NCAA Basketball: Ohio State’s defense, Virginia’s limitations and more weekly takeaways

Here are the biggest takeaways from the past week in NCAA Basketball, including a look at the Ohio State’s dominance and Virginia’s limitations.

The first week December brought a plethora of top NCAA Basketball matchups with it thanks to the Big Ten/ACC Challenge along with both conferences picking up conference play during the weekend.

The Big Ten ended up winning that challenge, marking the sixth time they had done so, but the results most heavily affected teams in the ACC.

Louisville, the new No. 1 team in the country, managed to hold onto that ranking (something that has been a rarity this season) thanks to impressive home wins over Michigan and Pitt. The Cardinals may keep that top ranking for a while, too, as they’ll face a struggling Texas Tech team on Tuesday before playing two mid-majors in two weeks leading into their showdown against Kentucky.

Virginia and North Carolina were the only other top 10 teams to lose this week (along with Michigan) and each did so in blowout fashion. The Cavaliers lost by 29 on the road to Purdue, giving the Boilermakers their first real signature victory over the year.

The Tar Heels also lost by a significant amount (25) but did so at home against Ohio State. That loss reiterated the thing I’ve stressed about North Carolina all year – they simply don’t have any reliable offense outside of Cole Anthony. The Buckeyes were able to exploit and come away with the victory.

I attended that game on Wednesday and was blown away with what I saw from Ohio State on the defensive end, so that is where we’ll start this new Rauf Report, detailing my biggest takeaways from the past week in college hoops.