College Basketball Couch Power 10 (Feb. 25th)
Kansas silenced the haters by winning arguably the biggest game of the college basketball season
Welcome to Week 5 of the College Basketball Couch Power 10! This is the last Power 10 of the month, and you know what that means...March is on our doorstep! It's fitting, then, that as we draw ever-nearer to the month of madness, the college basketball season reverted to the wild times it had seen most of the season.
We had finally seen a little bit of normalcy in the last few weeks, so much so that last week I declared that perhaps the madness was just over the regular season. If the narrator from Arrested Development were a character in this blog, now is where he'd say, "It wasn't."
You want some pre-March madness? How about the Top 3 teams in the country losing in one day? How about the last undefeated team it the country losing on their home floor? How about the ACC having 3 different leaders in a 5-day span? How about twelve ranked teams being upset in one week, a whopping nine of those upsets coming at the hands of unranked teams!
If this week doesn't epitomize that there are no truly great teams this season, and that the title is anyone's and everyone’s to win, I don't know what does. Despite this, I’ll do my best to rank the top teams based on what they’ve done to date:
1. Kansas (25-3)
Kansas had already been showing signs of becoming the team they were projected to be preseason, but the last week kicked it up a notch. On Saturday, they notched one of the biggest wins of the season, holding off #1 Baylor in Waco. They played just 48 hours after that, and beat Oklahoma State by 25 points. There can be little doubt the Jayhawks are playing the best basketball in the country right now, and if Baylor can't stop them...can anyone?
2. Baylor (24-2)
There's no shame in losing to Kansas this year, even at home. It was just the Bears' 2nd loss, and on aggregate they're still ahead of Kansas after beating them by 12 in Lawrence. However, despite Baylor's impressive winning streak, there were signs of decline in play starting to develop, particularly on offense. In a win over Oklahoma last week, for example, they scored just 65 points. They’ll need to be better as they look to secure their first Big XII title ever.
3. Florida State (24-4)
What a difference two weeks makes. The Noles weren’t even in our top 10 two weeks ago, and now they’ve launched all the way into our Top 3. Since losing to Duke, Florida State has 4 straight wins, and has also benefitted from the carnage of teams ranked from in front of them. This past week, they beat a bubble team (NC State) on the road, and just last night, got perhaps their biggest win of season by swamping Louisville to pull into a shared ACC lead with Duke. The Seminoles have 4 losses, sure, but every single one was on the road. Their losses to Pitt, UVA and Duke were by a total of 12 points, and the only big loss was to Indiana, a team certainly heading to the tournament (and losing in Assembly Hall is common-- the 2016-17 UNC team got shellacked there en route to winning the national championship, while the Hoosiers ended up missing the postseason altogether).
4. Dayton (25-2)
Losses by the West Coast Mafia last weekend allow the Flyers to finally take their turn atop the mid-major throne. Their record is still slightly inferior to San Diego State, and their schedule strength still slightly inferior to Gonzaga, but those early losses to Kansas and Colorado look better and better, and Dayton's 16-game winning streak is now far and away the best in the country. The question now is whether they are able to play themselves into a 1-seed.
5. Gonzaga (27-2)
After conducting routine business against San Francisco on Thursday, Gonzaga's 19-game winning streak finally came to an end in major fashion on Saturday, as a red-hot BYU team shot the lights off. I still think the Zags are an extremely balanced team, but with such a long gap between their quality opponents, a letdown was bound to happen.
6. San Diego State (26-1)
San Diego State's perfect season finally came to an end, as they lost their only game of last week to UNLV. It seems harsh to drop a team 4 spots in the rankings just for losing their first game of the season by 3 points, but the Aztecs' schedule strength is so weak that the margin for error is very small. The good news is, this result didn't suddenly render San Diego State a bad team, and they're still in prime position to run the table from here on out and possibly even make a play for a 1-seed.
7. Kentucky (22-5)
Welcome to the Power 10, Kentucky! A preseason Top 5 pick, they seemed headed for another underachieving season just 3 weeks ago. After losing to Auburn at the start of the month, they were two games out of the SEC lead and had lost a quarter of their games. 7 consecutive wins later, and thanks to the bizarre capitulation of LSU and Auburn, the Wildcats are suddenly atop the SEC by 2 games themselves. Their gritty win at LSU last week exemplifies that they are a team likely nobody wants to see come March.
8. Creighton (22-6)
After making their inaugural Couch Power 10 appearance last week, Creighton played just one game. Fortunately for Bluejay fans, that one game was a 22-point margin romp over recently-ranked Butler. They're still a game out of Seton Hall's Big East lead, but Creighton's 5-game winning streak renders them the most dangerous team in the conference right now.
9. Maryland (22-5)
Maryland's sole game last week was a loss, which snapped a 9-game winning streak. But nobody's gonna hold a closely-fought road loss at Ohio State against them, and the Terps still hold a 2-game lead atop the standings.
10. Duke (23-4)
Fresh off of the highest Couch Power 10 ranking Duke had achieved this season, they promptly lost by 22 points at NC State. It's not a preposterous thing to lose a road game at a bubble team late in the season, but to be so wholly destroyed by a mediocre side leaves a bad taste in your mouth, one that a 24-point win over Virginia Tech couldn't really wash out. I typically hate placing a team that has a head-to-head and record advantage over another team further behind in the rankings, but would you really rather be a Duke fan than a Florida State fan right now?
Just missed: Villanova, Auburn, Louisville, Penn State, Oregon, Whatever the polar opposite of North Carolina's injury luck is
Bonus: Daniel's #1 Seeds as it stands today!
MIDWEST (Indianapolis): Kansas
SOUTH (Houston): Baylor
EAST (New York): Florida State
WEST (Los Angeles): Gonzaga