NCAA Basketball: Ohio State and George Mason headlines latest Sunday Mailbag

Which top 25 team that is currently ranked should not be ranked?  Which non-top 25 ranked team should be ranked or a team to watch for? – Erik Mauro (@mauro_erik)

I receive this question every year and it is always a fun question to answer. I think rankings are a good gauge of where a team is currently at, but even though I do a preseason ranking of teams and am a voter for a mid-major top 25,  rankings never tell the entire story and they are going to favor the power schools more than they are not and can often be skewed.

There is going to be a lot of movement in the top 25 when the rankings get released on Monday, but for the purposes of this question, I am going to use the current week 2 AP rankings.

The team that has zero business being ranked right now is the Ohio State Buckeyes. Given they have lost a game now it is going to take care of itself and they likely won’t be ranked or shouldn’t be ranked come Monday. The Buckeyes are a mess right now as they can’t defend and have one reliable offensive player in EJ Liddell.

Ohio State struggled mightily on opening night against an Akron team that they should have beat by 20 points. It took a buzzer-beater for them to win that game.   Then in the second game, they struggled to beat an upstart Niagara team. Ohio State should have run Niagara out of the gym given the overall talent disparity.

Ohio State finally appeared to get right after blasting Bowling Green and then all the problems that presented themselves in the first two games showed up in a loss to Xavier. The Buckeyes never led in that game and they let Xavier get whatever shot they wanted. Ohio State is obviously fixable but like so many other teams in the country, they have a key player injured who is out for a while and they are breaking in a lot of new pieces that are still trying to see where they fit. Right now, Ohio State belongs nowhere near the rankings.

The team that isn’t ranked but is a team to watch out for is a little bit tougher because there are two teams, I was thinking of who both will be ranked come Monday. I want to find a team who is not ranked and won’t be on Monday that likely will be at some point this season. The George Mason Patriots out of the Atlantic 10 is a team to watch out for. The Patriots were always a team who had a great roster under Dave Paulson but could never put it all together. They decided to go a different way and hired ex Missouri star player and upstart coach in Kim English.

The Patriots have really surprised and look to be one of the best teams in the Atlantic 10, especially after they went into College Park and beat the Maryland Terrapins. That loss is going to knock Maryland out of the rankings and force the nation and the voters to take notice of George Mason. George Mason has a dominant big man in Josh Oduro who coach English was able to convince to stay. He also was able to secure some great transfers. Those transfers have already had a huge impact for the Patriots. Watch out for George Mason as the year goes on.