A sports blog by and for Midwest Sports Fans
By the time you read this, the Super Bowl will be over, and the sports world will finally be able to turn more of its attention to college hoops.
A terrific Kansas-Missouri game on Saturday night provided a springboard into “Rivalry Week,” which features a number of intriguing matchups.
Before that tips off though, here are this week’s power rankings.
It sounds a bit odd to say this, but last week was relatively tame in the college hoops world since “only” nine teams in the Top 25 lost. Even so, there are no new teams in this week’s edition of my power rankings, just some jostling of positions.
Saturday was arguably the best day of college basketball so far this season, as a pair of Top Five sqauds squared off, the top-ranked team went down, and a buzzer-beater ended a lengthy home winning streak just to name a few of the notable happenings.
And as usual, that led to plenty of shakeups in this week’s Top 25.
After yet another week where nearly half of the Top 25 suffered at least one loss, the exercise of putting together my latest power rankings has proven to be challenging once again.
The middle of the list has proven to be a complete mess, but since road wins have been so tough to come by, there are some teams that actually stayed put or even moved up despite losing.
It continues to be an exciting, albeit unpredictable, season in college hoops. Twelve teams ranked in the Top 25 lost last week, with many of those defeats coming on the road. Consequently, putting together this week’s power rankings proved to be pretty challenging once I got past the first 12 teams.
It’s been a couple weeks since the last edition of my power ratings, and a whole lot has changed since then thanks to some surprising results from early conference play, meltdowns from Pitt and Xavier, and a couple more teams falling from the ranks of the unbeaten.
Since last week’s installment of the power rankings, Illinois, Marquette, and Xavier have fallen from the ranks of the unbeaten, leaving just six teams with an unblemished record. One of those teams, Murray State, makes their debut in the Bottoms Line College Basketball Power Rankings this week.
I’m a couple days late on the power rankings this week, but there is no truth to the rumor that I went on a five-day bender following IU’s win over Kentucky. In case you forgot what happened, here’s the video. And in case you want to see a complete moron preview the game, here’s another one.
Now that the college basketball season is about a month old, it’s time for the first installment of the Bottoms Line College Basketball Power Rankings.
Putting these together is my attempt at balancing how teams are playing as well as who they are playing (and ideally beating) to rank the top teams in the nation. So before you get bent out of shape and call me an idiot for having North Carolina at number four, make an argument that they aren’t among the four best teams in the country based on how they played against Kentucky.
That’s what I thought.
While the college basketball season began in earnest over the weekend, there weren’t too many marquee games on the schedule, and the sport was forced to compete with college and pro football. That won’t be the case when ESPN’s fourth tip-off marathon begins. The event features 19 men’s games spanning roughly 25 hours, starting at 12:00 Tuesday morning.
I’m too old to stay up for the whole thing, but for those of you wishing to check it out, I can offer you two things: 1) a link to the complete schedule of the games and commentators and 2) my thoughts and predictions for each contest.
As my series of major conference previews continues, the SEC is up next. The league did away with its East and West divisions, but the schedules will stay the same this year with teams playing their former divisional foes twice and the other teams once apiece.
This was not supposed to be one of John Calipari’s better teams.
This was not supposed to be one of Jim Calhoun’s better teams.
Yet somehow, some way, John Calipari and Jim Calhoun have led their Kentucky and UCONN teams to the 2011 Final Four to play the winner of Butler and VCU.
There are plenty of pejorative statements to be made about the checkered history and reputation of both Calipari and Calhoun, but for now we’ll stick just to basketball. And one of these two embattled men will be coaching for a national championship next Monday.
As Gus Johnson might say, this is college basketball.
Update: The predictions are in below.
Wow.
My heart is still racing from that incredible Kentucky-Ohio State game, and I didn’t even have a dog in the fight! That is what makes March Madness so incredible. Even when your team – for me it’s Indiana – doesn’t make the tournament, the games are still so dramatic that you are compelled to get into it as much as if your own team was playing.
It should not be too difficult to get college basketball fans excited about this matchup. Two of the bluest of the blue bloods (literally) will be facing off in Newark on Sunday. It’s Kentucky-North Carolina. What the hell else do I really have to say?
The Wisconsin-Butler matchup on Thursday night is going to be outstanding. I cannot wait to watch that game. I am also greatly intrigued by UCONN-San Diego State, Florida-BYU, and really all of the other matchups on Thursday and Friday night because, well, this is the Sweet 16 after all.
But no matchup has me more intrigued than the matchup between the #1 seed and the #4 seed in the East Region – Ohio State versus Kentucky.
That’s why I am kicking off my part of our Sweet 16 previews off with this matchup. No sense saving the best for last. The most compelling matchup comes first for me.
John Wall.
Coming fresh from the hands of Coach Calipari after leading the Kentucky Wildcats deep into the NCAA Tournament and the ripe age of 19.
Not a bad resume, eh?
John Wall at such a young age is supposedly the next best thing since LeBron James stepped out of the high school shadows. He even appeared on the cover of SLAM magazine as a high school jock.
