A Month Into This Crazy College Hoops Season We Have Some History - For The First Time Ever Purdue Is The No. 1 Team In The Country
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And there it is. For the first time ever Purdue is finally the No. 1 team in the country. It's not exactly shocking as they should have been much higher to start the season. There was a reason I gave them out as my favorite future.
Too often than not people rely on what happened in the previous Tournament to judge the upcoming season. Purdue was a 4 seed that blew a lead to North Texas. They never should have lost that game, but they did. One game. That's the beauty of the NCAA Tournament. A team like UCLA, who barely got in gets hot for 3 weeks and makes a run to the Final Four. Similar to UCLA, Purdue brought back everyone. But because of the Final Four, UCLA was the hot name, not Purdue.
What's happened since? Oh Purdue just beating the hell out of everyone. They have this switch that few teams in the country have. They did it against Villanova where they just remembered they are the better team and Jaden Ivey is arguably the favorite to win NPOY. It's ridiculous how balanced this team is and how much they are willing to sacrifice. Trevion Williams was a preseason All-American selection, he's now coming off the bench and splitting minutes with Zach Edey. There was no pouting or complaining. He comes in does his business and Painter balances the two based on matchup. That says A TON about Purdue.
They have a damn good chance to head into 2022 undefeated. They have games against NC State, Butler, Rutgers, Incarnate Word and Nicholls State left in 2021. They are going to be favored in all of them and should win each one fairly easily. I'm not saying this is going to be Purdue vs the field like we see in year's past. That's just dumb. It's clear they are the best team in the country though with Baylor right now as 2.Talk about a change in culture. Baylor finally wins the NCAA Tournament, loses all these pieces but just reloads with transfers and soon to be top-10 pick Kendall Brown. I still think it's a wide open NCAA Tournament a month in. You can look at about 8-10 teams, throw a dart and they have a chance to win. It's AWESOME.
Yeah, the NET got released today but I'm refusing to talk about it. It's incredibly stupid to care about the NET in December. Let's get to the heart of conference play before we start to worry about that. Hilarious seeing top-25 Wagner and top-15 Wyoming though. Happens every year where people freak out about it.