As March Madness approaches once again I start to ask why the current ranking system exists in the way it does. A group of unknown people choosing teams matchups using other people rankings with a bit of their own personal bias. I started to look into the other ranking systems, most of them based off matchup statistics. I had heard of KenPom before but never really knew what it was exactly and how it ranked the teams.
KenPom is a college basketball ranking system developed to predict what team would win in a head to head matchup on a nuetral court with all else equal. This ranking system stood out to me because it was one of the few that looked to predict the outcome of a future matchup while most other systems look at who has the strongest season.