NCAA Basketball top 25 power rankings: Texas Tech rises, Baylor and Providence fall
By Joey Loose
The NCAA Basketball Tournament will begin in less than four weeks, with Selection Sunday on the horizon and conference tournaments due to start in the coming weeks. Time is flying on this college basketball season, though the real fun has yet to begin. Teams have powered through injuries, illnesses, and all kinds of struggles but here we are, on the doorstep of March Madness.
Again, our focus turns towards this week’s edition of the top 25 rankings. Once again, these are my own personal rankings and they are very fluid on a week-by-week basis, especially with how things can change very quickly in the college basketball world. We’ll be specifically looking at how these teams have fared this last week. Without further ado, let’s get right into these teams, knowing full well that there are still plenty of great teams missing out on this week’s rankings.
25. Iowa (18-8)
Perhaps it’s time we start heaping some love on these Hawkeyes, who have been playing some pretty impressive offense in recent weeks. Without Luka Garza, they didn’t exactly enter the season expected to compete for the Big Ten title this year, but they’ve still held their ground relatively speaking. There have been some rough outings, but this week presented one of their best performances of the season.
Entering the week on a three-game winning streak, the Hawkeyes saw that streak snapped with an 84-79 home loss to Michigan back on Thursday night. Keegan Murray had 23 points and played solidly, but the Hawkeyes just couldn’t contain the Wolverines down the stretch. Fortunately, the Hawkeyes proved they belonged with a tremendous 75-62 road win at Ohio State on Saturday afternoon, with Murray putting up 24 points in the big win.
Perhaps a byproduct of the toughness of the Big Ten and their stellar offense, Iowa is sitting pretty in most of the metrics and analytics, and a Top 25 road win like this certainly helps push the needle back in their favor. This hasn’t been the most consistent team in the nation, but this weekend they got the big win they really needed to solidify this resume. Next week they get another chance with Michigan State coming to town.