College Basketball Conference Power Rankings at Week 7

It takes a special weekend of college basketball to ensure that the No. 8 ranked team overcoming a double-digit deficit to win by one against the No. 6 ranked team isn’t the biggest storyline.

That’s because unranked Butler from the Atlantic 10 shocked No. 1 Indiana in overtime at the Boston Scientific Close the Gap Crossroads Classic at Indianapolis (yep, that’s a real thing). The resilient Bulldogs even played the entire overtime period without a number of their key contributors.

But don’t overlook Arizona’s nail-biting win over Florida. That game highlighted the top teams in two conferences that really needed a win.

Read on to see where those conferences, as well as eight other leagues, stand today.

No. 10: WCC

The dawning of another college basketball week means two things—a new AP Top 25 Poll and the WCC kicking off my updated conference power rankings in the No. 10 spot.

Gonzaga bounced back from its first loss to Illinois with an impressive 16-point win over a better-than-advertised Kansas State team. Saint Mary’s, the assumed challenger to the Zags’ conference-title hopes, dropped a cool 120 on Jackson State in its only game of the week.

BYU also won by 10, albeit against Weber State.

While the middle and bottom of the WCC did no favors for the league’s reputation with a number of losses against questionable teams (Nevada and Central Michigan come to mind), it was Santa Clara that made the most noise of the week.

The Broncos are currently 8-2, but there wasn’t a lot of meat in the early schedule. That changed during the past two games with road wins against San Jose State and Pacific. Remember, that’s a Pacific team who already beat Xavier and Saint Mary’s this year.

No. 9: Missouri Valley

Creighton, as will probably be the case all season, made the most headlines in the Missouri Valley Conference this week.

The Bluejays went on the road against a tough California team from the Pac-12 and soundly handled the Golden Bears by 10 points. All superstar Doug McDermott did was drop 34 points and grab nine rebounds.

Elsewhere, Illinois State has NCAA tournament hopes and has now won two straight after a difficult three-game losing streak. Northern Iowa was somewhat impressive even in defeat against Iowa, and Drake hung close with a decent Iowa State team but ultimately fell short.

Oh, and Missouri State is still all kinds of terrible.

The biggest non-Creighton news in the MVC this week was Wichita State’s first loss of the year. The Shockers went into Tennessee and lost by nine in a somewhat surprising result considering Wichita was in the Top 25, and the Vols had failed to score 40 points in each of the last two games.

No. 8: Atlantic 10

Real Time RPI has the Atlantic 10 ninth in its conference power rankings, but I am going to reward the league for arguably the biggest win for any team in this young season and slot it ahead of the Missouri Valley.

The Butler Bulldogs, who missed the NCAA tournament last year after almost completing the ultimate Cinderella run in the two seasons prior, announced their return to college basketball relevance in a big way against No. 1 Indiana Saturday.

However, Butler wasn’t the only good news of the week for the A-10. Temple bounced back nicely from its loss to Duke, Richmond upped its record to 9-2, Dayton continued to impress and the other newcomer, VCU, looked formidable in a 19-point win against Alabama.

Nevertheless, there are still too many issues in the league to move it higher than eight. The gaudy records of Charlotte and La Salle look like fool’s gold right now after a 33-point beat down at the hands of Miami (Charlotte) and a loss to Bucknell (La Salle).

Preseason conference favorite, Saint Joseph’s lost to a below-average Villanova squad this week, Duquesne got crushed at Robert Morris and Fordham is frankly terrible.

No. 7: SEC

Don’t worry SEC fans. This will probably only last one week, but the conference has to be temporarily punished by moving down to the seven spot for its putrid performance this past weekend.

Florida’s loss made the headlines, and theoretically going into Arizona and losing by one point is nothing to hang your head about. However, losing in the fashion that the Gators did by blowing a sizable lead at the last second is tough to get over.

Unfortunately for the league, that is just the tip of the bad-news iceberg. LSU lost by 19 points to Boise State, Texas A&M lost by 10 to Oklahoma and further proved its 7-2 record is simply because of soft scheduling, Alabama got crushed by VCU, Georgia lost to Iona and Mississippi State somehow fell to Loyola.

Suffice to say the SEC commissioner is probably devoting all of his attention to the football bowl season right about now.

However, it wasn’t all bad news. Tennessee, who was previously putting up pre-shot clock era scoring totals, knocked off Wichita State, Missouri is still good and Kentucky is slowly bouncing back thanks to a few games against sacrificial lambs.

No. 6: Pac-12

At the beginning of the season, the Pac-12 narrative was that this league was a two-team race between Arizona and UCLA. After early season struggles by the Bruins, it seemed as if it was Arizona and a bunch of also-rans.

However, the truth may lie somewhere else.

Yes, the Wildcats are the class of the Pac-12, and that comeback win over Florida was one of the most exciting moments of the year. Still, there are some challengers in there that may not have been expected, particularly in Eugene.

The Oregon Ducks demolished Nebraska of the Big Ten this week, which isn’t great but it looks nice when paired with their previous win over UNLV. Oregon State isn’t terrible (it almost beat Kansas), and maybe UCLA is bouncing back with two-straight wins.

But I still can’t place the Pac-12 any higher than six this week because there isn’t much non-Arizona quality in terms of wins. Arizona State getting crushed by DePaul, Colorado squeaking by Fresno State and California losing its third-straight game this week certainly didn’t help the cause.

No. 5: Big 12

It wasn’t the best week for the Big 12, although it wasn’t as bad as the SEC’s.

Kansas State fell by double-digits to Gonzaga (something it has done to the only two quality teams it has played), Texas Tech lost to McNeese State (really?), TCU is currently in a two-game losing streak that includes a loss to Tulsa and West Virginia got crushed again by a talented squad (this time Michigan).

What’s more, I think Baylor’s losses to College of Charleston, Northwestern and Colorado say more about the Bears than their one win over Kentucky does. And in case you were wondering, Texas is still without a single quality victory.

The good news was that Oklahoma was impressive against Texas A&M, Oklahoma State has rolled for most of the year and Kansas is one of the best teams in the country.

However, the Big 12 is going to have to perform better on the national stage before it moves up from the five spot in these rankings.

No. 4: Mountain West

I’m sure I will get some negative reactions to putting a non-power conference league this high, but just know that I am not alone. Real Time RPI also has the Mountain West in the No. 4 spot in its conference power rankings, and with good reason.

San Diego State, undefeated New Mexico and UNLV give the conference more ranked teams than the SEC, Big 12 and Pac-12. That doesn’t even include Wyoming, who is sitting pretty at 10-0 and has a victory over Colorado.

Moreover, Boise State crushed LSU this week to move its record to 7-2, and Nevada has won three straight after knocking off San Francisco.

While there is just not enough quality from top to bottom in the Mountain West to move higher than four (or stay here for much of the year I think), for the time being this league deserves basketball recognition whether its teams get automatic berths to BCS football games or not.

No. 3: ACC

Thanks to Indiana’s loss to Butler this weekend, Duke, the team with the best resume in the country by far, is the new No. 1.

However, the ACC is deeper than just the Blue Devils. Maryland continues to impress, albeit against mostly soft competition, Miami picked up an impressive 31-point victory over a previously undefeated Charlotte team and North Carolina State has bounced back from early losses with three-straight wins.

Even Virginia is riding high with a seven-game winning streak.

The worst performance of the week for the league was Virginia Tech’s inexplicable loss to Georgia Southern, a team that is currently sitting at 4-5 with losses to Elon and Samford. It also took Boston College overtime to knock off New Hampshire, and North Carolina looked underwhelming against East Carolina.

This is still a top-three league, but it could use better showings from its traditional powerhouse, the Tar Heels.

No. 2: Big East

Louisville, Georgetown and Notre Dame are all 9-1, Pittsburgh is 10-1 and Syracuse and Cincinnati are undefeated. Not bad Big East, not bad.

As with many of the top conferences at this time of year, most of the games on last week’s slate were against cupcake competition. However, there were some notable results.

Louisville fended off a difficult Memphis team after coming back from a double-digit deficit, Villanova beat Saint Joseph’s from the Atlantic 10, Notre Dame took care of a struggling Purdue squad and even DePaul crushed Arizona State.

There really wasn’t any bad news for the conference all week in terms of results.

The Big East counts five teams among the most recent Top 25 AP Poll, which is more than any other conference save for the top one in these power rankings.

No. 1: Big Ten

Obviously the headlines in the Big Ten this week were all about the fall of No. 1 Indiana. While that was certainly notable, especially this early in the season and in the manner in which the Hoosiers fell, let’s not overreact to one December game.

The Big Ten still makes up 40 percent of the Top 10 in the AP Poll, and Minnesota is sitting just outside that group at No. 13 (Michigan State is No. 20).

It was mostly a week of cupcakes for the conference, although Michigan’s prime-time crushing over West Virginia of the Big 12 didn’t hurt the league’s reputation.

At this point, my only real concern regarding the Big Ten is Wisconsin and Purdue. We knew Penn State and Nebraska would be terrible (although maybe not to the point where each would set basketball back 10 years), but the Boilers and particularly the Badgers were supposed to be better than this.

Nevertheless, there is no way the conference with the No. 2, No. 6, No. 7, No. 10 and No. 13 teams in the polls isn’t going to sit atop my rankings this week.