With Tennessee losing to Kentucky on Saturday, the AP Top 25 sees a new No. 1 in the college basketball rankings with Duke moving to the top.
Can you believe March Madness is just a couple of weeks away? College basketball fans are counting down the days until the NCAA Tournament, but if we learned anything in Week 15, it’s that the end of the regular season is critical for top contenders.
How you enter the tourney is important and for teams like Kentucky and Tennessee, they had been red-hot for conference play and finally met up in Week 15. Lexington was rocking as the No. 5 Wildcats downed the top-ranked Volunteers in dominant fashion. However, we may not see a major rise from Kentucky as it lost earlier in the week at home versus LSU.
Tennessee will no longer hold that top spot and had its 19-game winning streak snapped, but the Volunteers showed that they’re No. 1 seed-worthy but will have to wait until March 2 to exact revenge on Kentucky in Knoxville.
Outside of the SEC, there were some other ranked battles and teams going down in upset fashion.
The ACC saw Duke come back from a 20-plus point second half deficit at Louisville to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and Virginia went into Chapel Hill and beat red-hot North Carolina, rebounding from the Cavaliers’ second loss to Duke on the year.
The Big Ten had Michigan State hit the road to take down No. 20 Wisconsin and No. 6 Michigan lost to last-place Penn State in Happy Valley before rebounding at home against No. 24 Maryland. Oh yeah, and Iowa picked up its second straight buzzer-beating win, this time at Rutgers thanks to a banked-in 3-pointer from the corner.
Kansas, Texas Tech and Iowa State look to be pacing the Big 12, along with Kansas State which lost to the latter. The Jayhawks’ title streak is in serious jeopardy.
And the Pac-12 is, well, not good.
What could the Week 16 AP Top 25 projections look like on Monday afternoon?