College Basketball Rankings: Projected Top 25 for Week 3
Another year is here and it feels oddly familiar for the Saint Mary’s Gaels. Playing in the same conference as perennial contender Gonzaga usually means that the Gaels get overlooked and not many people know much about them until tournament time. Junior forward Calvin Hermanson might be one of the top players people don’t know about, averaging 20.7 points and making 63 percent of his 3-pointers this year. This team shoots lights out, and that’s bad news for the West Coast Conference.
Purdue is one of those teams everyone is trying to figure out. The Boilermakers are looking for a go-to guy after losing Caleb Swanigan, the 2016-17 Big Ten Player of the Year, and Carsen Edwards might just be that guy. The Boilermakers handled Marquette, 86-71, and blew the doors off Fairfield, 106-64, in Week 2 but will likely remain in the No. 19 spot.
What an offseason Louisville has had to deal with. First, there was an FBI investigation of the basketball program and then head coach Rick Pitino was fired after it was revealed he had some type of involvement in the illegal payment of freshman Brian Bowen. The Cardinals have only had two games since all this has taken place, winning both. Louisville only beat Omaha by nine points last week, but we still don’t know enough about this team just yet.
Gonzaga is consistently one of the best teams in the nation and that’s tough to say for a team from the West Coast Conference, but Mark Few has done an incredible job there. He has yet another talented team in 2017-18 and the young players have stepped up early on, such as sophomore forward Killian Tillie who is averaging 12.3 points and 8.7 rebounds with 1.3 blocks after being in a limited role last year. The growth will continue all season, but for now, the Bulldogs are easily 3-0.
Fresh off a win over then-No. 11 West Virginia in the Carrier Classic over in Germany, the Texas A&M Aggies smacked UC Santa Barbara 84-65 for their only win of the week as they also only played that single game. All the travel makes it tough on a team early on in the year, but luckily the Aggies only had two games over their first two weeks. They could be that team to dethrone Kentucky in the SEC this season.