The upset bug has hit college basketball with almost every top team losing at least once this week. In the AP Top 25 the losers were:
- #2 Iowa State lost at West Virginia, 64-57
- #4 Alabama lost at home to Ole Miss, 74-64
- #5 Florida lost at home to Missouri, 83-82
- #6 Tennessee lost at Vanderbilt, 76-75
- #7 Marquette lost at home to Xavier, 59-57
- #8 Kentucky lost at home to Alabama, 102-97
- #9 Kansas lost at Iowa State, 74-57
- #11 Texas A&M lost at Kentucky, 81-69
- #13 Oregon lost at home to Purdue, 65-68
- #14 UConn lost at home to Creighton, 68-63
- #15 Mississippi State lost at Auburn, 88-66
- #16 Gonzaga lost at Oregon State 97-89(OT) and at home to Santa Clara, 103-99
- #18 Memphis lost at Temple, 88-81
- #20 Michigan lost at Minnesota, 84-81(OT)
- #21 Ole Miss lost at Mississippi State 84-81(OT) (yes that's the same score as above)
- #22 Utah State lost at UNLV, 65-62
- #23 Georgia lost at Tennessee, 74-56 and at home to Auburn, 70-68
- #25 Baylor lost at Arizona, 81-70
That's 18 of the Top 25 that lost in the previous week. Only #1 Auburn, #3 Duke, #10 Houston, #12 Michigan State, #17 Purdue, #19 Illinois, and #24 Wisconsin avoided a loss.
Michigan State and Illinois play on Sunday, so it will be 19 teams with a loss. And Auburn and Houston escaped with very narrow wins on Saturday.
Not all of those losses were upsets but many were. And Saturday was a bloodbath for favorite teams, with 44 upsets according to Ken Pomeroy's ratings. Particularly hard hit were home teams; according to a quick hand count, 32 of the 44 upset victims were playing at home.
This impacted the Strength power rating in an interesting way: the home court advantage dropped from 3.13 to 3.00 overnight! That's a rare sight; normally it moves 0.01 or 0.02 if at all, even in the span of a full week.
But when home teams get beat, the needle moves and the ratings decided that playing at home isn't as much of an advantage as it had seemed. Interestingly, 3.00 is roughly where the numbers average out over the years, so getting back to that nice round number is a good thing, I think.
Tomorrow I'll figure out which teams benefitted from the carnage in the projected NCAA seedings. With so many upsets, just avoiding the carnage means moving up, but Auburn and Duke were already at the top of the heap. Houston looks to benefit as well as several Big Ten teams. But so many teams lost that some of the losers will move up too, depending on whether that loss was a big upset or a small, forgivable one.
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