This is the first week of the men’s college basketball season in which it has been a struggle to decide what to do with the No. 1 spot.
The tendency for most voters is to vote for a new No. 1 if No. 1 loses. I’ve never believed that should be an automatic.
I’ve had Auburn at No. 1 since the second week of the season. Despite a close loss at Duke last Wednesday, the Tigers still have the best resume, with four wins against top-50 teams in KenPom’s adjusted efficiency margin — including two in the top 10. A hard-fought loss in Cameron Indoor Stadium is worthy of a pass. AP No. 1 Kansas lost twice this week. Tennessee was my No. 3 team last week and the other candidate for No. 1. Although the Vols have been awesome, winning every game by double-digits, they have only one win over a KenPom top-50 team (Baylor).
Out of the four main computer rankings, Auburn is higher in two (KenPom and Bart Torvik) and Tennessee is higher in two (Evan Miya and the NET). Again, you could justify either choice. I remain a slight lean toward Auburn, based on resume and the eye test. But it’s very close.
Reminder: Below my Top 25, I give nuggets on an unspecified number of teams each week. So if a team appears in the table but not the text below, that’s why. Scroll on for notes on Auburn, Tennessee, Iowa State, Kentucky, Marquette, Michigan, Houston, Mississippi State, Clemson and Penn State.
In three games against top-10 opponents this season, freshman point guard Tahaad Pettiford is averaging 18.3 points and 2.3 assists. The freshman kept Auburn in the game against Duke in the second half, thanks in part to one pick-and-roll-and-replace play.
With Pettiford as the handler, the Tigers ran this five times:
Pettiford scored all four times they ran it to his right hand, then had an assist to Johni Broome the one time the Tigers ran it to Pettiford’s left:
Pettiford has been the handler for this play 10 times this season, and Auburn has scored nine times. He is naturally left-handed and is making most of these plays going to his right, including this ridiculous double-team split and righty floater:
One reason Auburn may not have hit its peak yet: Pettiford is coming off the bench and playing just 19.5 minutes per game. That could change by March.
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Below, the difference between winning…
And losing…
In the first clip, Tennessee draws two to the ball, and Syracuse’s Jyare Davis (No. 13) is the one who has to scramble to recover. Instead of going to box out, he runs toward the rim to rebound, and you’re not out-jumping the Pogo Stick. (Tennessee fans, you’ve been given a nickname for Cade Phillips. Run with it.)
Now rewatch that second clip. Tennessee’s Zakai Zeigler (No. 5) is the one left scrambling after Syracuse draws two to the ball and then center Felix Okpara leaves the paint to contest the 3. When the shot goes up, Zeigler goes to find someone to box out, and the Orange have no shot at an offensive rebound.
This why the Vols win. They nail all the hustle plays, and they’re great on the boards. Tennessee is getting back 42.7 percent of its misses, the second-best rate nationally (per KenPom), and is outscoring opponents 14.1 to 9.1 on second-chance points.
T.J. Otzelberger has targeted big, physical guards in the transfer portal, and he found another last spring in former Northern Iowa guard Nate Heise. During my preseason trip to Ames, assistant coach Kyle Green said of Heise, “When he guards the dribble, he just naturally creates a collision. That doesn’t come naturally for most people.”
Marquette star Kam Jones can now attest to that.
After Marquette went on a 10-0 run to tie Wednesday’s top-10 showdown in Ames at 61 — with Jones scoring seven and assisting on the extra three — Otzelberger turned to Heise to guard Marquette’s star. The Cyclones responded with a 14-0 run during which Jones went 0 for 4 and had a turnover.
It was exhausting running into Heise’s chest again and again. Look how hard Jones had to work just to end up with an open shot off a busted play:
Offense has been the story of the Cyclones’ start, but that defense can still be dominant. And now Otzelberger knows he has a stopper he can go to off the bench.
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Mark Pope allowed Kentucky to have a chance at a comeback with a defensive tweak in the second half of Saturday’s 90-89 win against Gonzaga, and he diagrammed a gem to set up Andrew Carr for the bucket that sent the game to overtime. Kentucky runs a lot of five-out action, but this was a different look, creating a triangle in the paint to get Carr an isolation in the middle of the lane where there wouldn’t be any help.
Carr deserves a ton of credit for making a tough shot, but this was a nifty call by Pope, showing awareness of where one of his best players operates most easily. It’s also something Gonzaga probably wasn’t expecting, since most of Kentucky’s actions take place on the perimeter.
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The Golden Eagles carved up Wisconsin’s defense by hunting switches, and no one is better at working to get those switches. Once a Marquette guard gets a big on him after a ball screen or dribble hand-off, then the priority is to give him the ball, give him space and get to the rim:
This puts the opposing guard in a tough spot. Should he switch? Or should he hang around and take his man back once the ball is stopped? Once Marquette draws two to the ball, it’s an easy decision to hit the popping big man:
Now the big starts to think twice about helping. When he doesn’t commit to stopping the basketball, Kam Jones knows he has a step and can get to rim, where there isn’t any protection because Marquette’s bigs are spaced at the 3-point line:
Jones is a nightmare in these situations. He scored 16 of his 32 points at the rim against the Badgers and is averaging 10.6 points at the rim this season, per Synergy. That’s the seventh-most among high-major players and the most among guards.
Yale transfer 7-footer Danny Wolf is starting to find his place in the Michigan offense. In the last three games — all against high-major opponents — Wolf is averaging 17.7 points, 3.0 assists, 11.7 rebounds, 2.3 blocks and 1.7 steals per game. Dusty May has helped Wolf find his niche as a playmaker by running four-five ball screens with Vlad Goldin. Wolf has scored nine points and had three assists in the last two games off ball screens set by the center. The duo took over down the stretch in last week’s win against Wisconsin. There aren’t many 7-footers who can pull this off:
Houston got back to looking like Houston on Saturday in a dominant 79-51 win over Butler. This was vintage Kelvin Sampson defense. The Bulldogs made only 4 of 18 shots from inside the arc, which has to be some kind of record, right?
According to Ken Pomeroy, a team has been held to four or fewer made 2s a total of 98 times since 1997, and only 10 of those 98 times has the victim been a power-conference team. The next most recent time it happened was last season, when UCF went 3-of-23 against — guess who! — Houston.
Butler was 1 of 10 inside the arc in the first half, which doesn’t even capture Houston’s dominance. In half-court possessions, only three of the nine 2-pointers Butler took even got to the rim. After Houston went just 1-2 at the Players Era Festival, you knew it was going to be a nightmare for whichever team played the Coogs next.
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Mississippi State sophomore guard Josh Hubbard is one of the fastest guards with the basketball in the country, and he’s terrific at penetrating and throwing lobs. Out of his 22 assists this season that have set up a 2, seven have been alley-oops. The main reason those are there is because his speed forces help:
Hubbard threw two oops against Pitt in what was arguably the most impressive beatdown of the week, a 90-57 win for the Bulldogs. He is off to an awesome start, averaging 19 points and shooting 43.2 percent from deep on more than eight attempts per game. Also impressive for a guy who plays so fast: Hubbard has only three turnovers, and none of the three have come on a pass. So he’s completing 100 percent of his passes this season, with better than a 10-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio.
Clemson was the first team all season to hold Kentucky to fewer than 70 possessions. Clemson’s opponents are averaging 19.2 seconds per possession, the third-slowest in college hoops, per KenPom.
There seems to be a direct correlation between possession length and defensive success. Among the 20 teams that have the longest defensive possessions, 10 rank in the top 20 of adjusted defensive efficiency at KenPom. The Tigers are No. 5.
Mike Rhoades and his aggressive, pressing defense is taking off in Year 2 at Penn State. The Nittany Lions are turning opponents over on 24.5 percent of their possessions and forced 22 turnovers in a 81-70 win against Purdue on Thursday. It was the highest turnover rate (33.5) for Purdue since a Feb. 7, 2015 game at Minnesota. Four of the turnovers came against the press. On possessions when Penn State starts out pressing, the Nittany Lions’ turnover rate for the season goes up to 30.3 percent, per Synergy. Penn State is 8-1 with its lone loss coming to Clemson on a neutral floor, and that loss is looking better after Clemson knocked off Kentucky.
Dropped out: Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Ohio State, Illinois, Baylor, Texas, Texas Tech, Memphis.
Keeping an eye on: Utah State, Drake, Rhode Island, San Diego State, Dayton, St. John’s, Saint Mary’s, Arizona State, West Virginia, Creighton, Missouri.
(Photo: Lance King / Getty Images)
