The calendar now reads December which means that this NCAA Basketball season isn’t exactly brand new anymore. We’re still fresh into the new year of college hoops, but we’ve got significant tape on the teams, new players, and new systems all around the country. However, do we really know as much as we think we do after just five weeks of play?
Holiday tournaments have come and gone and we’re reaching the part of the season where we get a sneak peak at conference play. Many of the more prominent teams are tuning up with mid-majors at home, alongside other stronger matchups, but these conference games give us some idea of what’s to come. Still, we’ve seen less than a dozen games from each team, meaning there’s a lot more to be figured out in the weeks ahead.
Some teams made their moves in Maui, Las Vegas, or other neutral sites. Other teams have disappointed or failed to live up to early expectations with new or young lineups. Some programs have new head coaches or drastically new rotations still coming into their own after just a month of play. There’s a little bit of everything with this and any new season of college hoops, though our focus is obviously on the cream of the crop.
This begins our latest crack at the Top 25 rankings after the events of the previous week. Several top teams were upended, with some losing their first games of the season in the process. Considering all we’ve seen this week and previously, we’ve ranked these teams as we see fit and dived a bit into what’s going on for all 25 of them. Let’s not waste any more time and get right into those individual rundowns.