Will Tipton’s Early 2024-2025 College Basketball Top 10 as Movies
There are two things I love most other than family: basketball and movies. I could go on and on about my favorite types of movies from a good rom-com, an Adam Sandler comedy, or a gritty Tarantino film. I learn a lot from sitting with a bucket of overly-buttered popcorn next to me and watching fictional characters occupy my viewing space for two hours in my day. If there is a common denominator between both watching basketball and movies, it is that both are an escape from what is happening in the real world. If I’m ever having a rough day at work or struggling in a difficult business class, I can clear my mind by either sitting down and watching Matt Damon rough up enemy agents as Jason Bourne or seeing Mark Sears dissect defenses in a mid-January SEC conference game. Both are different products, but provide me with the same fulfillment and enjoyment, which is probably why I enjoy both so much. The stories these teams have and the storylines that come with it is only an added bonus to the product we view on the screen. This gives us, as viewers, the ability to see real stakes and emotions for these athletes/coaches that aren’t staged as actors do on a big screen. But both basketball and feature films go hand-in-hand in a plethora of ways. So I thought, why not combine the two to give you guys a sneak preview at my preseason college basketball top ten?
The transfer portal train has slowed down to an almost screeching halt, with the remaining players left on the board being guys that withdrew from the NBA draft recently, i.e. Coleman Hawkins. The transfer portal had enough drama this offseason to make a feature film, with betrayals and heartbreak that remind one of a period piece set in the middle ages. However, the squads that teams have assembled this offseason are pretty much set in stone, which lets me gauge a basis for a much too soon preseason top ten. Fast forward to March, and I probably will be hilariously wrong on this, but hey, it is always fun to speculate. Isn’t that what fans are supposed to do? Add to the drama and storylines? To give a picture of the type of films I will be comparing these teams to, here are my personal top five movies of all time, with a couple honorable mentions thrown in there.
Good Will Hunting
La La Land
Inglourious Basterds
The Watch
The Shawshank Redemption
HM: Rocky 4, The Wolf of Wall Street, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Spiderman Across the SpiderVerse, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
I enjoy a wide variety of films, and I try to watch every single genre there is out there, so I hope that reflects in this Top Ten list I have cultivated.
#1 Kansas Jayhawks - The Wolf of Wall Street
The Kansas basketball we saw in 2023-2024 was not the powerhouse team America was accustomed to seeing the past decade-plus in Lawrence, Kansas. All-American big man Hunter Dickinson was as good as advertised coming in from Michigan, but injuries (Kevin McCullar) and general ineffectiveness from some key players (i.e. Nick Timberlake) really doomed this team down the stretch of the Big 12 conference schedule. So what did Bill Self do this offseason? Well, he did his best Jordan Belfort impression and got the best crew of transfers that money can buy. AJ Storr, Zeke Mayo, Rylan Griffen, and Shakeel Moore comprise Self’s merry band of brokers, with Hunter Dickinson operating as Self’s Donnie Azoff, Jordan Belfort's pseudo partner-in-crime building his Wall Street empire in the Wolf of Wall Street. As Leonardo DiCaprio says in the movie,
“Was all this legal? Absolutely fucking not.”
However, the current state of college basketball is something more akin to the Wild West than anything remotely resembling a sense of order regarding name, image, and likeness. There isn’t an FBI agent on the tail of Bill Self like Jordan Belfort. However, if they were, it wouldn’t be the first time the feds have been snooping around ole Bill’s program (he truly is the wolf of Lawrence).
This has allowed Bill Self to assemble an embarrassment of riches on his depth chart, with the aforementioned players joining a roster with vets Dajuan Harris and KJ Adams, both of whom played key roles on the national championship Kansas team in 2022. This begs the question, is Kansas too good to fail? Looking up and down the roster, it is a difficult task to find a discernible hole anywhere on the team, with shooting, size, versatility, and depth aplenty. Kansas will be getting everyone’s best shot in a gauntlet of a conference in the Big 12, and they will be tested night in and night out. The end result of Jordan Belfort’s Wall Street brokerage firm, Stratton Oakmont, amounted to a crash and burn, and that is a result that the Kansas Jayhawks are not trying to repeat. This team has real championship aspirations, and I think they have even more talent than Bill Self’s championship squad from three seasons ago.
#2 Alabama Crimson Tide - Return of the Jedi
Last time we saw Alabama on the national stage, they were getting their clock cleaned against the vaunted UConn Huskies in a 72-86 loss where the final score doesn’t tell the full story of how outmatched Alabama looked at times. In this story, this chapter was the Empire Strikes Back, where Dan Hurley tells Nate Oats he is his father, and chops off his hand to boot. Like the titular jedi knight Luke Skywalker, Nate Oats has come back with a vengeance, loading up on portal players, a stellar recruiting class, and the kicker, the immediate favorite to be NPOTY next year, Mark Sears, is returning to Tuscaloosa for his senior campaign. Sears is like Oats’s Master Yoda, a crucial element for Luke to complete his Jedi training before he can defeat Darth Vader and the empire. Yes I know, Yoda dies in this movie, but Luke would be unable to complete his journey as a character without him in this film, much like Oats’s ability to take this team to another Final Four rides on the shoulders of the 6’1” Sears. The dynamite guard was a huge reason why the Crimson Tide made their Final Four run this past year, and the wrath of opposing SEC defenses will be awaiting him this next year.
The supporting cast resembles a group much like Luke’s allies in the Return of the Jedi. Premier transfer center by way of Rutgers, Cliff Omoruyi, is an elite glue guy with ferocity on the glass and in the paint on both ends of the floor. Chewbacca is a massive protector for Luke and the gang, and a fearsome presence on the battlefield like Omoruyi. Returnees Grant Nelson and Latrell Wrightsell get the C3PO and R2D2 comparison for this squad, with both players being key contributors to the squad (11.9 PPG/8.9 PPG), and integral to the identity of Alabama basketball, which is playing at the speed of Lightning McQueen for forty minutes. Much like the sidekicks of Luke Skywalker, they get underappreciated in the moment and vastly overlooked, but always come up clutch in the big moments. Getting the Death Star plans to Luke Skywalker and Grant Nelson scoring 24 points in the Sweet 16 to defeat North Carolina are one and both the same to me. Like in Return of the Jedi, and the protagonists regrouping after a defeat, they licked their wounds and got back to fight against the evil empire. Alabama is on a similar journey now, with the Crimson Tide looking to get back to the stage they were just on, and to finish the job this time, with a possible rematch with Dan Hurley in their sights.
#3 Duke Blue Devils - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
In this comparison, the greatest basketball player to come out of the United States development system since LeBron James is our Harry Potter. Cooper Flagg is the anointed “chosen one”, who is supposed to lead the wizards of Durham to the Final Four, and that is a burden of expectations that draws parallels to the young Harry Potter. With Flagg comes a group of highly regarded freshmen that are Flagg’s Ron and Hermione, (Khaman Maluach and Isaiah Evans). With any other team in college ball, both of these guys would be the leading headline for their respective teams, but there is a reason it is called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and not Ron/Hermione and the Sorcerer’s Stone. There can only be one chosen one, and that is without a doubt the “Maine Event”, Cooper Flagg. With a Dumbledore-like figure manning the ship in Jon Scheyer, (Mike Krzyzewski would have been perfect for this analogy, but bear with me), he injected an assortment of experienced players from the portal to balance the squad out. Mason Gillis and Maliq Brown are the Professors McGongall and Hooch of the team.
There are players who have been around the block that can help ease the heavy burden that has put on Flagg’s shoulders, just as both teachers in the Sorcerer’s Stone navigate Harry’s first year at Hogwarts, both as a quidditch player and student. Returnee Caleb Foster will be putting on his own stamp to elevate this team to its full potential, much like Quidditch captain Oliver Wood and Percy Weasley were the veterans in the Gryffindor house in Harry Potter’s first year.
The main parallel from the inaugural Harry Potter film and this Duke basketball team starts and ends with Cooper Flagg. If it weren’t for the aliens placing Victor Wembanyama on this earth for the sole purpose of dominating the NBA, Cooper would be no doubt the best NBA draft prospect since the Kid from Akron. Harry Potter himself is the stuff of legend in the wizard community, and people look to him less as a human, and more as a mythical figure. Cooper Flagg reclassed to the class of 2024 and will be 17 years old at the start of the season. The boy wonder led a team of local kids from Maine to the finals of Peach Jam, the pinnacle event of the Nike AAU summer tournaments, and also led his Maine high school to a state title as a freshman! Two Geico Nationals championships playing for powerhouse program Montverde Academy in Florida, and Flagg’s accolades on the high school level have reached the stuff of legends for prep basketball.
The media spectacle surrounding Duke will rival the Zion Williamson show six years ago, and every move Flagg makes will be under an intense microscope. But like Harry Potter, his pure ability at his craft is something special, as a defensive eraser, shot creator, and generational two-way ability.
#4 Houston Cougars - Fight Club
The way Houston is coached to play defense, you wonder how some opponents walk out of the Fertitta Center alive. Houston has ranked in the top ten for defensive efficiency for four years running, and lately, Houston has truly honed in their gritty tenacious defense to a different level. To truly beat Houston in a forty minute basketball game, opponents have to be willing to stoop to Houstons level and be willing to play ugly, which is not something a majority of the nation is comfortable doing. In the movie, the main character, who is never named, meets Brad Pitt’s character, Tyler Durden, and they both later go on to found an underground fight club. Now, what was the first rule of Fight Club in the movie again?
“You do not talk about Fight Club.”
That is exactly how it feels Houston approaches the defensive end of the floor, with their actions and not their words. Leading scorer LJ Cryer returns, as does glue guy big man J’wan Roberts. Defensive centerpiece Ja’vier Francis, flamethrower jump shooter Emmanuel Sharp, promising guard Terrance Arceneaux (who was limited to eleven games last year due to injury), all running it back one more year under Coach Sampson. To disrupt the social order was the premise of why the fight club was established in the movie, and that is exactly what the Houston basketball team has been accomplishing the past four seasons in college basketball. Kelvin Sampson was told he wouldn’t dominate his competition like he did in the AAC, that the Big 12 was the best conference in college basketball, that he was out of his element. He proceeded to go 15-3 in conference play, being crowned the Big 12 regular season champions, and was one win away from being conference champions, along with capturing a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Kelvin Sampson brought Houston back into the national spotlight in 2021 with a Final Four run that evoked memories of Phi Slama Jama and the early 80’s, and Sampson hasn’t relinquished his time in the limelight since. Sampson isn’t getting younger, and he may only have a couple more shots at the title, so why not this group of hungry defensive disruptors? There is a saying that hungry dogs run faster. I think Kelvin Sampson is starving for this shit.
#5 Gonzaga Bulldogs - Rocky II
You know Gonzaga has arrived as a perennial program when the 2023-24 season was considered one of the worst Bulldog seasons in the past twenty years. And how, you may ask, did Gonzaga fare last year? Oh nothing crazy, just a non-conference win against Kentucky at Rupp, a 14-2 conference record, and a Sweet 16 appearance. Yes, it did take a while for Gonzaga to get their rhythm after multiple rough non-conference showings, but like in Rocky I, they bounced back with a vengeance. Gonzaga has always been the plucky underdog team from Spokane, which is why I liken them to a character like Rocky Balboa, a scrappy boxer who wears his heart on his sleeve. But the heightened expectations in the past decade in Spokane, Washington, is why I make the Rocky II comparison.
Rocky had already proven himself in his first fight with Apollo Creed and set up a standard to the public as to how good of a boxer he was, while leaving the people wanting him to live up to that same standard. Gonzaga returns almost the same exact roster as last year's squad, minus Anton Watson, while also finally getting a full season of former Big Sky conference POTY guard Steele Venters, who missed the entire 23-24 season to injury. Graham Ike, Ryan Nembhard, and Nolan Hickman comprise one of the better trios in the country, combining for 43.6 PPG, 13.7 RPG, and 10.5 APG last year for the Zags. They have the potential to carry this team far, much like Rocky’s inner circle of his wife Adrian, his best friend Paulie, and his trainer Mick, who helped push the Italian Stallion to beat Apollo Creed in his rematch fight. There is a big difference between Rocky Balboa getting one fight for a chance at the heavyweight championship for the world and the Zags having to go through 30 or so odd games, just to have the right of entering a 68-team single elimination tournament. But, everyone loves an underdog, and no team right in their mind should underestimate coach Mark Few. This Gonzaga team might just turn some heads come March…
#6 UConn Huskies - Avengers: Infinity War
The odyssey of Dan Hurley has been a whirlwind this offseason, from courtships from the Kentucky Wildcats shortly after UConn’s national championship victory over Purdue in April, to a very real chance that Hurley could have gone to Tinsel Town and coach LeBron James weeks ago. But Hurley has a chance to etch his name into hallowed ground and chase a third straight national championship, something not done since the legendary John Wooden and the UCLA Bruins. Chasing the ghosts of Pac-12 past is to Hurley what Thanos was to the Avengers in Infinity War. An unbelievably difficult task to conquer, but an achievement that has to be chased.
Almost the entire UConn team from last year's championship squad has departed to the NBA, but X-factor sniper forward Alex Karaban decided to stay in Storrs for his senior year. You can’t say that Dan Hurley hasn’t revamped this UConn roster, with transfers (Saint Mary’s) Aiden Mahaney and (Michigan) Tarris Reed, along with the late commitment of five star do-it-all forward Liam McNeeley. Much like the linear history of the Avengers movies, the first two iterations of the Huskies bore end of the season victories where it didn’t feel like much of a challenge in the postseason. The domination of their opponents felt like watching Captain America and the Hulk on the big screen womp on some poor bad minions of Loki or Ultron, where the Avengers always wound up victorious in the end. But the third film brought a different vibe, a feeling that this wouldn’t be a walk in the park, and the Avengers if anything were outmatched, and outgunned, but still went through with trying to attempt the impossible.
That is exactly what the Connecticut Huskies are attempting to accomplish. The impossible. This is not last year's roster. They don’t have a 7’2” monster of a center or an elite floor general walking into the XL Center anytime soon. If the Huskies are to win this third championship, they are going to have to fight tooth and nail to get there. This roster has the talent to do some major damage in the Big East, and by tournament time, Dan Hurley will have his guys ready to play. There is a reason the Lakers offered him $70 million, as he may as well be the greatest offensive mind in basketball, with a maniacal way of approaching defense.
#7 Baylor Bears - Billy Madison
Over the past two seasons in Waco, Texas, Scott Drew has brought in a consensus five star shooting guard. In 2022, it was Keyonte George and in 2023, it was Ja’Kobe Walter. George landed in the lottery of the NBA draft and so will presumably Walter this next week. Yet the common theme of both of these teams is that they both didn’t win the Big 12 regular season title or conference tournament, nabbed #3 seeds in the NCAA tournament, and got bounced in the 2nd round. So what makes this year's iteration different, with Scott Drew landing yet another five star shooting guard in bonafide three level scorer V.J. Edgecombe? Well, Drew opted to find some chaperones for Edgecombe and fellow five star signee point guard Rob Wright. Transfers Jeremy Roach (PG) and Norchad Omier (C) have combined to have played 250 games of college basketball spanning their careers at Duke and Miami. Both have experience playing on the big stage in the Final Four, and operate as wily vets for a squad with plenty of young talent.
This situation Scott Drew has created reminds me a lot of one of my favorite comedies, Billy Madison. In the movie, the titular character Billy has to attend school starting in 1st grade in order to prove he is worthy to take over his father’s company, due to the fact that his extremely wealthy father bribed all of his previous teachers to pass his classes. In this scenario, Roach and Omier operate as the Billy Madison of the Bears, standing head and shoulders above the rest of the team in terms of age and experience. I think the infusion of experience on this team bears resemblance to the veteran approach Scott Drew had in 2021 while winning his only national title on the Bears. On that squad he had numerous quality veterans including Jared Butler, Davion “Off-Night” Mitchell, Mark Vital, MaCio Teague, showing the example for the young talent on the team such as Matthew Mayer, Adam Flagler, and LJ Cryer. The cohesion of both young and old is an important dynamic to have, that I think Scott Drew can accomplish in a Billy Madison type fashion.
#8 Creighton Bluejays - The Internship
The comedic duo of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson is extremely underappreciated, and they are honestly two of the funniest actors I have ever watched over the years. I especially loved their comedic timing and elite chemistry in the movies Wedding Crashers and The Internship. But The Internship is the movie I’d like to draw some comparisons to this Creighton team from.
In the film, the two aforementioned actors play two middle-aged former salesmen who compete for jobs with Google against a plethora of interns half their age. The veteran duo reminds me of the situation both super-seniors, center Ryan Kalkbrenner and guard Steven Ashworth, are in for the Creighton Bluejays this upcoming season. As the COVID-year players are dwindling with each passing year, Ashworth and Kalkbrenner comprise a minority of current players who are playing a fifth year of basketball, and competing against an increasingly younger Big East conference. Tyler Kolek, Oso Ighodaro, Tristen Newton, Cam Spencer, Baylor Scheierman, Trey Alexander, Justin Moore….a majority of the elder statesmen of the conference have left after last year, making Kalkbrenner and Ashworth stand out compared to the rest of the league. They will both have a tall task leading the Bluejays, with a supporting cast that is noticeably greener then in previous years. The addition of Pop Isaacs by way of Texas Tech reminds me of the character Lyle in The Internship, who is a member of the internship team with Vaughn and Wilson, and operates as the functioning third wheel of the group. Isaacs is a certified hooper, and provides needed veteran playmaking and scoring for the Bluejays. Hopefully forward Mason Miller and top 50 ranked freshmen, skilled point forward Jackson McAndrew and athletic combo guard Larry Johnson all make noticeable contributions to the team either in the starting five or off the bench. The star power on this team is real with a two-time Big East DPOTY roaming the paint and a true three-point sniper at the point guard position. The depth at some spots is a huge question mark, but if Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn can figure it out, I think Kalkbrenner and Ashworth can do the same.
#9 Iowa State Cyclones - Fury
If you have never watched the movie Fury before, I highly recommend it. A truly gritty WWII story, it follows Brad Pitt as the leader of an American tank crew, where he and his small crew are forced to fight off an entire Nazi battalion by their lonesome. The fact that this movie is severely underrated by the general public and the cohesion of the tank crew drew me to compare this film to the Iowa State Cyclones. The Cyclones’ starting unit was not talked about enough from last years No. 2 seed Sweet 16 squad. Four out of the five starters averaged above ten points a game, with no starter exceeding 13.7 points a game. Keshon Gilbert, Tamin Lipsey, Curtis Jones, and Milan Momcilovic displayed unselfish team basketball all season, while all being threats to take their man off the dribble and pull up from deep (all four players shooting above 34.9% from three.)
In the movie Fury, Brad Pitt’s crew of men lacked numbers, but showed traits of bravery and courageousness that led to the men holding off the hordes of Nazi soldiers far longer then anyone expected, and something that wouldn’t have occurred if the American soldiers were all not on the same wavelength. With the four starters returning I previously mentioned, and Coach Otzelberger adding multiple instant impact transfers (Charlotte center Dishon Jackson and Saint Mary’s forward Joshua Jefferson), Iowa State has a rare opportunity presented to itself to push the envelope on the standard they set last season. Otzelberger reminds me of Pitt’s character in Fury, a fearless leader who has assembled a squadron that plays for each other, displaying defining characteristics of grittiness and toughness on both ends of the floor. The overall talent of this team may not match a bunch of the teams I have in this top ten, but they sure as hell are one of the hardest teams in the country to play any given night.
#10 Texas A&M Aggies - Groundhog Day
A Texas A&M team led by Wade Taylor IV and Henry Coleman with high preseason hopes? I swear I have heard this story before. God, I wanted to believe in the Aggies last year. With the excitement of the duo of Taylor and Tyrece Radford, they were just so damn fun to watch. But, teams don’t win national titles just by being exciting. If that were the case, I think Nate Oats would break John Wooden’s records by the 2030’s. Even with a bit of a disappointing season in comparison to how they were perceived to do by the media, the Aggies obliterated Nebraska in their opening round NCAA game, then gave No. 1 seed Houston all they could handle in a thrilling 95-100 loss in overtime. A noticeable statistic that reared its ugly head in the tournament: Wade Taylor IV scored 21 points and went 5-26 from the floor….Yikes. Taylor had a habit of putting up clunkers in games in which he couldn’t afford to go cold for a team that relied on his shotmaking ability so much. The core memory I have from that game is not a Houston walk-on being forced to enter a crunch time game due to Houston’s lineup being ravaged with foul trouble, or the shot by Texas A&M’s Andersson Garcia with 0.01 on the clock in regulation to force overtime. It was Wade Taylor IV chucking a black line three pointer that didn’t even come close to the net with 23 seconds left on the clock…only down four points. Therein lines the comparison to the movie Groundhog Day for this team.
Coach Buzz Williams returns a ton of talent from last year's Aggies. Seven out of the team's top eight scorers are coming back for another go around in College Station, including electric guard Wade Taylor IV, who averaged 19 PPG for A&M in 23-24. Williams also added transfers Pharell Payne and Zhuric Phelps by way of Minnesota and SMU respectively, with both projecting to start for the Aggies this upcoming season. But in the beginning of the movie Groundhog Day, as Bill Murray’s character begins repeating the same day over and over again, he repeats the same actions over and over, expecting a different result each time, he wakes up on the same day no matter what he does. Is that what Buzz Williams is doing this year? He’s returning almost the same exact team as last year, with minimal decrease in competition in the always difficult SEC conference. I truly believe in Taylor’s ability to be an SEC POTY type player for the Aggies, but his consistency has to really improve if Texas A&M is to escape this Groundhog Day-esque season cycle they have found themselves in recently.
