Following the slowest week of NCAA Basketball action, Saturday’s slate provided plenty to talk about. Here are the biggest takeaways from the past week.
Finals Week on college campuses gave us virtually no NCAA basketball games (insert witty Cardale Jones “we didn’t come here to play school” joke here), but there were a number of high-profile games on Saturday as the non-conference season winds down.
Kansas likely maintained their hold on the No. 1 ranking despite not looking their best in a 74-71 win over Villanova. North Carolina picked up their first big win of the season over Gonzaga, who suffered their second straight loss after rising to the top of the polls.
There were also a number of upsets, headlined by Belmont’s 74-72 win over UCLA. It was a rough week for the Pac-12 overall – again (more on that later) but with head coach Steve Alford’s job already in jeopardy, this loss put him even more on the hot seat. Old Dominion also knocked off Syracuse, pushing the Monarchs to 3-1 against ranked teams on the road since 2006 (don’t schedule Old Dominion!).
But the story of the day was the number of near-upsets and close calls there were. Auburn needed overtime to get past UAB, Nevada only beat South Dakota State by four, Ohio State beat Bucknell by two, and Arizona State needed a layup from Luguentz Dort in the final seconds to beat Georgia.
Despite the limited action, we still learned a lot. Here are my eight biggest takeaways of the week in this latest edition of the Rauf Report.