NCAA Basketball top 25 power rankings: Illinois rises, Baylor and UCLA fall

The NCAA basketball season has really delivered, and this past week alone is evidence of that. We are near the middle of January, already solidly into conference play. The season is still affected by the national pandemic, but there are fewer COVID pauses than in the previous month. The season is still going strong, despite all illnesses, injuries, and other things preventing these players and teams from taking the court. We’ve gotten action-packed, exciting college basketball as the product.

March Madness is still two months away, but it feels closer and closer with each week. These teams are starting to figure each other out as the season passes the halfway point of the regular season. Still, we’ve learned a lot about some of the top teams this past week alone, especially as power conferences dive into the grueling parts of their league schedules. Furthermore, conference play is a big barometer of success for some teams, though for others it may represent smooth sailing.

This past week alone has been chaotic, making this week’s edition of the top 25 rankings even more tricky to produce. This series continues, having come out each Sunday since the beginning of the season, and will continue to be released. Our efforts to represent the chaos come to fruition with my own version of the top 25 rankings.

A lot of teams lost games this week, many in surprising efforts, and there are a number of teams just outside the poll as a result of these efforts. We instead turn our focus to the 25 very best in the nation, starting from the bottom and working towards that new team at the top.