The Most Important Fake Top-25 College Basketball Rankings On The Internet

So every Monday I’ll be putting these together. But, what I want to do each week, besides rack up hopeful pageviews by people getting mad about where their team is, is address some of the biggest questions of the previous week. Now, the way I plan on doing these rankings is a combo of looking forward and looking behind. So take some of the results that we’ve seen, but also try to predict who will be the best teams going forward. 

1. Gonzaga (6-0, 3)
2. Kansas (5-0, 2)
3. Duke (5-1, 1)
4. Virginia (6-0, 4)
5. Michigan (6-0, 4)
6. Kentucky (5-1, 6)
7. Nevada (6-0, 7)
8. Auburn (5-1, 10)
9. Tennessee (4-1, 9)
10. UNC  (6-1, 8)
11. Virginia Tech (5-0, 11)
12. Michigan State (5-1, 14)
13. Ohio State (6-0, 17)
14. Kansas State (6-0, 12)
15. Texas Tech (6-0, NR)
16. Florida State (5-1, 13)
17. Villanova (5-2, NR)
18. NC State (6-0, 19)
19. Buffalo (5-0, 21)
20. Iowa (5-0, 24)
21. Texas (5-1, NR)
22. Maryland (6-0, NR)
23. Creighton (5-1, NR)
24. Oregon (4-1, NR)
25. Clemson (5-1, 23)

Fell out of rankings: LSU (15), Mississippi State (16), UCLA (18), Nebraska (20), Indiana (22), Butler (25)

So the first thing is to address the top-3. There’s a clear top-3 across pretty much any poll you look at and the question is in what order do you put them. For me, Gonzaga gets the nod right now. They beat Duke without Killian Tillie which is damn impressive, especially on a neutral court. That said, if you want to put Duke up there because you think they are the best team in the long run, I’m not going to yell at you. Same goes for Kansas who is undefeated with quality wins over Michigan State and Tennessee on neutral courts. After that it does seem like a clear top-5 with Virginia and Michigan.

Then there’s what to do with Villanova. I know they got its ass kicked by Michigan and lost at home to Furman. But, looking at the long term picture here, Villanova was never going to be bad. You can have a bad week and still be good. That’s Villanova. I know they beat Florida State, but for now I’m keeping them a spot behind due to the loss to Furman. I will say the win against Florida State was impressive because Nova won playing an ugly game. That’s typically a game that Florida State wins. Speaking of Furman, I’m not ranking them despite the win at Loyola and Villanova because the record is a bit inflated – they’ve played 3 non DI teams.

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I also likely have Ohio State higher than most and that’s because of two reasons. First, Chris Holtmann. Just start betting on him and Chris Beard from Texas Tech to always be good no matter what. Second, the wins on the road against Cincinnati and Creighton. They are one of the few teams to have two quality road wins like that. Maybe during the basketball game Michigan’s defense will put on a better showing than the football game.

Scheduled Top-25 Matchups This Week:
No. 10 UNC at No. 5 Michigan – Wednesday, 9:00pm
No. 4 Virginia at No. 22 Maryland – Wednesday, 7:30pm
No. 1 Gonzaga at No. 23 Creighton – Saturday, 2:00pm