NCAA Basketball Top 25 Recap: A Rough Week
I was a bit surprised to see that Michigan State was playing at 2:30 PM on Monday. Usually their games are on at 7 PM or so, but since it was MLK day, they were playing early. I was one of the few people who didn't have the day off, so I had to rush home from work to catch the game.
It was a heck of a matchup between the Spartans and Purdue. They took it right down to the wire, but ultimately lost to the Boilermakers by one point. It was heartbreaking to say the least. It still gives me a lot of hope for this team.
They have been able to hold their own against some really though opponents so far this year. I still have little doubt that they will eventually make it back into the top 25. Hopefully things will really start to heat up just as the post season comes around and they need those wins.
There were zero upsets on Monday in the four top 25 games that were played. Kind of lame right? Good thing we have four more days in the week to give us some action!
Tuesday gave us seven top 25 games and you didn't have to look very far to find an upset in this batch. Probably the biggest one of the day was #13 Kansas State taking down #2 Kansas in overtime 83 to 82. Houston continues to hold the #1 spot, but you can of have to look at strength of schedule and wonder just how tough they really have it.
#12 Iowa State upset #7 Texas 78 to 67 and Wake Forest took down #19 Clemson by ten points. I have to admit, I am pretty surprised to see Alabama sitting in the #4 spot. Don't they know they are a football school? Meanwhile, Tennessee continues to look pretty good this season sitting in the #9 spot.
The upsets continued into Wednesday night as four top 25 teams got knocked off their pedestal. There were a total of seven games and probably the biggest upset was #8 Xavier falling to DePaul 73 to 72. #15 UConn fell short against Seton Hall 66 to 67, and #14 TCU couldn't hang with West Virginia and dropped their game 65 to 74.
Finally, #25 Arkansas fell to Missouri 76 to 79. These have been some tight games and it should give you a pretty good idea of just how good the ACC, SEC, and BIG 12 are this year. I still think the BIG 10 has a lot of potential as well, but it is going to be a battle to see who comes out on top!
It seems to be it was a week of sevens as last night there was once again that many top 25 games played. For me, the biggest upset of the night was Michigan State taking down #23 Rutgers 70 to 57. I doubt that will be enough to move them into the top 25, but it is still a good win for them.
Most other people will probably argue the biggest upset of the night was #6 Gonzaga falling to Loyola Marymount 67 to 68. I think we can all agree this is just a speed bump for a Bulldogs team that has looked really good for the most part over the past three years.
I am a little bummed I didn't get to watch the Michigan State game last night. I was celebrating a friends birthday at a bar and they only had the Michigan/Maryland game on every TV. It's not much use arguing with Wolverine fans, so I didn't even bother asking them to change the channel. I just kept track of the score on my phone.
Purdue continued to steam ahead crushing Minnesota 61 to 39. It's almost kind of sad how horrible the Minnesota team is this year. There were no other upsets on Thursday night.
Surprisingly, we have zero top 25 games tonight, but Saturday brings us 19. Most of them during the afternoon to keep us occupied until the NFL playoff games start! I have a feeling we are going to see some interesting outcomes from some of these games on Saturday.
Will it be a 50/50 split of upsets like we saw last weekend? It's hard to say...
If you aren't worn out from the 19 games on Saturday, Sunday brings us another three top 25 games plus another two football playoff games. Keep an eye on that Maryland/Purdue game. It could be really good.
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