Would you be willing to bet that the standard deviation of most statistics has increased over the last decade, even after conference play settles in?
Well, it doesn't matter what you'd bet because it seems no one computes that statistic. I wonder if someone has an open database I could pull from.
I would think so. 20+ years ago and through most of the history of college basketball, you could probably somewhat accurately predict/extrapolate how a team might perform from one year to the next, since your average player would progress from Freshman-Sophomore-Junior-Senior. You could probably take a Freshmans stats at a certain position, under a certain coach, in a certain type of scheme and predict somewhat accurately how they should progress each year, based on the results of previous players in the same situation.
Nowadays, with 1-and-dones, and a huge amount of transfers, it's just damn hard to predict anything from year to year. It used to be the norm was a team like Wisconsin, where they bring back all 5 of their underclassmen starters from a Final 4 team last year, now that is an extreme rarity. Obviously every team, now or previously, brings in new Freshmen every year so that factor was always a little unpredictable, but 20+ years ago you didn't have too many Freshmen coming in that were the go-to player on a team, instantly. They had to slowly work their way in to more minutes as the season or their career went on, so the crazy fluctuation wasn't there from one recruiting class to the next, most Freshman never contributed significantly to good, established teams.
The current landscape of college basketball today seems to be roughly equivalent to if every player in the NBA were a free agent every year. Just wild swings in power and lineups every single year. Obviously there are certain teams in the NBA willing to spend more than others, so they're more likely to stay good through the roster turmoil (just like blue-blood programs in college always getting the top Freshmen each year), but it's still pretty chaotic overall each year.
