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A year ago at this time, the top eight in the Power Rankings were, in order, Gonzaga, Baylor, Michigan, Ohio State, Illinois, Villanova, Alabama and Houston. On Selection Sunday, five weeks later, seven of those eight teams received a 1-seed or a 2-seed in the NCAA tournament. The only member of that group that didn't receive a top-two seed was Villanova, which dealt with a season-ending injury to Collin Gillespie. Iowa, which moved into the 2-seed range, was ranked No. 14 at the time.Why am I pointing this out? Well, it's one month until the big conference tournaments for the 2021-22 men's college basketball season begin and five weeks until Selection Sunday. So while there's plenty of time for movement in the rankings and projected seedings, we now have three months of evidence on these teams in terms of building their profiles and assessing how dangerous they are in March.
And after the past couple of weeks of results, we might be getting a little bit of separation near the top of the rankings. Auburn and Gonzaga aren't going anywhere, while Kentucky is perhaps playing the best basketball of anyone. Purdue and Duke are rolling, and Arizona and Kansas have regained their mojo after losses.
After that? It's wide-open. Houston has elite metrics but only one Quad 1 win, while Baylor's injuries are catching up to it. Predictive metrics are still slow to rate Providence and Wisconsin. Texas Tech and Illinois are performing at a high level right now, and could make a move up in the coming weeks. The same can be said for UCLA and Villanova, but both struggle with consistency.
Will early February rankings be as predictive for Selection Sunday as they were last year? We're only five weeks away.
