The final rankings before Selection Sunday are out and there’s plenty of movement at the top!
Here are the full rankings this week:
1. Gonzaga 2. Baylor 3. Illinois 4. Michigan 5. Iowa 6. Alabama 7. Houston 8. Arkansas 9. Ohio State 10. West Virginia 11. Kansas 12. Oklahoma State 13. Texas 14. Villanova 15. Florida State 16. Virginia 17. Creighton 18. Loyola Chicago 19. San Diego State 20. Texas Tech 21. Purdue 22. Virginia Tech 23. Colorado 24. USC 25. Oklahoma
Sorry Michigan fans, Illinois deserved it
Michigan can try to persuade people into thinking that they belong ahead of Illinois because they have three fewer losses than them, but they clearly aren’t a better team right now.
Michigan not only lost to Illinois without their best player, Ayo Dosunmu, by 23 points but they also followed that up with a loss to an unranked Michigan State team to finish off the weekend. Illinois, meanwhile, obviously blew out the Wolverines in primetime and beat then #7 Ohio State this past weekend.
This isn’t the time for Michigan to be struggling, so Juwan Howard needs to get his team back to where they were a couple of weeks ago if they want to be a Final Four team.
Does Iowa have a shot at getting the final one seed?
The Hawkeyes sit at #5 in the rankings just behind Michigan and they can grab a one seed if they win the Big Ten tournament or if the Wolverines fall on their face.
As mentioned previously, Michigan didn’t have a good week but it was the opposite for Luka Garza and Iowa. They beat now #9 Ohio State and blew out Nebraska before beating then #25 Wisconsin on Sunday.
This team is playing well heading into the most important part of the year and they have a shot at beating Michigan and Ohio State in the Big Ten tournament this week.
The voters love Ohio State
The Buckeyes are a good team, don’t get me wrong. But if these rankings weigh recent games pretty heavily, then Ohio State should be lower than ninth. Dating back to February 21, they lost to Michigan and then to unranked Michigan State before getting blown out of the water by Iowa. Then, in their only game last week they lost to Illinois.
To be fair, those losses weren’t against horrible teams–they’ve had a rough schedule playing in a big-time conference. But at the same time, four consecutive losses still have to mean something.
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