A sports blog by and for Midwest Sports Fans
After crushing Duke in the season finale, North Carolina will be playing to maintain its grip on a one seed when the ACC Tournament tips off on Thursday. If things go according to seed, the final will be the rubber match between UNC and Duke, but don’t count out a Florida State team that has summoned its share of late-game heroics throughout the season.
With Selection Sunday less than a week away, Andy Bottoms unveils his final College Basketball Power Rankings of the season.
If Saturday’s glut of upsets, exciting games, and nail-biting finishes is any indiation, this year’s NCAA Tournament is going to be fantastic. As it stands, this looks like Andy Bottoms’ second the last set of Power Rankings for the season, because once the field is announced and March Madness begins, any lingering debates will be settled on the floor.
Duke, North Carolina, and Florida State are within one game of each other atop the ACC standings, which should make for an entertaining conference tournament when things get rolling in Atlanta on March 8th.
With just three weeks left until Selection Sunday, Andy Bottoms’ Top 25 stayed relatively stable with just one new squad making their way onto the list this week.
Many of last week’s top matchups lived up to their advanced billing, and when the dust settled following an excisting week of basketball, 13 teams in the Top 25 had lost at least once. While that certainly made Andy Bottoms’s job of assembling this week’s rankings a bit more challenging, it certainly bodes well for March Madness 2012, which begins with Selection Sunday in just four weeks.
With the Super Bowl in the books, 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, Andy Bottoms provides his latest college basketball 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 Andy Bottoms’ College Basketball Power Rankings.
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 Andy Bottoms’ Top 25.
In episode #18 of The Bottoms Line College Basketball Podcast, host Andy Bottoms is once again joined by Rob Dauster and Troy Machir of Ballin’ Is a Habit to discuss all the latest news and events in college basketball.
After yet another week where nearly half of the Top 25 suffered at least one loss, it was another challenging exercise for Andy Bottoms to put together his latest power rankings. 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.
After 12 teams ranked in the Top 25 lost last week, Andy Bottoms had some work to do when putting together this week’s edition of the Bottoms Line College Basketball Power Rankings.
It’s been a couple weeks since the last edition of Andy Bottoms’ 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. There is, however, truth to the rumor that the Hoosiers are back in the top 20 after a long hiatus.
