Last weekend Xavier played UConn in a matchup of two top 25 teams. That sentence only works in the case of one specific thing, the AP poll. Beyond that, Xavier wasn’t a top 25 team. Not in the NET, not in KenPom, not on Bart Torvik. Not in fact, in any of the factors that actually matter come the pointy end of the college basketball season.
That, of course, didn’t stop the hype or excitement. A top 25 matchup on New Year’s Eve? Sign all of us up. It doesn’t matter what the reality is so long as those teams each have a number in front of their name.