This week Michigan looked like they were making a statement that they belonged in the top tier with Gonzaga and Baylor with their dominant win against Wisconsin. Then the Wolverines followed it up by losing to Minnesota on the road. Michigan still is a top team for sure, but I’m not sure a team will have the ability to fully join the top-2 for a while now that Michigan and Texas lost this week.

After not being in my Top 25 yet this year, Virginia makes a large jump up to 15th after they absolutely dominated Clemson on the road.

Alabama also made a large jump as they stayed undefeated in SEC play with a 20-point and 31-point win over Kentucky and Arkansas.

I’ve got a handful of Pac-12 teams towards the end of my rankings because they all have good records and have mostly been beating up on the worse teams in their conference. I don’t think all of them will stay in my rankings for long, but for now, it’s hard to tell who doesn’t really belong since they all have pretty comparable wins and few losses.

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 (14-0)

Key Wins:

Losses:

2. Baylor (12-0)

Key Wins:

Losses:

3. Villanova (8-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

4. Iowa (12-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

5. Michigan (11-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

6. Houston (11-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

7. Texas (11-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

8. Tennessee (10-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

9. Ohio State (11-3)

Key Wins:

Losses:

10. Kansas (10-3)

Key Wins:

Losses:

11. Texas Tech (11-4)

Key Wins:

Losses:

12. Wisconsin (11-3)

Key Wins:

Losses:

13. West Virginia (9-4)

Key Wins:

Losses:

14. Alabama (11-3)

Key Wins:

Losses:

15. Virginia (9-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

16. Creighton (10-3)

Key Wins:

Losses:

17. Clemson (9-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

18. Illinois (9-5)

Key Wins:

Losses:

19. Connecticut (7-1)

Key Wins:

Losses:

20. USC (11-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

21. UCLA (11-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

22. Oregon (9-2)

Key Wins:

Losses:

23. Minnesota (11-4)

Key Wins:

Losses:

24. Oklahoma State (9-3)

Key Wins:

Losses:

25. Colorado (11-3)

Key Wins:

Losses:

Also Under Consideration (Alphabetical)

Arizona, Arkansas, Drake, Duke, Florida, Florida State, Indiana, Louisville, Loyola Chicago, LSU, Maryland, Michigan State, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Penn State, Purdue, Richmond, Rutgers, Saint Louis, San Diego State, Seton Hall, Stanford, Utah State, Virginia Tech, Xavier