It's been another wild week in college basketball the top team in the nation was taken down, another undefeated team has become defeated, some bad post game sportsmanship and more upsets. Working our way to March, you can almost already get the sense that the 2016 NCAA Tournament is going to be a rollercoaster from start to finish!
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Who wants to be No. 1?
Midway through January and we've already had 4 different No. 1 seeds, with a fifth coming this week. North Carolina, Kentucky, Michigan State and Kansas have all taken losses after being ranked as the top team in the nation. With the way this season has been going, you almost wonder if anyone really wants to be No. 1 at this point?
This week that ranking falls onto the Oklahoma Sooners. Many feel that this team should have been the No. 1 ranked team for the past few weeks. It shows in this weeks AP Top 25, as the Sooners are the first team all season long to recieve all 65 first place votes. Will the Sooners fall victim of losing after obtaining the No.1 spot? Only time will telll.
Poor sportmanship after a great game:
The Monmouth Hawks defeated the Iona Gaels by the final score of 110-102 in regulation. Great games from Iona's A.J. English who scored 45 points, one short of his career high and Monmouth's Justin Robinson's career high 29 point efforts were overshadowed by a post game scuffle. The scuffle broke out during the post game handshakes between the two teams.
There has long been bad blood between the two teams and it boiled over after this one. Iona's Head Coach Tim Cluess had plenty to say leading up to the game about the increasingly popular Monmouth bench, which only added fuel to the fire. "Are they on the team? I wasn't sure if they were on the team or if they were wearing uniforms as cheerleaders?" Cluess continued, "I've never seen them on the court doing anything, so to me, they're not basketball players."
One above them all; SMU the lone undefeated team.
After South Carolina got beat by Tennesse early in the week, SMU became the lone undefeated team in Division I college basketball. SMU has a talented team led by talented senior Nic Moore. The Mustangs are 16-0 and look to continue their perfect season. The thing that is different with this undefeated team though, is that there will be no postseason play.
The team was banned from post season participation on September 29, after it was discovered that an administrator did all of Keith Fraizer's coursework in a class prior to him getting to campus. Seniors like Moore, Jordan Tolbert and Markus Kennedy will have to do their best to keep this team undefeated and always wonder what could have happened in the NCAA Tournament.
Junior Keith Frazier decided earlier in the week that he is going to leave the program and transfer to another school. Leaving the Mustangs with only seven players.
Rankings: New Additions and Dropouts
New adds: No. 21 USC, No. 25 Indiana
USC finally cracks the top 25, out to a 15-3 start and winners of 10 or their last 11, the Trojans are ranked for the first time since 2008.
Dropouts: No. 20 Pittsburgh, No. 25 Gonzaga
Duke falls from No. 9 all the way down to No. 20 after taking two losses this week. Coach K and the Blue Devils have some things to figure out if they don't want to slip any further.
The Bubble: Who's in? Who's out?
In: Utah, Boise State
Utah has already been ranked this season and fallen out of the top 25. Playing in a very tough PAC-12 conference this season, Utah will have plenty of opportunities to get resume wins.
Boise State has won 10 of their last 11 games and with only one questionable loss thus far this season, the Broncos could be the only MW team to get an at large bid this year. Unless of course, they win the conference tournament.
Out: Ohio State, Seton Hall
Ohio State: The Buckeyes are a pedestrian 12-7 on the season and have been one of the more inconsitent teams in the nation. The inconsistency will hurt this team and ultimately lead to missting the tournament.
Seton Hall: I said in my first "King's Korner" article that there will be at least one good team from the BIg East that will get left out of the tournament due to their tough conference schedule. That week I said it would be Marquette but as the season goes along it may end up being both Seton Hall and Marquette. Both teams are worthy of Tournament play but are in a stacked division this season and will have trouble finding a ticket to the dance.
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