College Basketball Rankings 2017: Projected Week 12 Top 25
Virginia Cavaliers
15-3, Last Week: 16
Virginia continues to win with its defense as the rest of the ACC might be in trouble. By no means do I think the Cavaliers have enough offensive firepower to compete with Florida State, North Carolina or even Duke, but defense wins championships and that’s exactly what Tony Bennett’s team is proving. For the past few years the Cavaliers have won with defense and they’re doing the same thing in 2016-17. They held Boston College to 54 points and Georgia Tech to 49 points in two Week 11 victories.
West Virginia Mountaineers
15-4, Last Week: 7
Basketball can be a cruel sport. One day you’re beating the new No. 1 team in the country (Baylor) by 21 points and the next you’re losing back-to-back games against unranked opponents. West Virginia was flying high after a blowout win over No. 1 Baylor last week but responded by losing to Oklahoma at home and then on the road against Kansas State. The Mountaineers might just be going through a rough patch, but the Sooners loss was alarming. They will drop considerably.
Louisville Cardinals
16-4, Last Week: 12
Louisville opened the week with a 32-point blowout of a decent Clemson team that was on the verge of the Top 25 not too long ago, but Rick Pitino couldn’t get a consistent effort from the Cardinals in a loss to Florida State on the road. Winning at Florida State isn’t easy and Louisville found that out early. Although the Cardinals almost did make a surprising comeback, the Seminoles held them off, but don’t expect Louisville to drop much, if at all.
Butler Bulldogs
17-3, Last Week: 13
Butler is one of those teams that doesn’t do anything exceedingly well, but is just an all-around above average squad. They have impressive wins over Indiana, Xavier, Arizona, Villanova and Cincinnati, but tough losses against St. John’s and Indiana State. We almost saw the good and the bad from the Bulldogs in the same week as they beat a tough Marquette team by eight and then nearly lost to Big East bottom-dweller DePaul. Consistency is key with this team.
Creighton Bluejays
18-2, Last Week: 7
The Big East is becoming more competitive by the week and if a team like Marquette can emerge and take down Creighton by 18 points, then there could be even more intrigue surrounding the conference. Creighton did suffer a tough loss to the Golden Eagles, but the Bluejays beat No. 22 Xavier to start the week. This team knows how to score and if the Bluejays can continue to average around 87 points per game, they will be just fine come March.