I don't typically look at it in analytical terms. I just base it on what I see like we all used to do before analytics took center stage. In my opinion, there is not and never will be an analytical formula that can accurately represent quality of competition, and that is the most important factor. They can crunch all the wins/losses, stats, trends, projections, adjust this, adjust that, simulate everything a billion times, but actual talent cannot be measured that way. There are also 363 teams and none of them play identical schedules. There will inevitably be people who will argue this by saying something like, "well every national champion since 1492 has been in the KenPom top 10" or something like that. Well, yeah, it doesn't come as some major shock that the best teams also tend to be highly efficient on both ends of the court. It doesn't mean KenPom has some magical formula that predicts the best teams in the country. His rankings change as the year goes on just like the polls, bracketology, or anything else, and the cream usually rises to the top. It's like Joe Lunardi making his NCAAT projections. He can be all over the map all year and it makes no difference. It only matters what he puts out right before the selection show. Then he can brag that he picked 67 out of 68 teams correctly. Well shit, Joe, by then it was pretty damn obvious to most of America and 32 of those picks were auto bids. How many of your projected mid-major conference champs actually lost in their tourneys and you had to change your auto bid pick before the final version of Bracketology? lol
Anyway, sorry that kind of took a left turn... mediocre to me means slightly better than average but nothing special, neither very good nor very bad. Most teams fall into this category for me, including many tournament teams. I also think a lot of the teams in the top 25 at any given time are mediocre. For me to think a team is very good to great they have to be a national title contender in my mind, which typically only includes a dozen or so teams every year. I guess I really don't have a "good" rating on my scale. Teams are either very good to great, mediocre, or they suck. 🤣 For instance, at this point I would say UK is mediocre (at best). They would have no chance to win a natty if the tournament started right now. Could that change in the future? Maybe, they have the talent, but it's unlikely they'll put all the pieces together. I also wouldn't usually consider a team that lost to Texas Southern to be a threat to win a national championship but you never know. There are sometimes outliers and blips on the radar screen. I remember UNC losing to a bad Santa Clara team in the first game of the 2004-05 season before going on to win the natty. Sometimes there are even what I would consider mediocre teams that get hot at the right time and end up hoisting the trophy ('85 Nova, '14 UConn). They won the title but that doesn't make me automatically say, "wow, they were a really good team!" No, they were still mediocre, they just got hot at the right time and probably got a little lucky along the way too. Again, just my own personal opinion.
