The defending champions hardly look poised for another title run.
Sure, Louisiville has a tidy 11-2 record, but they have played two ranked opponents — North Carolina and Kentucky — and lost both games, and now junior forward Chane Behanan was dismissed from the team Monday after he was suspended earlier in the season, a major blow to Rick Pitino’s team. The team also is likely to be without Kevin Ware for the rest of the season. Ware has played sparingly this season after returning from breaking his leg in gruesome fashion during the Elite Eight last season.
They clearly miss Peyton Siva’s playmaking, as Russ Smith and junior college transfer Chris Jones are shoot-first guards, unable or unwilling to make their teammates better, which Siva was known for. The Kentucky loss was eye-opening, the Wildcats winning by a comfortable margin despite the absence of fantastic freshman Julius Randle for most of the second half because of leg cramps.
(Last week’s ranking in parentheses)
1. Arizona (1): The Wildcats are every bit deserving of their perch atop the sport. They’ve defeated an elite foe (Duke), won in a hostile environment (at Michigan) and have manhandled everyone else. The Pac-12 won’t be a cakewalk, but it’s hard to imagine Arizona losing more than a few games before March with its scoring depth, firepower, strength inside and defensive prowess.
2. Syracuse (3): Maybe this season has been too easy for the undefeated Orange, and they needed to raise the degree of difficulty. Hence why they spotted Villanova an 18-point lead Saturday afternoon. It didn’t matter, as Syracuse won going away away, behind the continued excellence of freshman point guard Tyler Ennis, the sharpshooting of Trevor Cooney and the efficient production of CJ Fair.
3. Ohio State (2): We’re going to learn very quickly whether Ohio State is indeed a product of a soft schedule — the Buckeyes have played no opponents who are currently ranked and just one (Marquette) who was ranked at the time the two teams met — or just a team that beat who was on its schedule. In the first few weeks of Big Ten action, Thad Matta’s team travels to Michigan State and hosts Iowa, litmus tests for the defense-minded club.
4. Duke (5): What a story senior guard Andre Dawkins is writing, following his publicized battled with depression and absence last year. The talented marksman is averaging 9.1 points per game, and he’s come on of late, scoring a season-high 20 points in Saturday’s win over Eastern Michigan and notching 18 against Gardner-Webb.
5. Wisconsin (6): Typical Wisconsin: The Badgers are out-rebounding the opposition by more than four boards per game, holding them to 60 points per game and through 13 games — all wins — turning the ball over just 8.5 times. Nothing flashy, just winning basketball, and Bo Ryan’s team has done a lot of that.
6. Oklahoma State (7): This is what Marcus Smart imagined when he came back to school, stunning NBA teams and their scouts: a chance to unseat Kansas in the Big 12, win a national title, even play himself into being the top pick in the draft. It’s all there for the mega-talented point guard, who has the Cowboys off to an 11-1 start and has impressed not just with his scoring, but his rebounding and playmaking.
7. Florida (8): Two matchups with Kentucky are certainly going to be fun to watch, track meets loaded with future pros that could very well decide the SEC champion. Feb. 15, the first encounter in Lexington, can’t come soon enough.
8. Wichita State (9):Â The best start in program history, 13-0 at the turn of the new year, has no end in sight. Wichita State has beaten a handful of major conference teams, from DePaul to Tennessee and Alabama, and now it moves into conference play, where it would be shocking to see the Shockers slip up more than once.
9. Michigan State (10):Â It has taken some time, but the Spartans are beginning to look like the Final Four contender everyone imagined in November. The four-headed monster of Branden Dawson, Adreian Payne, Keith Appling and Gary Harris is as dynamic a foursome as there is in the sport.
10. Oregon (12):Â The Ducks were thought to be an NCAA tournament team during the preseason, but nobody outside of Eugene imagined this: A 12-0 record entering 2014 and the highest-scoring offense in the nation (90.8 points). Oregon is only improving, too, now that sophomore Dominic Artis and Ben Carter have returned from suspension.
11. Memphis (13): The Tigers are the team to beat in the AAC. Yes, that’s right, in a conference with UConn and Louisville, Memphis has proven it’s head and shoulders the top team in the new league with how its performance in non-conference action, where others have stumbled.
12. Iowa State (14): There isn’t a transfer who had made a bigger impact than DeAndre Kane. The 6-foot-4 point guard from Pittsburgh has done it all for the Cyclones, scoring (14.9), rebounding (7.5) and distributing (5.5) for undefeated Iowa State. It’s remarkable how successful head coach Fred Hoiberg and Co. have been in adding players from other programs, a tradition that has clearly continued with Kane.
13. Villanova (11): The first loss was going to eventually come, and losing at the Carrier Dome is nothing to be ashamed of. Yet when Villanova raced out to a 25-7 lead on Saturday, it seemed like the magical start to the season would continue. It didn’t, as the Wildcats went cold from the perimeter and had no answer for the Orange on the other end of the floor.
14. Kentucky (17): Did everyone really think Kentucky was all hype and no substance? After an inconsistent start that included close wins over Cleveland State and Belmont and ugly losses to Baylor and North Carolina, we finally saw why the Wildcats were predicted to be so tough, pulling away from defending champion Louisville on Saturday in the annual Commonwealth rivalry despite the absence of Randle for large stretches of the second half. If Kentucky did in fact grow up in the win, it should scare the rest of the SEC — because it has been a matter of when, not if, with this group of McDonald’s All-Americans.
15. Baylor (15): It was supposed to be a two-horse race in the Big 12 between Oklahoma State and Kansas. Baylor was an afterthought. Yet as the league season nears, no team is playing better basketball than Scott Drew’s Bears, a physical bunch in the paint led by bruising forwards Ricardo Gathers and Cory Jefferson.
16. Louisville (4)
17. Kansas (16)
18. Connecticut (18)
19. Illinois (19)
20. Iowa (20)
21. San Diego State (21)
22. Creighton (22)
23. North Carolina (23)
24. Missouri (24)
25. Gonzaga (25)
Stock Watch
Up
Harvard
The Crimson have been somewhat forgotten after an eight-point loss to Colorado in late November dropped them from the national polls. Since that setback, however, Harvard has won seven games in a row, winning at Boston University, Northeastern and improved Fordham. The development of sophomore point guard Sinayi Chambers has been integral in this run, and will continue to be important as Harvard moves into Ivy League action.
Jordan Bachynski
Who, you ask? One of the country’s most improved players, a 7-foot-2 senior leading the nation in blocked shots per game (4.8) while also nearly tallying a nightly double-double of 12.5 points and 9.8 rebounds per game. Arizona State is off to an impressive 11-2 start, and standout sophomore point guard Jahii Carson isn’t the only reason. Jordan Bachynski is another.
Down
La Salle
The Explorers are a mystery. A Sweet 16 team a season ago, they are a dismal 6-6 after last week’s ugly 13-point loss to rebuilding Miami. La Salle isn’t rebuilding; all of last year’s impact players returned aside from star Ramon Galloway, and of the six losses, only one has come to a ranked foe (Villanova). The Philly school has fallen to mid-majors Manhattan and Northern Iowa and mediocre high majors Providence and Penn State, teams it chewed up and spit out last season.
Iona
The Gaels are still scoring at a typically high rate, averaging nearly 80 points per game, but their defense — a deficiency even over the last two years — has been a major issue. Iona has lost four games in a row, and is giving up 92 points per game in that span. The setbacks haven’t exactly come against a murderer’s row in Dayton, St. Bonaventure, Nevada and Northern Iowa. Iona needs to clean up its act in time for the MAAC season, which begins Thursday at league contender Quinnipiac.