Well they're definitely not sleepers anymore. The Kansas State Wildcats that is. They put a beatdown on #1 Texas over the holiday weekend on their home court. Frank Martin has his boys playing some great basketball right now. You might think that beating the #1 team in the land would jump you up a bit higher than 3 spots to #10, but it is hard to put Kansas State ahead of any of the other top 10 teams at this point. I think that Kentucky, Kansas and Texas are the cream of the crop this season, though I don't think that any of them would be immune to a loss on the road to any of the other top 10 teams. Texas is good and deep but definitely struggled in the hostile environment the other night. Kansas is also very good when they want to be but has been on life-support an few times this season only to be rescued by Sherron Collins' brilliant play. That luck might run out against a good team (like it did against Tennessee). And Kentucky has looked good but has played all their big games on the comfort of their home floor (or a neutral site), and even Coach Cal has admitted that his team is lacking in overcoming adversity, because they haven't really faced any.
A couple other things stood out to me while looking at these rankings and wondering just what the fuck the writer's are looking at.
One is Northern Iowa at #20! Northern Iowa? What the hell? I had to pull up their schedule. I was hoping to find a defining upset win over a good team, but was disappointed. They had a win over an overrated Boston College and a win against a Big 10 rival in Iowa. I couldn't even tell you if Iowa is any good this year, which probably means they are not. Iowa is for wrestling...not basketball. This is just a case of writer's not knowing anything and thinking because a team only has one loss they must be top 25 worthy. I guarantee they won't last long in here.
The other thing was that North Carolina is still ranked. Do we really still need to have them in the Top 25? I know, I know. They have 3 losses to top 5 teams, but those are still losses. And they have 6 altogether...too many at this point in the season. One of those 6 was to College of Charleston! Ugh. How are they still getting votes?
Which brings me to my final point. The Rhode Island Runnin' Rams are again receiving votes. Was it the whooping they laid on the terrible Fordham team? The St. Joe's win was nice, but that is a game they have to win this year. What is it this week that those 11 writers saw that none of them saw the previous weeks after beating Oklahoma State on a neautral (kinda) site and an overtime loss to #17 Temple? I just want some consistency. I hope the Rams keep it up and I hope they crack the Top 25 soon. Lord knows they've got to be as good as Northern Iowa.
Watch out for Wisconsin. They beat EVERYONE at home. And the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets just might be the class of the ACC (aside from Duke, but they don't count because I hate them.)
AP Top 25 (#1 votes, record, points accumulated and previous ranking)
1 Texas (57) 17-1 1617 1
2 Kentucky (8) 18-0 1568 2
3 Kansas 16-1 1457 3
4 Villanova 16-1 1442 4
5 Syracuse 18-1 1376 5
6 Michigan State 15-3 1259 7
7 Duke 15-2 1249 8
8 Tennessee 14-2 1163 9
9 Pittsburgh 15-2 1015 16
10 Kansas State 16-2 989 13
11 West Virginia 13-3 922 10
12 Georgetown 13-3 873 11
13 Purdue 14-3 799 6
14 Brigham Young 18-1 763 18
15 Gonzaga 14-3 748 17
16 Temple 15-3 581 19
17 Clemson 15-3 568 24
18 Wisconsin 14-4 542 13
19 Georgia Tech 13-4 380 20
20 Northern Iowa 16-1 252 27
21 Ohio State 13-5 228
22 Mississippi 13-4 211 21
23 Mississippi State 15-3 189 29
24 North Carolina 12-6 161 12
25 Baylor 14-2 147 22
No comments:
Post a Comment