Sunday, January 15, 2017

Saturday Reactions

Saturday was a major day in college hoops, and there were lots of things discovered over the course of those 24 hours. Here are my major takeaways:

#1 is Wide Open
Okay. Maybe not as wide open as the Big Ten, but there are three deserving teams that should all receive votes for the AP's top-ranked team. Those three are Gonzaga, Kansas and Villanova. Gonzaga is still undefeated and has quality wins over Iowa State, Arizona and Saint Mary's. Villanova's lone loss came to a top-15 Butler team on the road, and they have good wins over Creighton, Notre Dame, Purdue and Xavier. Kansas has rattled off 16 straight wins since dropping their opener to Indiana and are starting to get in their groove. Right now though, I think Villanova should be the #1 team, but I expect Kansas to nab the top spot since they were #2 this past week. 

Louisville is a Final Four Team
The win over Duke put me over the top. I'm all in on this Cardinal squad. They play great defense, and their offense is coming along. Donovan Mitchell is one of the best players in the country, with Deng Adel and Quentin Snider backing him up. Louisville has size, speed and athleticism, and that's a dangerous combination come March. 

Butler is for Real..Sort of
I've been skeptical of Butler all year. I still think the Sweet 16 is their ceiling, but they surely deserve to be in the top 15 this week. I know they were dominated by Creighton earlier, but they just beat a really good Xavier team, which gives them that win along with ones over Villanova, Indiana, Arizona and Cincinnati. There's that side of Butler, and then there's the side where they lose to Indiana State and Saint John's. So really, I still don't believe in them.

UNC is Figuring It Out
The Tar Heels had a lot of questions marks a few weeks ago after starting off really well. But after their catastrophic loss to Georgia Tech, they've responded nicely winning at Clemson, thrashing NC State, getting by Wake Forest and handling a very good Florida State team on Saturday. This was the prove-it game for the Tar Heels, as they have vaulted back into the title discussion with that win. 

The SEC Can't Hang with the Cats
Kentucky is good. We all knew that, but we didn't know how bad the rest of the SEC would be. Auburn is probably a top six team in that conference and they just lost by 20 points. Granted, it was closer than that for most of the game, but it was still a dominant performance to close it out. I think it's become obvious that Kentucky will win the SEC with ease, but we have to start discussing them going undefeated in league play. 

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