The end of the college basketball season is near which means it’s time to look back and reflect. This time of year the focus is put on who is playing well now with the tournament, but going back all the way to before the first tip and looking at the totality of the season is fascinating.
With the transfer portal era, preseason hype and expectations have reached an all time high as many rosters can be easily rebuilt on a year to year basis. The season is filled with ups and downs for everybody but some experience that much more than others. We love a good story like Drake or Michigan who entered the season under the radar and surprised everybody, but what about the other side of that narrative.
Let’s take a look at the top ten most disappointing teams from this past college basketball season.
The Friars looked like a contender in the Big East and there were high expectations for Kim English in his second season. After missing the second half of last year their best player Bryce Hopkins ended up only playing three games this season due to injury issues once again and is now transferring to conference foe St. John’s. Talk about disappointment which goes well beyond just this season. A 12-20 overall record, including ending the year 1-10 is not good, but at least Providence fans will always have that win at home back in January against Ed Cooley to look back on.
The Canes got off to a disastrous start with a 4-8 record followed by head coach Jim Larranaga stepping down due to the current state of the sport. Just two years removed from a Final Four appearance they looked good coming into the season with the return of , and Matthew Cleveland, but hype does not translate to wins. Miami finished the year with just seven wins and in dead last of the ACC where they were voted 6th in the preseason polls.
A horrendous end to the season losing six of their last seven earned the Cornhuskers a spot here. At one point this team looked like a lock for the NCAA Tournament but instead they ended up not even making the Big Ten Tournament after losing a de facto play-in game to Iowa at home. Inconsistency was the theme for Fred Hoiberg’s team who lost six games by one possession. Although the expectations were not super high coming into the year for Nebraska, ending up in the College Basketball Crown tournament is very disappointing after where they stood in early February.
The Gamecocks made their first tournament appearance since 2017 last year and things appeared to be on the up with head coach Lamont Paris and Collin Murray-Boyles back for his sophomore season. The year started just about as bad as possible with a loss to North Florida at home. They regrouped winning 10 of their next 12 with the two losses coming against ranked opponents. Then came the daunting SEC where they lost 13 straight to start conference play. Yes, the SEC was very good this season, but entering the year I expected South Carolina to hold their own and compete. Going from 10-3 and ending at 12-20 is about as brutal as it gets.
Kansas State went to the portal and spent in hopes of getting better, most notably with the infamous addition of Coleman Hawkins who reportedly got around $2 million in NIL. According to Jeff Goodman they were in the top 5 of NIL spending this season and still missed the tournament, proving that money cannot buy happiness. Coming into the year, this was looking more like a 2022-2023 Jerome Tang KSU team, which was certainly not the case.
Baylor was a team that was just mediocre compared to what they could have been all year in my mind. Despite having a top coach in Scott Drew, two stud freshmen in VJ Edgecombe and Robert Wright III, and two big-time transfers with incredible college basketball resumes in Norchad Omier and Jeremy Roach the Bears seemed to never break through. They did win a tournament game which makes the season a little less disappointing, but heading into the year they looked much closer to, or even better than, Duke who ran them off the floor in the round of 32.
The Hoosiers had a real up and down year that ultimately ended with them missing the NCAA Tournament for the second year in a row and the conclusion of the Mike Woodson experiment. They really struggled early in a Big Ten Conference that was not what everyone thought it would be and transfer Oumar Ballo was not the consistent dominant force for them that they expected when they reportedly gave him over $1 million in NIL. If not for a strong end to the season that brought them onto the bubble and back into relevancy, they would be much higher on this list.
With RJ Davis and other experienced guards returning, along with two five-star freshmen, it was looking to be another great year in Chapel Hill with a preseason top-10 ranking. Instead, it showed how much they missed long-time Tar Heel Armando Bacot, as this team really struggled on defense and had no strong presence inside the paint. What makes it even worse is that UNC finished outside of the top 5 in an ACC that was very down. They did squeak their way into the tournament, but the biggest thing people will remember about North Carolina this season is how angry they were when they did make it into the field.
With two of the top five recruits from the 2024 class in Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper this was the most excitement and hype I can remember going into any Rutgers sports season ever. In the end though it was simply bad. Bailey and Harper were good but the rest of the team really struggled. They were terrible on the defensive end, which is normally a strong suit of Steve Pikiell teams, and were one of the worst shooting teams in the Big Ten. With two NBA lottery picks and a spot in the AP Preseason top-25 a tournament berth felt like a lock, but instead they ended the year with a losing record and zero signature exciting wins.
Many programs would kill for a 20+ win season and NCAA Tournament appearance, but that does not cut it for a Bill Self-led team in Kansas. It all started at the end of last year when Self admitted in his press conference after a second-round blowout loss to Gonzaga that he had already been thinking about the following year for the past month. The Jayhawks went out and spent in NIL to bring in one of the top transfer portal classes with AJ Storr, Rylan Griffen, and Zeke Mayo to go along with their experienced and skilled trio of Hunter Dickinson, DaJuan Harris, and second-round. This put them as the AP preseason No. 1 team in the country and, in my mind, the best team on paper. In the end, all this got them was a 6th place finish in the Big 12 and an upset loss in the first round of March Madness. If the Jayhawks cannot bounce back after back-to-back disappointing seasons, questions could start to swirl around the future of Bill Self in Lawrence.