Arkansas, Wisconsin, LSU and Iowa State are also big movers in this week’s Hey Nineteen.
9 min read
Wednesday night felt like close to the best night of college basketball through the first three-plus weeks of the season. And did it ever have an impact on this week’s power rankings. Undefeated teams Florida, BYU and Texas Tech took their first Ls. NC State needed four overtimes at home to get over Nebraska. Michigan State looked dandy against Louisville. Michigan looked defective against North Carolina. Virginia Tech dodged a third straight loss and, in the process, gave Maryland its third loss.
Oh, and Arizona State scored just 29 points, putting up its worst offensive performance since 1946 in a 51-29 home defeat to Washington State. Woof.
Today we have the second edition of the Hey Nineteen of this 2021-22 season. In the event you missed last week’s because of Thanksgiving, I’ll carefully remind readers once again that these power rankings are unlike any other power rankings you’ll encounter. This is a temperature gauge of sorts, a listing of teams that are (more or less) playing the best as of late. As an example, I believe Duke is better than Iowa. But Iowa hasn’t lost yet and just won on the road to remain undefeated. Duke took a road loss, so it gets knocked down a couple of pegs for now. Thus: Iowa is ahead of Duke in this week’s rankings. Capiche? Excellent.
Hey Nineteen Power Rankings
My rankings are a weekly encapsulation of the 19 hottest, most successful and/or most interesting teams in college basketball, combining team quality with win quality but also leaving no shame for recency bias and rewarding significant winning streaks.
