The Big Ten continues to look like the top conference in the country, but with so many good teams, they’re starting to devour each other which leads to some bad looking records, but still great resumes towards the top of my rankings. Michigan has avoided a loss so far and is continuing to look better, especially with the increasing contribution from Hunter Dickinson.

Gonzaga and Baylor continue to look like they’re in a category of their own at the top, but the Bears have a few tough matchups coming up with three straight games against West Virginia, Texas Tech, and Kansas. With Gonzaga not playing Big 12 level competition the rest of the way, if Baylor can stay undefeated, they may rack up enough quality wins to dethrone the Zags at the top of my rankings.

The SEC is also quietly establishing a few teams at the top of their conference that could be dangerous in the postseason if they can keep it up. Missouri is still riding off their quality non-conference wins and could be slipping up in conference play, but Tennessee, Alabama, LSU, and even Arkansas keep looking better and better.

With normal powers like Duke, North Carolina, and Virginia having slow starts to the year, and now some COVID issues with scheduling in the ACC, the league that is used to being one of the best in the country currently only has two teams in my top-25. Clemson is a quietly good team with more wins I qualify as good than anyone else in the country.

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 in italics 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 (12-0)

Key Wins:

Losses:

2. Baylor (11-0)

Key Wins:

Losses:

3. Villanova (8-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

4. Texas (10-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

5. Iowa (11-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

6. Houston (10-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

7. Michigan (10-0)

Key Wins:

Losses:

8. Wisconsin (10-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

9. Tennessee (9-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

10. Kansas (10-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

11. Clemson (9-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

12. Creighton (10-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

13. Illinois (9-4)

Key Wins:

Losses:

14. Ohio State (9-3)

Key Wins:

Losses:

15. Texas Tech (10-3)

Key Wins:

Losses:

16. West Virginia (9-4)

Key Wins:

Losses:

17. Connecticut (6-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

18. Louisville (8-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

19. USC (8-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

20. UCLA (9-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

21. Missouri (7-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

22. Oregon (9-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

23. Alabama (9-3)

Key Wins:

Losses:

24. Saint Louis (7-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

25. LSU (8-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

Also Under Consideration (Alphabetical)

Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Drake, Duke, Florida, Florida State, Indiana, Kentucky, Loyola Chicago, Maryland, Michigan State, Minnesota, NC State, North Carolina, Northwestern, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Penn State, Purdue, Rutgers, San Diego State, Seton Hall, SMU, Stanford, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech