NCAA Basketball: ACC struggles, Gonzaga dropping, and more takeaways

Here are the biggest takeaways from the past week in NCAA basketball, including a look at the ACC’s struggles, Gonzaga’s potential drop, and much more.

Another week of NCAA Basketball, another week of crazy upsets and not knowing what next week’s rankings are going to look like. Five top 10 teams lost over the course of the last three days, four of which came against unranked opponents.

Oregon lost to Colorado, Ohio State was ousted by Wisconsin, Memphis had their win streak snapped by Georgia, Villanova was blasted by Marquette, and Louisville was handled at home by Florida State.

One of the teams that didn’t lose was the nation’s top-ranked team in Gonzaga, but that doesn’t mean the Zags won’t drop when Monday’s rankings are released. Here are the top takeaways from the week in a new Rauf Report, starting with why Gonzaga shouldn’t be No. 1 this coming week.

1) Expect Gonzaga to drop from No. 1

Gonzaga became the sixth team this season to own the No. 1 spot a couple of weeks ago and, while they haven’t lost since jumping to that spot, they deserve to fall a few spots.

The Zags struggled opened West Coast Conference play this week and struggled mightily with both Portland and Pepperdine, who are 9-8 and 7-9, respectively, on the season.

They trailed Portland by seven at halftime before catching fire in the second half, as a 16-0 run gave them the lead for good. Still, trailing a Pilots team that has losses to Jackson State, Cal State Northridge, and Seattle on their resume, that’s not good.

But at least that game was on the road. Gonzaga came out flat again on Saturday night against Pepperdine, this one coming at home. The game was tied at halftime, and the Waves were able to tie it up again with less than nine minutes to play. In fact, the game wasn’t decided until Gonzaga big man Killian Tillie blocked a three in the closing seconds.

Now, Gonzaga is a good team and they’ll get this corrected – Mark Few is too good of a coach for them not to. But some of their weaknesses in the backcourt and at the free throw line have been exposed a bit against lesser competition.

And, unfortunately, Gonzaga simply has less margin for error because of that competition. Expect them to be No. 2 or No. 3 when the rankings are released on Monday.