Monday Newsletter: KenPom Rankings Are Out, UAC (WAC) Announces Addition
KenPom released his preseason rankings for the 2025-26 season on Oct. 12
Beginning today, October 13, there will be two newsletters per week along with the usual content.
The newsletters will be simple in nature: sharing recent news that has happened in the past few days.
If some other news breaks in between the two newsletters, then another story will be written.
Make sure you subscribe to the WAC Hoops Nation newsletter for any updates and news regarding basketball in the Western Athletic Conference.
KenPom Drops Preseason Rankings
It was all the hoopla on social media on Saturday when analytics guru Ken Pomeroy dropped his preseason rankings on his website.
The X timeline was filled with college basketball fanatics hyping up the preseason release.
Sure, at WAC Hoops Nation, we got in on the action, following the trend of posting the rankings of teams in the WAC, and where the WAC stands in the conference rankings.
Let’s be honest…it’s not good.
No WAC team begins the season in the top 100.
Defending WAC regular season champion Utah Valley begins at 111.
KenPom is projecting the Wolverines will win the WAC again in 2025-26 with a 14-4 record.
KenPom has ACU listed second at 177, finishing with a 10-8 record.
Here are the rest of the WAC KenPom rankings.
UT Arlington - 178
California Baptist - 191
Utah Tech - 252
Southern Utah - 269
Tarleton State - 279
The good news is that the WAC doesn’t have a sub-300 KenPom team as it has in years’ past.
It is all for preseason hype. If we are being honest, NET rankings and KenPom rankings don’t really matter in the WAC other than for seeding in the NCAA Tournament because the WAC is a one-bid league.
They are always fun to speculate about. But, considering the WAC isn’t a power conference and has lost multiple teams each for the past four years, it is safe to say that KenPom doesn’t pay a ton of attention to the league.
Secret Scrimmages and Exhibitions Begin
It is that part of October when scrimmages and exhibition games are taking place around the country.
If you aren’t on X, then you missed Jon Rothstein calling out institutions for not streaming their exhibition games. You also missed fans and CBB pundits saying that secret scrimmages should be streamed.
There is a lot of excitement over an exhibition game that went down in Waco, Texas, over the weekend. Or other results that have come out.
Don’t shoot the messenger, but exhibition games and secret scrimmages are college basketball’s version of Spring Training.
The results don’t matter. The stats don’t count. And we have absolutely no idea who will and won’t play in those games, what the coaching approach is to the event, and other factors.
On top of that, talking with multiple coaches around the WAC, secret scrimmages are formatted differently from an actual game. Coaches want to work on specific situations. They want to use the time to practice against another team that doesn’t know the playbook.
It’s fun to hypothesize over results. And perhaps I am old school, but I don’t give those results much credence because of so many outlying factors that we don’t see or hear about.
Here is an example. If I report that a current WAC team beat a former WAC team in a secret scrimmage, and then release the teams, there would be an uproar from both fan bases, despite not knowing who played, what the format was, and so much more.
Just know that your team is getting prepped for their season opener.
WAC/UAC Add Member for 2026-2027
On Friday afternoon, the WAC announced that as part of the rebrand to the United Athletic Conference beginning July 1, 2026, Arkansas Little Rock will be joining the league.
“The addition of Little Rock bolsters an already impressive lineup of institutions within the new United Athletic Conference,” said consortium Executive Director Jeff Bacon. “Little Rock’s impressive academic and athletic track record, its leadership’s commitment to all sports including men’s and women’s basketball, and the expansion of our presence into Little Rock bring significant value to our membership as we build a new model for Division I athletics—one designed to minimize expenses, maximize revenues, and deliver quality competition to all members.”
Little Rock will join ACU, Tarleton State, UT Arlington, Central Arkansas, West Georgia, Eastern Kentucky, North Alabama, and Austin Peay beginning July 1, 2026.
Little Rock doesn’t sponsor football, so the UAC will still be at just seven teams in FCS football.
In terms of basketball, Little Rock finished 19-14 overall in 2024-15 and 12-8 in Ohio Valley Conference play.
Little Rock had a NET ranking of 234 and a KenPom ranking of 225 in 2024-25.
In KenPom’s 2025-26 preseason rankings, Little Rock sits at 152.