I’ve noticed that Torvik is not accounting for Darlan yet.
Not surprising, honestly. I’m sure that Bart Torvik has some aspect of his enterprise that generates money, but given that the basic website is free with no adds (unlike KenPom which has an annual subscription), it’s sort of amazing that Torvik’s data exists in its current form at all. I can’t imagine manually inputting hundreds of college players each year, especially with the new layers of chaos generated by NIL and the portal.
Torvik has the Roster Cast tool which allows you to project a team by adding other D1 players or even a departed senior to the roster. Very flawed methodology, but I think it’s at least somewhat reasonable to project Darlan to be roughly like having Adama Alpha-Bal back for a third year. If you plug Adama back into this year’s roster, the Broncos jump from 93 to 75 in the forecast. If Darlan delivers on improving his numbers from the G-League–a step down in talent, so not unreasonable–then it would lift Santa Clara a meaningful amount in Torvik’s rankings.
What that’s worth, I can’t tell you, but with the season two weeks away, I can empathize with searching for meaning and hope in every analytic tool or AI-generated article.
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