NCAA Basketball: Buy or Sell Duke, Kentucky, Purdue, Villanova, and UConn?

This past weekend was big when it came to top NCAA Basketball teams going down. There was a top-5 matchup, along with several top-10 teams having to go on the road for the start of league play. On Friday and Saturday alone, six ranked teams fell, some more surprising than others.

So I ask, which of these teams are more likely to rebound compared to others? And which loss may be a sign of things to come? Here’s my “buy or sell” edition for the key teams that lost this weekend.

UConn Huskies

The Huskies easily had the most understandable loss of the bunch, falling 69-65 on the road at Kansas.  It came without five-star freshman guard Stephon Castle, still recovering from a knee injury. They did get 31 points and six rebounds from Tristen Newton, while Alex Karaban was in double figures too.

Donovan Clingan didn’t have as good of a game, going for just 8 pts and 7 rebs and easily getting outplayed by Hunter Dickinson. Outside of a big game against inferior competition, the big man hasn’t had that breakout sophomore campaign everyone had expected so far. If that doesn’t happen, can we still have UConn as a contender to repeat?

I think so. It’s a team that’s still been very impressive to this point and isn’t fully intact. We may have to configure the ceiling if Clingan doesn’t take the big leap but with Newton taking his own in the second year of the program, the floor remains just as high.

Buy