College Basketball Couch Power 10 (March 1st)
In a weekend filled with wild upsets, perhaps none were bigger than St. Mary's handing #1 Gonzaga their first loss in the year 2022.
In case you're not fortunate enough to be seeing weather that's showing signs of the early thaw, or smelling the cherry blossoms emerge, or hearing the many homes playing this iconic tune on repeat... allow me to assure you that it's March! Yes, we are past the year's worst month and into arguably one of its best, and that means two things: this is the penultimate Couch Power 10 for the college basketball season, and believe it or not, we are fast approaching the best postseason in sports.
It's already been a year full of action, upsets, unpredictable storylines, and more, but I think the college basketball gods realized March was around the corner and decided to give us a little somethin' extra. Because last week, college hoops lost their damn MINDS. From last Monday through Friday night, three different Top 15 teams lost-- one to an unranked opponent -- and four more were taken to at least one overtime by their unranked opponent. "Daniel," you say, "that's all good and fun, but that doesn't exactly sound all that mind-blowing." Sure! ... but then came Saturday. On Saturday, 7 of the Top 10 lost. And not only that, four of them lost to unranked opponents. And not only that, the entire top 6 lost. Let me say that agin, THE ENTIRE TOP 6 LOST. The #1 ranked team, all the way down through the #6 team, all lost!!! It wasn't quite March yet, but I'd sure call that madness.
Once again, true to form for the last couple years in the world at large, it's been a wild and unpredictable season. Despite this, I’ll do my best to rank the top teams based on what they’ve done to date:
1. Kansas
How does a team that was ranked #3 last week lose their big game and move up to #1? Well, the top 6 ranked teams all lose, that's how. When all the dust clears, you see a team with a 23-win season, including 9 "Quad 1 wins," despite playing a schedule that ranks in the Top 5 nationally in strength. That's good enough for the #1 'Strength of Record,' per ESPN, and it's good enough for me. Kansas is a flawed, inconsistent team, but they may turn out to be the best of the flawed, inconsistent teams.
2. Baylor
Perhaps one of the bigger beneficiaries from the Saturday carnage was the team that beat Kansas last weekend! Baylor certainly are the biggest beneficiaries in The Couch's ranking, jumping from outside the Top 10 last week all the way up to the #2 spot. The Bears were up and down for a little while there, but followed up a key win over the Jayhawks with a tough road victory at Texas last night. Their schedule strength and strength of record are also both Top 10 and Top 5, respectively. They slot in just behind the team they just beat for now, due to a slightly inferior schedule and the fact that Kansas did beat them by a million a mere couple of weeks ago...but Baylor is right on KU's heels, both in the Big 12 and nationally.
3. Auburn
Auburn, who so recently hadn't lost since November 2021, lost for the third week running, and this one, a 5-point loss at Tennessee, was their most decisive one yet. The trend line isn't pretty for the Tigers, and fans of theirs have legitimate reason to be concerned about that. But all things considered, when a competitive road loss at Top 20 Tennessee is the biggest blemish on your 25-4 record, you're still among the best.
4. Wisconsin
Wisconsin has been stealthily climbing both the Big Ten standings and the national rankings, thanks to a 4-game winning streak and just 2 losses from their last 12. The lack of big-name wins amongst that streak probably has contributed to the relatively little attention, but make no mistake: the Badgers are for real. Their 23-5 record comes with 10 Quad 1 wins and the #10-ranked schedule strength, and amazingly, with a win at home against Purdue tonight they could not only complete a season sweep of the Boilermakers, but secure the Big Ten regular-season title. Don't sleep on Wisconsin.
5. Purdue
A road loss to Michigan State on a buzzer-beater is hardly a serious condemnation of Purdue's quality. The problem is that it speaks to a season-long trend of the Boilermakers being inconsistent, and never really being able to finish the job. The Boilers have a good record, a solid schedule strength, and 8 quality wins, all of which are the facets of a top-tier resume. But, especially if they officially lose the Big Ten to Wisconsin tonight, you can't help but feel like more could have been expected from Purdue thus far.
6. Providence
Providence's blowout win over Creighton this must have been a nice palette-cleanser, because the previous four games had been giving their fans heart-palpitations. Their home loss to Villanova was sandwiched between two nail-biting wins over DePaul and Butler, and they began last week with not one, not two, but three overtimes against Xavier before finally sealing the home win. With their dominant weekend win, though, the Friars not only avoided the upset bug, but clinched the Big East regular-season title and got their 7th Quad 1 win from a schedule that ranks slightly stronger than the likes of Duke, Arizona and Gonzaga. Providence has one more big game tonight against Villanova, then all eyes are on the postseason tourneys.
7. Duke
At one point during ESPN's Big Monday broadcast, the commentators were discussing the new AP rankings, and Cory Alexander made the argument that because Duke had been the highest-ranked team to not lose and because it was entering the last regular season week of Coach K's career, Duke should be ranked #1. Unfortunately for Cory and for Duke fans, that line of thinking doesn't really track here. Duke absolutely should be commended for avoiding upsets better than their peers on their 6-game winning streak, and it's true that they seem every bit as steady and consistent as any team right now. But this is still a team who twice lost at home to unranked opponents, hasn't beaten a ranked opponent since November, and has a schedule ranked in the 50s in strength, so let's pump the brakes on the #1 team talk.
8. Gonzaga
9. Arizona
It speaks to the chaos that is the end to this basketball season that I could be so far apart from the AP in terms of who the top teams are. Nobody really knew what to expect from this week's rankings after the pandemonium of last weekend, but I think it's safe to say few people expected Gonzaga and Arizona to remain #'s 1 and 2 in the country. Now, I understand the convenience of keeping the West Coast teams in their spots: they have the best record of any of the teams in the debate, so many teams lost that it was almost a guarantee that someone who lost would be #1 (see our #1 team), and silly as this may sound, because Arizona and Gonzaga's losses happened so late on Saturday night on the East Coast, it was a bit out of the public eye.
That said, I think they got it wrong. Both these teams fall under the same umbrella of team that has a ridiculously high ceiling, and have been playing like it for the better part of two months, but don't exactly have a sterling resume. Schedules that rank from 75-100 don't offer too many opportunities for impactful wins, and as such, they don't have much room for error. Losing by double digits as a heavy favorite constitutes a pretty big error, and that's why they slip further than anyone else in my rankings. I do agree with the voters in that I still give the slight edge to Gonzaga between the two, though; even though the Zags' schedule is the weaker of the two, they also have more quality wins to date, and a loss at St. Mary's is a whole lot more palatable than a loss at Colorado.
10. Murray State
Yeah, why not? Murray State has played a grossly easy schedule (ranked #258 in the country), and it's not lost on me that they've been flirting with a loss multiple times in recent weeks. But they're 28-2, and have been doing what seemingly every other team in America can't do: avoiding losses. They own a road win at Memphis and two blowout wins over Belmont, and one of their two losses is a road loss at Auburn, all of which are aging quite nicely. Let's give them their due.
Just missed: Tennessee, Kentucky, USC, Texas Tech, Villanova, ACC Player of the Year Armando Bacot
BONUS! Couch Seed Projections
MIDWEST (Chicago): Kansas
SOUTH (San Antonio): Baylor
WEST (San Francisco): Auburn
EAST (Philadelphia): Wisconsin
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