The college basketball landscape was pretty tame last night, with the majority of tournament teams performing as expected. There were a few small shake-ups, though. Florida jumped four spots to #9 by way of a 62-58 victory at Alabama. While games like this typically go unnoticed, this ranks as Florida’s 5th best victory to date. Part of that stems from the fact that they have played a fairly weak schedule, but the fact of the matter is, beating above average conference foes on the road is a tough task.
The other team to take a step forward was UCLA, who thumped Stanford by 17. Similar to Florida, UCLA’s schedule to this point has been fairly pedestrian, but this game is the 3rd best win on their resume. In fact, their three best wins have all come in the past 12 days. Lunardi has the Bruins as a 7 seed, which lines up with the EPW. If that seed holds, I wouldn’t want to be the 2 seed in their region.
If I had done posts like this over the past month, this next entry would start to seem repetitive. Oregon dropped their 5th straight game, losing to Washington in Seattle. After starting 13-0, and picking up their biggest win of the season at Utah, the wheels have come completely off. In his most recent bracket, Lunardi had Oregon as a 10 seed. This loss likely puts them on the bubble. My ratings have Oregon at #45, which means they need to right the ship fast to lower their anxiety levels come Selection Sunday.
Like yesterday, here is today’s snapshot of the projected Top 40 rankings at the end of the regular season.
