the highest-rated in the SWAC is Bethune Cookman at 222, the highest-rated in the Ohio Valley Confernece is Tennessee Martin at 195, the highest-rated in the NEC is LIU at 194, the highest-rated in the Patriot League is Navy at 174, the highest-rated in the South Conference is East Tennessee State at 129, and the highest-rated in the Summit League is North Dakota State at 126. 

That’s eight conferences with a highest-rated team below the Horizon League’s highest-rated team, and the conference has three teams in the top 200 before getting to Green Bay as the seventh-highest rated team, three spots lower than where Gottlieb’s team sits in the Horizon League standings. 

Gottlieb won’t have to worry about his NCAA Tournament seed

So, while it was framed as a defense of his league, really, Gottlieb’s frustration and subsequently his excuse-making were about a gripe much closer to home. 

Now that he’s pulled away from his radio duties after an embarrassing 4-28 record last year, Gottlieb’s program has taken a meaningful step forward. But if he’s worried that his team would be given a 16-seed if it somehow won the Horizon League because of KenPom, he’s putting the cart quite a bit before the horse. 

Green Bay has lost four of its last five, and is a combined 0-3 against the top two teams in the conference with an average margin of defeat of 20.3 points. Gottlieb would be so lucky to get to play in Dayton.