The Week 13 college basketball rankings will be released Monday afternoon and here are our Top 25 projections.
The 2016-17 season is just flying by and the college basketball landscape is starting to take shape — or so we thought. Week 12 was one of the wildest weeks, in terms of upsets, in recent memory as seven of the top-10 teams went down and 10 of the top-15 dropped.
What will that mean for this week’s rankings? There are going to be major shakeups and the top-10 won’t look nearly the same. Also, there may be a new addition, or two, into the AP Top 25 this week and we took a stab at who that may be.
Let’s take a look at what college basketball rankings might look like for Week 13.
A name you don’t usually see in the AP Top 25 may make a surprise appearance late in the season. The Northwestern Wildcats aren’t usually relevant at this point in the season, but this season has a different feel to it. In fact, this could be the first year in which the Wildcats make the NCAA Tournament — it’s hard to believe they’ve never made the Big Dance. The Wildcats beat Nebraska and Indiana in Week 12 to jump into the rankings over a team like SMU.
I was predicting Purdue to jump up to the No. 17 spot this week had the Boilermakers taken care of business against the 9-11 Nebraska Cornhuskers, but that wasn’t the case. Purdue struggled with the Cornhuskers defensively, allowing 83 in a three-point loss. It wasn’t pretty, especially after gaining some confidence with a road win over Michigan State, but Purdue will likely stay in the Top 25, just barely.
Notre Dame could drop the farthest of any team in the rankings this week not because of poor losses, but because the teams behind the Fighting Irish played well enough to move up. Notre Dame lost by 17 to Virginia at home and then on the road against Georgia Tech. The Fighting Irish are still one of the better teams from the ACC, but Week 12 just showed how deep the conference truly is. Mike Brey will have his team back and ready to compete in Week 13.
Florida had an impressive week with an SEC blowout of LSU, 106-71, as well as cross-conference victory over Oklahoma on the road, 84-52. Not often do teams go on the road twice in one week and pick up multiple 30-point victories, but the Gators just asserted their dominance. Florida will need to play like that this week against Kentucky at home if it’s going to pull off the upset and pull into a second-place tie with the Wildcats in the SEC.
Since Frank Martin has taken over South Carolina’s basketball program, the Gamecocks have played a more disciplined and effective game. They are no longer a mid-level SEC program, rather a team that can compete for conference titles. The Gamecocks took down Auburn and Missouri last week, improving to 17-4 on the season and moving into a first-place tie with Kentucky in the SEC.