NCAA Basketball Rankings: January 9, 2008

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The next 10, alphabetically: Arizona State, Dayton, Drake, Kansas State, Louisville, Ohio State, Oregon, Pitt, Rhode Island, Vandy

Vandy still doesn’t make the cut, although it will be hard to leave them off if they beat both South Carolina and Kentucky in the next week.   Yes, I do think four-loss Gonzaga and similarly undefeated Ole Miss are better at this point.

Clemson was a buzzer-beater away from jumping into the top 10, but UNC survived undefeated.  I dropped them one more spot in favor of Kansas’ more impressive resume at this point.  They are still a top notch team, but they miss Brandan Wright a lot.

I still like Xavier as a three-loss team over some of the power conference leaders (like Texas A&M) because they’ve done so well against some very good teams.  Their loss to Miami (OH) is not terrible, and though the margin was bad, neither was the loss to Arizona State.  Tennessee is not a bad loss at all.  They will need to continue their good work in the A-10, and beating Dayton on the 24th would go a long way toward staying this high in the rankings.

At some point, I may try my hand at something like Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology, now that the strengths of the various conferences are becoming more apparent.  D-II basketball keeps me busy enough, so we’ll see.