“Feast Week” always gets the attention of NCAA Basketball fans for rightful reasons. There are going to be a ton of quality matchups and games to watch between ranked opponents and potential NCAA Tournament teams. It also means that from a Bracketology standpoint, there will be lots of “winners” who take advantage of the opportunities, as well as “losers” who suffer bad defeats that could come back to haunt them.
But even before that, there are plenty of programs that have done good and bad things in the past seven days to warrant a quick examination. Here are the five biggest winners and losers when it came to resume building as of late.
No. 5 Winner – Kansas Jayhawks
The reigning national champions passed their first true test of the season, beating Duke in the Champions Classic and picking up an elite win for its resume. They also avoided washing it away by holding on against Southern Utah a few days later.
It’s expected that Kansas will make the NCAA Tournament and get a high seed but they also got good news with Baylor losing to Virginia. It’s certainly not a bad thing for them but these two Big 12 programs could be battling for a 1 seed in the Big Dance and right now, the Jayhawks have the edge.
No. 5 Loser – Florida State Seminoles
The Seminoles were a big loser last week, going 0-2 in surprising upset losses. If that didn’t end their postseason hopes, these past few days definitely did. Not only did they lose at home again to Troy, but Florida State also blew a 17-point lead to Florida and ended up losing that game to start out 0-4 on the season.
At this point, they’ll need to beat Purdue, Virginia, and St. John’s in the next few weeks just to even get back into the mix. But nothing they’ve shown so far has given that kind of hope. Blame can be put on the trio of forwards out for the team right now but among those who are playing, they simply haven’t been good enough.