NCAA Basketball top 25 power rankings: Tennessee and Villanova rise, Alabama falls

First and foremost, a belated Merry Christmas to all who read this article, and a Happy New Year’s as well. With the calendar about to flip over to January, we’ve made it more than a month and a half into another exciting NCAA Basketball season. With nonconference play nearly finished, we’ve seen a fair share of amazing performances, dramatic upsets, and phenomenal plays all over the court. In recent weeks, we’ve all seen the effect that COVID has had on this season and the numerous teams affected by pauses due to the pandemic.

While we are getting deeper into the regular season, it’s important to remember that it can still be too early to judge some of these teams. There are programs playing without important injured or suspended players, while others could be too harshly judged for upset losses or bad performances. It’s fair to make some conclusions about teams after ten or twelve games, but what you know about one team might be far different by the time March Madness comes around.

With what we know and have seen about these teams, we’re going to try our best to rank and assess the current top 25 teams in the nation. We’ve done this on a weekly basis here on Busting Brackets, but this week is just my rankings with a bit of a more detailed explanation for each team.

The bottom line is that many teams have excelled while others have disappointed; but there is still plenty of time for the stories of these teams to change. From what we’ve seen to this point, let’s look at the current state of the top 25.