Apologies for last week, we got a tad sidetracked and did not submit a poll. We're back now and better than even after a crazy week in college basketball. Explanations follow the poll...
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| Rank | Team | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Connecticut | |
| 2 | Memphis | |
| 3 | North Carolina | |
| 4 | Pittsburgh | |
| 5 | Louisville | |
| 6 | Oklahoma | |
| 7 | Duke | |
| 8 | Kansas | |
| 9 | Michigan St. | |
| 10 | Wake Forest | |
| 11 | Louisiana St. | |
| 12 | Washington | |
| 13 | Gonzaga | |
| 14 | Villanova | |
| 15 | Missouri | |
| 16 | Xavier | |
| 17 | UCLA | |
| 18 | Marquette | |
| 19 | Clemson | |
| 20 | Purdue | |
| 21 | Butler | |
| 22 | Arizona St. | |
| 23 | Syracuse | |
| 24 | Utah | |
| 25 | Florida St. | |
After a brief hiatus from the top spot, the Connecticut Huskies climb back to take their rightful place as the number one team in the nation. Out of every team in the nation, they have been the most consistent all year. The sad thing for them is that I don't know if it translates into an NCAA title because of the loss of Jerome Dyson. Time will tell...
Something has to be said about the outstanding coaching of Bill Self and John Calipari. Both were in last year's NCAA Title game and were absolutely exposed by graduation and the NBA Draft. Kansas was stripped of virtually every key player fom that title team and Memphis lost the super-talented Derrick Rose, and their two leaders Joey Dorsey and Chris Douglas-Roberts. People were debating if these two teams would even be in the top-25 at the start of the year and now here they sit at #2 and #8, respectively. Both teams struggled early in the year but both coaches have done an outstanding job at getting their youth to play like seniors.
Gonzaga's got the formula down. Just keep winning and everything else will take care of itself. Basically every team remotely close to the Zags in the rankings lost, and lost big. Clemson was dismantled this week and was Missouri, Marquette, and Arizona State. The Zags, ugly or not, just keep plugging along without anyone batting an eye. Is it possible to dream top-10 at this point? Probably not but I could see teams like LSU, UW, and Wake Forest hitting rough patches.
I think the only noticable omission may be Illinois...and we totally admit to having a pretty large Big-10 bias. In our defense, they did lose today and it's hard to forget that 33 point performance against Penn State.