The college basketball season is nearing the middle of its second month. At this point in the calendar, the cream usually starts to rise to the top as players and teams begin showing more consistency. But this season, just as soon as we start to gain confidence in a team, it is instantly crushed. In the past week alone, three of the top four teams in the power rankings suffered losses, and AP No. 1 Kansas — a frequent flyer in the rankings — took two losses. Alas, yet another shake-up in the rankings is in order.
Tennessee held on to the No. 1 spot it claimed last week from Auburn, but the entire top five is reconfigured to account for major risers and fallers. The list includes Duke, which rose from No. 5 to No. 2 after stacking wins over Louisville and Incarnate Word following a statement win over Auburn. It also includes three teams that rose from unranked to the top five: No. 3 UCLA, No. 4 UConn (welcome back!) and No. 5 Texas A&M.
There’s much to unpack here, so let’s dive in with the rankings guidelines as we always do and make clear how we operate in this space. I promise to abide by these as closely as I can throughout the season.
Power Rankings definition: Ranking teams with an emphasis on recent performance based on their level of competition. These are heavily unscientific in nature and can be distilled down to a “vibes” ranking — with things like margin of victory, injuries, performance vs. top competition, momentum and other sometimes subjective factors weighing into the equation. The power rankings can be thought of in a weekly setting as a reaction — or sometimes even an overreaction — to the small sample of the week that was.
Let’s get to it.
College Basketball Power Rankings
