I took a few weeks off from my top-25 for the holidays, but have been keeping up with games as much as I can. As SEC play tips off, I don’t get as much time to watch games around the rest of the country, but that’s what Twitter and all the wonderful websites such as KenPom are for.

Over the last few weeks, the main thing I’ve noticed is that Gonzaga and Baylor seem to be even more alone at the top as the best teams in college basketball, and the Big 12 and Big 10 have already started to devour each other as both leagues look to be pretty deep. The ACC certainly looks to be having a down year and the SEC is hard to fully evaluate right now with the league having pure chaos in the first few league games.

I have a new system for tracking teams and will use it to base a lot of my decisions. As the year goes on, I find that a lot of people get sucked into the most recent games and put a little too much weight on recent results sometimes. Because of this, and because I generally like objective data as much as possible, I’m going to use these metrics in my post as well as the basis for my thought process.

I use KenPom as my starting point and keep track of the top-50 overall teams and a few others as I see fit. A key win in my rankings is defined as a top-50 win at home, a top-75 win on a neutral court, or a top-100 win on the road. I will try to record all losses for now, but will also denote bad losses when necessary and those are just the opposite of the good wins. For instance, if a team loses to a team not in the top-50 at home, then it’s a “bad” loss. Same for a loss to a team outside of the top-100 anywhere.

1. Gonzaga (10-0)

Key Wins:

Losses: None

2. Baylor (9-0)

Key Wins:

Losses: None

3. Villanova (8-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

4. Texas (8-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

5. Iowa (9-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

6. Houston (7-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

7. Illinois (8-3)

Key Wins:

Losses:

8. Michigan (8-0)

Key Wins:

Losses: None

9. Wisconsin (9-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

10. Tennessee (7-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

11. Kansas (8-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

12. Clemson (8-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

13. Creighton (8-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

14. Minnesota (9-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

15. Missouri (7-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

16. Rutgers (7-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

17. Oregon (8-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

18. West Virginia (8-3)

Key Wins:

Losses:

19. Virginia Tech (8-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

20. Florida (5-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

21. Ohio State (8-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

22. Arizona (9-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

23. Saint Louis (7-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

24. Oklahoma State (7-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

25. Louisville (7-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

Also Under Consideration (Alphabetical)

Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Duke, Florida State, Indiana, Kentucky , Loyola Chicago, LSU, Maryland, NC State, North Carolina, Northwestern, Oklahoma, Penn State, Purdue, San Diego State, Seton Hall, SMU, Stanford, Syracuse, Texas Tech, UCLA, USC, and Virginia