Ken Pomeroy bewildered by Doug Gottlieb’s criticism of KenPom ratings

Doug Gottlieb isn’t the first coach to complain about rankings and ratings, and he won’t be the last.

Over the years, Ken Pomeroy has seen numerous coaches take issue with his Pomeroy College Basketball Ratings. So, on the one hand, he wasn’t surprised. On the other hand, he was confused by the Green Bay coach’s argument. In a press conference on Tuesday, following consecutive Horizon League losses, Gottlieb railed against the KenPom ratings, describing them as “bullsh*t.”

Awful Announcing reached out to Pomeroy for a response, and he appeared bewildered by Gottlieb’s comments. 

“It’s just like the standard coaching rant,” Pomeroy said. “Eric Musselman had one last year, and Steve Pikiell had one the year before, and Jim Boeheim’s gone down this road. So, I don’t know. My reaction is always to kind of chuckle. After watching the whole thing, it wasn’t really clear to me what exactly his point was. It was pretty rambling. I guess he’s saying his team’s better than my rating shows or something like that. I don’t know.

“But anyway, all these teams that are poorly rated have excuses. Over the course of time, generally, my ratings have proved to be at least in the ballpark of reality.”

“KenPom is bull***t”

Sit back an enjoy this four minute dialogue from Doug Gottlieb on the KenPom rankings. Insightful thoughts.@fox11news @TheFieldOf68 pic.twitter.com/mtJTpfRttW

— Michael Gross (@MichaelSGross) February 3, 2026

As of Wednesday night, Green Bay (13-12) is ranked No. 228 by the KenPom ratings.

Everyone, from the media covering college basketball to coaches, pays attention to the KenPom ratings, which provide valuable data. However, in a lengthy rant, Gottlieb blasted those ratings while defending his program’s NCAA Tournament resume. He accused other mid-major teams of “buying wins” and bolstering their resumes by narrowly losing to superior teams.

“Because it takes into account how much you lose by,” Gottlieb said. “And it has no context for who you have, who the other team has. So in our league, OK, KenPom gives you benefits because Oakland plays like seven buy games. And so if you get close in those buy games and those teams you play in a buy game have great years, your numbers go up. So we get dinged.”

“Buy games” are matchups in which mid-majors travel to play Power 4 teams for a substantial paycheck. Gottlieb argued that the KenPom ratings overvalue teams that lose these buy games by smaller margins.

Pomeroy said his system values those “appropriately.”

“That’s the advantage of looking at scoring margin,” he said. “It absolutely matters. I don’t know. He’s talking about Oakland who played Michigan State, I think pretty close. If you lose to Michigan State by 10 or by 40, that absolutely says something about how good your team is. You can’t just look at the fact that the team lost that game. So, yeah, I mean, for sure that matters from a predictive standpoint.”

Oakland lost to then-No.9 Michigan State 79-70 in Detroit in late December.

https://youtu.be/mcOrkC59COU?si=htRIF9Ff1ICwie7U

One problem might be that coaches don’t understand the KenPom ratings.

“It’s designed to be a predictive system. The complaint that you hear is, ’Oh, this team, they just beat so-and-so, and they’re still ranked behind them or whatever. They have like 10 quad one wins, and they’re ranked poorly or something like that.’

“Those things are kind of secondary to what matters in making predictions, which is really the quality of your opponents and how much you beat them by. I’m not trying to give you a ranking like the AP poll on how good a team’s season has been or how good the resume is. I’m just strictly trying to say how good these teams will be going forward.”