Fansided

College Basketball Rankings 2016: Projected Week 6 Top 25

By Connor Muldowney

Dec 10, 2016; Las Vegas, NV, USA; Duke Blue Devils center Marques Bolden (20) congratulates center Chase Jeter (2) near the end of a game against the UNLV Runnin
Dec 10, 2016; Las Vegas, NV, USA; Duke Blue Devils center Marques Bolden (20) congratulates center Chase Jeter (2) near the end of a game against the UNLV Runnin /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
1 of 5
Next

The Week 6 college basketball rankings will be released Monday afternoon and here are our Top 25 projections.

Week 5 of the college basketball season is in the books and it’s time we look toward the final stretch of non-conference games. The college basketball rankings, namely the AP Poll, come out on Monday afternoon, but we are giving you a sneak peek at what we believe it will look like.

There was plenty of movement in last week’s ranking with a few top teams such as Kentucky and North Carolina going down. The UCLA Bruins went from No. 11 in the poll to No. 2 after hitting the road to beat Kentucky in Lexington. That was arguably the most impressive win of the year and AP voters agreed, bumping them nine spots.

North Carolina lost to Indiana but managed to stay ahead of the Hoosiers in the rankings as it seems like voters are still not over their loss to IPFW.

Will there be any major shakeups this week? None of the teams ranked in the top 10 in last week’s AP Poll fell this week, but I still made one move. The top-end of the rankings were relatively quiet while the 11-25 range were shuffled around quite a bit.

With a numbers of ranked teams in that range falling via upset, the AP Poll is set to look much different on Monday as there might be some new teams in the top 25. How many teams dropped out completely?

Here are our projections for the Week 6 AP Top 25 rankings.

Notre Dame started the week with a double-digit win over IPFW, the same team that beat Indiana, but lost its first game of the season against No. 1 Villanova, 74-66. It was a valiant effort, but the Wildcats were just too much. The Fighting Irish still look like one of the best teams in the ACC and a loss by just eight points to the nation’s top team wasn’t enough to knock them out.

It was tempting to drop St. Mary’s completely out of the rankings after a loss to Texas-Arlington, but they rebounded with a victory over UC-Irvine. It’s too early to tell if the 14-point loss to UT-Arlington was a fluke, but the Gaels definitely shouldn’t be losing like that against inferior opponents. The WAC might just be Gonzaga’s to lose.

Losing to Pittsburgh at home two weeks ago seemed to be a bad sign for the Maryland Terrapins and they were effectively dropped from the rankings. However, as long as Melo Trimble continues to play like an All-Big Ten point guard, the Terrapins will be just fine. Maryland took down Howard and St. Peter’s in Week 5 and that makes it three straight victories.

The USC Trojans only had one game in Week 5, pending a potential win against Pepperdine at home on Sunday night, but they were the first team outside of the rankings, in terms of votes, last week. They have played well enough to earn a spot in the rankings and I actually thought they would have been in last week, with a few teams losing ahead of them, the Trojans jump to No. 22.

Florida State played exceptionally well against last week’s No. 21 team in Florida on Sunday evening and squeaked out a victory. The Gators made it close even though the Seminoles seemed to dominate a majority of the game and sophomore guard Dwayne Bacon looks like one of the best players in the ACC. Florida State could be a sleeper to win the conference this season.