The college basketball season is approaching its mid-second month. At this point in the calendar, the cream usually starts to rise to the top as players and teams start to show stability. But this season, just when the team started to have confidence, it was quickly dashed. Last week alone, three of the top four teams in the power rankings lost, and No. 1 Kansas State in the AP rankings (which frequently appears in the rankings) suffered two losses. Unfortunately, there has been another big change in the rankings.
Tennessee retained the No. 1 spot it snatched from Auburn last week, but the entire top five has been reconfigured to account for key gains and losses. The list includes Duke University, which moved from fifth to second place with wins over the Incarnate Word, including wins over Louisville and Auburn. It also includes three teams that rose from unranked ranks to the top five. No. 3 UCLA, No. 4 UConn (welcome back!), and No. 5 Texas A&M.
There’s a lot to unpack here, so as always, let’s take a closer look at our ranking guidelines to clarify how we operate in this space. I promise to adhere to these as much as possible throughout the season.
Power Ranking Definition: Rank teams based on level of competition, with emphasis on recent performance. These are highly unscientific in nature and boil down to “atmosphere” rankings where win margin, injuries, performance against top competitors, momentum, and other subjective factors weigh heavily into the equation. You can. Power rankings, in a weekly setting, can be thought of as a reaction, or even an overreaction, to a small sample of that week.
Let’s get started.
College basketball power rankings
