A great part of being associated with the SB Nation network of blogs is the amount of collaboration we get to do with the rest of our vast community of over 200 sites. As such, the big wigs at SB contacted their college basketball bloggers to work together to create our own set of power rankings. Often times I submit my rankings without writing them down but this week, I decided to share my ballot with you all. Last time I did this I got some "what are you crazy?!" type feedback so let's see what we have for this week.
The combined rankings will be released on Friday morning over at SBNation.com. We'll make sure to give you all a link when they are published.
| Rank | Team |
| 1 | Kansas |
| 2 | Kentucky |
| 3 | Villanova |
| 4 | Syracuse |
| 5 | West Virginia |
| 6 | Purdue |
| 7 | Kansas State |
| 8 | Texas |
| 9 | Wisconsin |
| 10 | Michigan State |
| 11 | Georgetown |
| 12 | Duke |
| 13 | Vanderbilt |
| 14 | Tennessee |
| 15 | Ohio State |
| 16 | BYU |
I was actually in attendance tonight for the Kansas-Colorado match up in Boulder so it was really tough for me to slate them #1 but I still think they are the most deserving. Kansas gets the best from every Big 12 team, especially the up and comers like Colorado so their struggles didn't surprise me. Kentucky still gets the nod at number two as I grow more and more impressed with them as a team every day. Demarcus Cousins is blossoming into the best low post player in the nation and, if he can keep his head on straight, is nearly impossible to stop. The rest of my rankings are pretty self-explanatory. Everyone outside that top four is still insanely inconsistent. Vanderbilt has come on strong recently and went into Knoxville and got a huge road win in the conference.
As for Gonzaga, I left them out because I haven't seen a team worthy of being in this class the past few games. Starting Thursday night, Mark Few's club will have the chance for a huge bounce back as they will take on Portland tomorrow and Memphis on Saturday evening. I think we've all seen a very capable team for the balance of the season but lately, it hasn't been there. Hopefully we can a huge performance from the Zags on Thursday night.