The Week 9 college basketball rankings will be released Monday afternoon and here are our Top 25 projections.
Week 8 of the college basketball season was one of the wildest in recent memory. The first week of conference action brought some incredible upsets as well as big wins for teams looking to climb up the college basketball rankings.
There were a couple of teams who got a nice bump last week with big wins. The first was Oregon who took down two ranked teams, including No. 2 UCLA, on its way to a big week. The second was Florida State which went on the road to take on a scrappy Virginia team, and won by two.
With the risers in the rankings, there were also some schools that dropped. In fact, nine AP Top 25 teams lost at least one game last week and five were in the top 10.
Let’s take a look at what that may have done to the college basketball rankings for Week 9.
I was tempted to believe that Indiana would completely drop out of the rankings after a rough week and be replaced by fellow Big Ten contender Maryland, but the Terrapins lost a home game to Nebraska Sunday, dashing those thoughts. Let’s face it, Indiana can be a top-five team when it wants to, but it can also be one of the most consistent in the country. Losses to Nebraska and Louisville last week proved the latter.
Florida has put its loss to in-state foe Florida State behind it and it’s looking like the Gators could be true SEC contenders. They proved that with a nice road victory against an Arkansas team that was 11-1 on the season. With the SEC looking a bit down this year, Florida may very well be the second best team from the conference.
Notre Dame opened the week with an eight-point win over Saint Peter’s and then closed it out with an overtime victory at Pittsburgh by one. It was one of those ‘survive and advance’ weeks that feels like NCAA Tournament play and the Fighting Irish remain alive. Mike Brey has a talented team here, but is it good enough to compete with Duke, North Carolina?
Cincinnati is off to a hot start to its 2016-17 season and there’s a good chance the Bearcats could come out of the American Athletic Conference with ease. They went on the road and beat Temple and then beat bottom-dweller Tulane on Sunday night. This team is coming together at a good time, but it’s hard to tell just how good the Bearcats are. Their best win of the year was against a shaky Iowa State team.
If you beat Duke the way Virginia Tech did on Saturday afternoon, you deserve to make a jump into the rankings. I could see the Hokies making the leap to No. 21 this week since they did beat the Blue Devils without arguably their best player in Grayson Allen who is still suspended. Still, that team is loaded and the Hokies are now 12-1 on the season. Could this team be a flash in the pan or a true ACC contender?