What Are The Odds: 31-0

This year's Memphis team really seems like the perfect storm. They were pretty solid last year, reaching the Elite 8 before losing to a team that only had two eventual top-four picks.

Obviously, that doesn't make them unique. The difference between Memphis and those other seven teams is that they returned nearly their entire team.

Below are the key losses of each of last year's final eight teams:
Ohio State: Conley, Oden, Cook
UNC: Wright
Georgetown: Green
Kansas: Wright (the other one)
UCLA: Afflalo
Florida: Ha
Oregon: Brooks
Memphis: Jeremy Hunt

Now, this is not to diminish Jeremy Hunt's contributions to last year's team. He did average 24 minutes and 14 points. But his loss clearly didn't hurt Memphis as much as the other Elite 8 teams (with the possible exception of Kansas).

Not only that, but Memphis added the third best freshman in the country this season. Combine that with a 13-0 start and the fact that they play in Conference USA...I think you see where I'm going with this.

So, how likely is it that they finish 31-0, ? Moreso than you probably would have guessed.

Here's their schedule the rest of the way:
1/9 East Carolina
1/12 @Marshall
1/16 @Rice
1/19 Southern Mississippi
1/23 @Tulsa
1/26 Gonzaga
1/30 @Houston
2/2 UTEP
2/6 Southern Methodist
2/9 Central Florida
2/13 Houston
2/16 @UAB
2/20 @Tulane
2/23 Tennessee
2/27 Tulsa
3/1 @Southern Mississippi
3/5 Southern Methodist
3/8 UAB

Projections for each of these games can be found at Ken Pomeroy's site. Needless to say, they are going to be significant favorites in each. They've been favored in every C-USA game since 04-05 (when their conference schedule looked a little bit different), and their two non-conference games (Gonzaga, Tennessee) are both at home.

Pomeroy gives them a 46.9% chance of running the table in C-USA, and since I'm not about to try to handicap games like Memphis @ Rice, I'm going with that for these purposes. He predicts Memphis to beat Gonzaga by 12 (with an 87% chance of winning), which seems about right- I would guess they'll be favored by about that number when they play later this month.

In their other non-conference game, Pomeroy has Memphis beating Tennessee by 11, with a 83% chance or winning. Both of these numbers seem high to me; Tennessee is damn good. On 12/22, the Volunteers won at Xavier by seven. Check out what Xavier has done since that loss:

12/28 Delaware State W 65-33
12/31 Kansas State W 103-77
1/3 Virginia W 108-70
1/6 @Auburn W 80-57

Not bad. I'd guess Memphis will be favored by about 7.5 against Xavier, which gives them a 75% chance of winning. Combine that with 87% in the Gonzaga game, and 46.9% to go 16-0 in C-USA, and they're at a 30.6% to go 31-0.

If there was a line on this (there's not...there should be), here's what it would look like:

Memphis to go undefeated, +215
Memphis to NOT go undefeated, -255

(I understand that there are five other undefeated teams. It's really too early to look at the odds that any of them to undefeated, though. Pomeroy has Kansas rated #1, and they are by far the highest, at almost 12%. But UNC is at only 1.02%, because they're still rated below Duke, who they play twice. And Vandy, Wash St. and Mississippi are all under 0.1%. If one of them still hasn't lost a few weeks from now, then it'll be worth looking at.)

Photo: InsideHoops.