There is no shortage of surprises in sports, and especially in college basketball. So no one should be shocked that the once-invincible Michigan Wolverines came crashing to Earth last week. Even as Michigan was rolling through opponents, KenPom gave them less than a four percent chance of running the table. Well, the table won again, and it will do the same for the remaining five unbeatens. Still, entering the second week of January without a loss is not easy, so let’s give that quintet their flowers.
Some of my fellow AP voters need to do a little reshuffling at the top this week, but not those of us who had Arizona at No. 1 last week. That’s the nature of being a poll voter. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains. At the end of the day, all the important decisions will be made on the court, which is exactly as it should be.
As usual, I relied on a trio of diverse metrics to drive my decisions: KenPom, a predictive metric which includes data from last season; BartTorvik, which I filtered to include this season only; and BartTorvik’s Wins Above Bubble, which is a purely results based metric. Those rankings are listed in order beside each team. The number in parentheses reflects where each team was ranked on my ballot last week.
Here, then, is the (correct) order of the top 25 teams in men’s college basketball, as filed to the Associated Press on Sunday night.
DROPPED OUT: Kansas (17) 23-21-26; Iowa (24) 19-15-39; UCF (21) 44-44-23
ALMOST FAMOUS: Utah State (21-24-19), St. John’s (8-20-40), Villanova (25-35-20), Indiana (27-19-52), Saint Mary’s (35-33-25), Clemson (29-25-13), Saint Louis (34-28-29), Miami (37-36-31), Miami Ohio (97-93-28)
Notes on the votes
• I often say that subsequent results don’t validate previous voting … unless they validate mine, of course. So while I did not expect Michigan to suffer its first loss at home to an unranked Wisconsin team, I also would not say the loss meant I was “correct” to leaving the Wolverines behind Arizona even as they were throttling opponents by ridiculous margins. The main reason I stuck with the Wildcats was due to my belief that if a team is ranked No. 1, it should stay there the following week if it hasn’t lost — although here in Ballotland, we put all of our opinions in wet cement.
The larger takeaway is that we should be careful about crowning teams as prohibitive favorites or historically great. (My pal Andy Katz kinda sorta fell into that trap with Michigan last week.) Not only did the Wolverines lose to Wisconsin at home on Saturday, but they also nearly lost at lowly Penn State four days earlier. As you can see, they are still No. 1 on KenPom and BartTorvik, but their WAB rank sank to No. 8. I didn’t need to drop them far, but I did think given those two results that they belonged behind undefeated Iowa State.
Arizona, meanwhile, looked like a worthy No. 1 while dismantling Kansas State and TCU. There’s a very high probability the Wildcats will be undefeated when they travel to Provo to face BYU on Jan. 26. Think the Marriott Center will be rocking that night?
• Nebraska likewise justified its first top-10 ranking in 60 years by winning tough road games at Ohio State and Indiana. It is amazing that this team keeps winning even though the target on its back is so huge. The Huskers erased a 16-point second-half deficit faster than you can say “Faux Pelini’s cat.” This team is going to lose at some point, so we should enjoy the ride while it lasts. The Huskers have four winnable games before they head to Ann Arbor to play Michigan on Jan. 27. Here’s hoping they’re still perfect by then.
• I’ve been saying all season that despite Vanderbilt’s gaudy metrics, I needed them to beat a good team before I pushed them up my ballot. It’s not that I was skeptical as to how good they are, it’s just that this is prime real estate that needs to be earned. Well, the Commodores earned it, not only by knocking off Alabama at home, but by doing something even harder, which was avoiding a letdown three days later against LSU. As a result, I jumped Vandy up six spots, even though none of the teams they leapfrogged lost last week.
• The on-again, off-again Florida Gators are on again. They had by far their best week of the season with convincing home wins over Georgia and Tennessee. Florida has lost close games to good teams all season, but their two-point loss at Missouri, combined with a lack of a signature win, led me to put them in time out last week. Their two wins and strong rankings in KenPom and BartTorvik prompted me to re-install Florida at No. 15.
• Wisconsin’s metrics are weak, but if you win in Ann Arbor, you deserve to be ranked. We’ll see how long that holds as the Badgers grind their way through the Big Ten season (beginning with a classic trap game at Minnesota Tuesday night). All five of Wisconsin’s losses were respectable (BYU, TCU, Nebraska, Villanova and Purdue), but this was by far the Badgers’ best win. They should get a lot of confidence from it, but eventually they’re going to have to learn to beat good teams when they’re shooting poorly from three.
• I’ve been giving Kansas every benefit of the doubt as it managed its way through the Darryn Peterson situation, but after seeing the Jayhawks barely survive TCU at home and then lose at West Virginia with Peterson scoring a combined 55 points (he also had 26 in their loss at UCF on Jan. 3), then it became a no-brainer to drop them off my ballot. I am surprised at this turn of events given that KU became a top-10 defense with Peterson out of the lineup. Does he make them worse defensively? Are they out of sync because he just came back three games ago? Or as Bill Self indicated after the loss, are they just not that talented? All good questions, and with Iowa State coming to Allen Fieldhouse on Tuesday night, they don’t have much time to find the answers.
• Iowa lost twice (to Minnesota and Illinois) and UCF lost to unranked Oklahoma State, so that left me with one spot to fill. As usual, I had no shortage of good candidates. If I went with the metrics, I would have ranked Utah State, which improved to 5-0 in the Mountain West by winning at Boise State Saturday 93-68. But the Aggies have just four top-100 KenPom wins, and they lost by 13 points at South Florida on Dec. 4.
Compare that with Auburn, whose six losses came to Houston, Michigan, Arizona, Purdue, Georgia and Texas A&M. (Those last two came by a combined six points, and the A&M loss came after KeyShawn Murphy’s apparent buzzer beater got waved off following a replay review.) Auburn also has wins over Oregon, St. John’s, N.C. State and Arkansas (by 22 points at home on Saturday). It’s close between these two teams, but Auburn deserves the nod.
There are three really good mid-majors on my Almost Famous list. Saint Mary’s has won seven in a row and is 5-0 in the WCC. The Gaels have two tough road games this week at San Francisco and Santa Clara, but the big one of course comes Jan. 31 at Gonzaga. Saint Louis remains red hot in Josh Schertz’s second season. The Billikens are one crazy-ass buzzer beater against Stanford from being undefeated. And speaking of undefeated, Miami of Ohio still has a bagel in the loss column. The RedHawks’ WAB rank is rising, but their KenPom and BartTorvik metrics are way too low for me to consider ranking them.
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