College basketball analytical website BartTorvik.com has the Gonzaga Bulldogs ranked No. 9 in its 2024-25 projections released earlier this week.
With seven of their top eight scorers back, plus an incoming transfer portal class that ranks top 40 in the country, Torvik projects the Zags to enter the new season No. 1 in adjusted offensive efficiency and No. 43 in adjusted defensive efficiency. Gonzaga finished the 2023-24 season fifth in offensive efficiency and 57th in defensive efficiency according to Torvik.
With 10 players back from last season, Mark Few returned 81.4% of the total minutes played from 2023-24, the fifth-highest return rate in the country and the highest among NCAA Tournament teams (Houston was next at 77.0%). According to sport-reference.com, the Bulldogs haven’t had that high of a retention rate since the 2005-06 campaign, when Adam Morrison, J.P. Batista and Derek Raivio headlined an experienced squad that had eight of its top nine scorers from the year prior.
The Cougars sat atop Torvik’s projections, as Kelvin Sampson returned six of his top eight scorers from a team that won the Big 12 Tournament and advanced to the Sweet 16 as a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Oklahoma transfer Milos Uzan (No. 57 ranked transfer on EvanMiya.com) joins the team after starting 56 games over the past two seasons with the Sooners. Even without Jamal Shead and Damian Dunn, Houston figures to be a preseason top-five team.
Duke slid in at No. 2, followed by Iowa State, Kansas and Tennessee in Torvik’s projected top five. The Jayhawks, who returned Hunter Dickinson, KJ Adams and Dajuan Harris Jr., were ranked No. 1 in way-too-early power rankings from ESPN, CBS Sports and FOX Sports. The returning talent mixes with Wisconsin transfer A.J. Storr, Alabama transfer Rylen Griffen and South Dakota State transfer Zeke Mayo, plus two top-50 high school recruits in Flory Bidunga and Rakease Passmore.
Despite coming off back-to-back national championships and finishing No. 1 in Torvik’s rankings last season, UConn checked in on the outside of the top 10 at No. 12. The Huskies lost Donovan Clingan, Tristen Newton and Stephon Castle to the NBA this spring, though Dan Hurley’s program still opened with the shortest betting odds to win the 2025 NCAA Tournament and claim its third straight title, according to BetMGM. Saint Mary’s transfer and All-WCC guard Aidan Mahaney and top-10 recruit Liam McNeely headline the group of newcomers headed to Storrs, Connecticut.
Kentucky, which faces Gonzaga in the Battle in Seattle on Dec. 7, made its way into Torvik’s projected top 25 at No. 23. The Wildcats, in Mark Pope’s first season at the helm, feature an entirely new cast of characters after John Calipari left the program for Arkansas in April. Pope reeled in a top-10 transfer portal class to replace the outgoing talent.
UCLA was right behind Kentucky at No. 24. Two potential opponents at the Battle 4 Atlantis Tournament — Arizona (No. 10) and Indiana (No. 31) — cracked the top 35 of Torvik’s projections, while San Diego State (No. 76) dropped 48 spots from where it finished last season. The Aztecs lost nearly 75% of their minutes played from last season, including All-American Jaedon LeDee, 6-foot-6 wing Micah Parrish and 6-foot-2 guard Lamont Butler.
The West Coast Conference tied the Mountain West, Atlantic-10 and American for the most teams from mid-major conferences ranked in Torvik’s projected top 100 (five). The Gaels, who finished last season 15th, were ranked No. 38 in next season’s projections after losing Mahaney and Joshua Jefferson in the portal. Newly-added Washington State was put at No. 75, followed by San Francisco (No. 84) and Santa Clara (No. 98).
Oregon State checked in at No. 117 heading into its first season in the WCC. Loyola Marymount ranked 158th, followed by a big gap between it and Pepperdine at No. 229. San Diego (257th), Portland (286th) and Pacific (318th) rounded out the league’s projected standings.
No Big Ten team ranked in the top 15 of Torvik’s projections. Rutgers, which added top-three recruits Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper, took a tremendous leap from where it finished last season at No. 105, as the Scarlet Knights and their high-touted freshman class sat at No. 19 in the updated projections.
The SEC led the way with seven teams ranked in Torvik’s projected top 25.
On Thursday, the NCAA announced its selection committee would consider Torvik’s rankings when seeding teams for the tournament, like it does KenPom.com. Another big add was a metric called “Wins Above Bubble,” which is resume-based and shows how many wins a team has earned against its schedule compared to what an average bubble team would do against the same schedule. WAB will derive from the NCAA’s NET tool.
