Men's College Basketball Top 10, Bubble Team NET Rankings: U-M No Longer No. 1

The top 25 rankings are important for understanding just who is killing it in college basketball, but we can go deeper — all the way to the bubble and beyond.

The NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET, is a rankings system used in Division I basketball to help figure out which teams are going to participate in March Madness. As the NCAA puts it, NET "takes into account game results, strength of schedule, game location, net offensive and defensive efficiency, and the quality of wins and losses," the latter of which is determined by placing every Division I matchup into different quadrants, ranked 1 through 4, with 1 being the strongest teams and 4 the weakest — Quads aren’t just determined by record, but also whether a game was played at home, on the road or at a neutral site.

Using NET, we can get a sense of which teams are the best at a given moment, as well as which ones are on the bubble for selection in March. While updated daily by the NCAA, we’ll track changes weekly.

With that, here are the top 10 men’s college basketball teams through Jan. 26, according to NET.

The Top 10

10. Purdue (previous: 5)

If you couldn’t tell by the five-spot drop, this was a terrible week for Purdue. The Boilermakers were upset by UCLA, 69-67, then fell to now-No. 9 Illinois in their follow-up matchup. That dropped them from a tie atop the Big Ten to fifth, which has the added downside of putting them out of position for a double-bye in the conference tournament. There’s a lot of season left, Big Ten or otherwise, though.

9. Michigan State (previous: 12)

The problem for Purdue, really, is that it’s in a conference where it can drop that far in a week because there is no shortage of teams competing against them, which makes climbing back up that much harder. Teams like Michigan State, which reentered the top 10 in NET with a win over Oregon and 91-48 domination against Maryland. The Spartans are here this week instead of Houston, which fell out of the top 10 after being upset by Texas Tech.

8. UConn (previous: 8)

The Huskies’ consistent presence in the 8th spot in NET tells you that being No. 2 in the poll the past two weeks has more to do with the chaos from upsets than UConn’s actual showing to this point. Though, it’s worth considering this: UConn keeps having close wins against Big East opponents, yes, but it also keeps winning, whether it takes holding off a surging opponent or coming from behind to win. Maybe the Huskies come up against another opponent that doesn’t fly against — it’s how they lost to Arizona in their only defeat — but even that game was decided by a mere four points.

7. Iowa State (previous: 10)

Iowa State recovered from its rough stretch the last time out by crushing UCF, 87-57 — UCF was ranked in the poll earlier this month — and then taking down Oklahoma State. Big 12 competition keeps increasing the Cyclones’ strength of schedule bit by bit, but they have been up to the challenge outside of that brief blip.

6. Illinois (previous: 7)

Illinois defeated Maryland by 19 points before making Purdue’s week a lot worse, and its reward is moving up to a vacated spot in the rankings. The Fighting Illini have faced the fourth-toughest schedule of any of the top-10 teams in NET, which is part of why they get some leniency for having three losses — that’s also why Purdue is in the top-10 still, as the Boilermakers are one of the few teams ahead of Illinois in schedule difficulty.

5. Nebraska (previous: 6)

Another week, another highest-ever spot in both the poll and in NET. Nebraska and its smothering defense — it ranks 11th in KenPom’s Defensive Rating — handled Washington and Minnesota no problem, but on Tuesday the undefeated Cornhuskers will face their most difficult challenge of the season against No. 3 Michigan.

4. Gonzaga (previous: 4)

Gonzaga once again took care of business against Pepperdine, but was nearly upset by San Francisco on Saturday, which is only a top-100 team now because of that almost-defeat of the Bulldogs. Because Houston fell out of the rankings and Purdue slipped so far back, Gonzaga stuck in 4th in NET despite this. The rare "almost doesn’t count" from the NCAA Evaluation Tool, where the opposite usually holds true.

3. Michigan (previous: 1)

The very first NET ranking of the year released on Dec. 1, and Michigan was 1st. The Wolverines have stuck there every week since, but no more. While they have still played the most-difficult schedule of anyone in Division I men’s college basketball, the two teams in front of them have been mostly surging of late, and the Wolverines maybe didn’t beat Indiana and Ohio State — both top-40 teams, but not unstoppable by any means — by enough last week.

2. Duke (previous: 2)

Then there is Duke, which trounced No. 20 Louisville like it was a mid-tier conference opponent, 83-52. If Michigan had held off either of the Hoosiers or Buckeyes last week with the same kind of dominance, the NET rankings might look a little different right now. It didn’t, and they don’t.

1. Arizona (previous: 3)

Arizona is the one that got the biggest boost from Michigan’s slight dip, however, as the Wildcats hopped over both teams to land in the top spot. The explanation for that is simple enough: Arizona handled Cincinnati — which had just upset Iowa State — with ease, then beat West Virginia by 35 points to actually move into 1st in the rankings. Arizona then followed that up with a win against No. 13 BYU. A close win, yes, but the Cougars are 12th in NET, and were before the loss, as well. Meaning, the system sees that close result as exactly what should have happened in a matchup between the two. 

Risers and Fallers

In the span of a week, some teams can see their spot in the rankings dramatically shift. Here are the five teams that rose the most in men’s college basketball in the last week…

5. Longwood, 288 to 263: Two significant wins for Longwood last week, with a 91-56 drubbing of Gardner-Webb followed by an overtime W against Charleston Southern, which entered the matchup the heavy favorite in NET and ended it with a much narrower gap between the two.

4. UTRGV, 196 to 169: The Vaqueros defeated Houston Christian and A&M Corpus Christi, and it’s the second of those that gave UTRGV most of its boost in the last week.

3. North Carolina A&T, 287 to 259: A two-win week for the Aggies, both close but both upsets. N.C. A&T defeated Hofstra, 79-78, then Towson 80-73. Hofstra was ranked 100th in NET at this time last week, and while Towson wasn’t quite as lofty, it was still over 100 spots ahead of the Aggies. 

2. Drake, 184 to 154: Drake secured a dub against Murray State, which was huge for the Bulldogs given the Racers were on the bubble. "Were" being a key word there, as the defeat knocked them out of the range we cover here in this space.

1. UIC, 171 to 139: The Flames delivered that same Drake team its most recent defeat before last week’s check-in, and since then also won against Evansville and Bradley. Losing to Evansville would have been a disaster, but UIC won, 76-49, then upset Bradley by 15.

…and the five that fell the furthest.

T5. UT Martin, 168 to 190: Just one game and one loss, but it was a bad one to Southeast Missouri State given the Redhawks were around 90 spots further back in NET.

T5. USC Upstate, 269 to 291: UNC Asheville and Gardner-Webb both dropped USC Upstate in Big South action, which took the Spartans from a bad place to a worse one.

T5. Texas State, 264 to 286: Neither of Coastal Carolina nor James Madison started out the week all that much better off than Texas State in NET, but the gap grew considerably with both winning against the Bobcats this past week.

T5. Campbell, 197 to 219: A tough week for Campbell, which lost to Charleston despite a 31-point effort from DJ Smith, then lost by 15 to Monmouth after seeing its offense stopped in the second half.

4. New Mexico State, 126 to 149: New Mexico State was upset in both of its games, first against Missouri State (205th in NET) and then FIU (188th). 

3. Central Connecticut State, 253 to 278: The new year looked like it was changing Central Connecticut State’s fortunes, as it rattled off four wins in a row to move to 10-6, but since then the Blue Devils suffered defeats at the hands of Mercyhurst, FDU and Stonehill.

2. Cal Poly, 244 to 269: Cal Poly suffered a bad loss to Hawaii earlier in the month, and to this point hasn’t bounced back: an even worse loss — 107-67 — to UC Santa Barbara followed, and then the Mustangs dropped a game to Cal State Fullerton, 93-78.

1. Elon, 145 to 177: The Phoenix lost to Towson and College of Charleston, which were both ranked around where Elon is now in NET prior to those Ls. The defeat to Towson was worse, with the Phoenix losing by 13.

On the Bubble 

Of the 68 March Madness teams in the tournament, 31 of them are conference champions who receive automatic entry into the tournament. The other 37 spots are at-large bids. With that in mind, we will look at the teams ranked between 64-to-73 in NET each week, as those are the ones who are the most on the bubble for the tourney.

73. Oklahoma State (previous: 75): Sure, the Cowboys lost to TCU and Iowa State in the past week, but a regular old L against the current No. 8 team in the country isn’t going to ruin a bubble team’s season.

72. Stanford (previous: 68): Stanford played just once last week, a 78-66 loss to California, and that had them slip in NET by a few spots.

71. George Washington (previous: 77): George Washington also played just one game, but the Revolutionaries won it, defeating Richmond 85-69.

70. George Mason (previous: 62): Another single-game squad, George Mason fell to Rhode Island, 74-65, which wasn’t great for the Patriots in a vacuum but is worse when taking into account that Rhode Island ranked 139th in NET.

69. Northwestern (previous: 81): A significant boost for the Wildcats, courtesy a win over UCLA (44th in NET last week) and a loss against USC (50th in NET). Neither are Big Ten powers at the moment, but a win and not getting blown out by a pair of top-50 teams is a pretty solid week from where Northwestern is sitting.

68. Missouri (previous: 67): Not much of a change here, as a 1-point loss to Georgia a top-30 team in Georgia isn’t going to ruin a bubble team, and then the Tigers won against a team rated similarly to itself, Oklahoma, in OT.

67. West Virginia (previous: 64): Losing to Arizona by 35 points basically undid all the progress that beating Arizona State had managed, but the end result is West Virginia basically where it was in the bubble a week ago.

66. Nevada (previous: 72): A dominant win over San Jose State followed by a loss to top-40 New Mexico averaged out to a comfier spot in the bubble for Nevada.

65. Wake Forest (previous: 58): Teams have had worse weeks than losing to SMU and Duke, but losing to the two by a combined 33 points wasn’t great.

64. Boise State (previous: 83): Some quality recovery here by Boise State, which had been safely out of the bubble just a couple of weeks ago before falling so far that the Broncos went right past it on their way down. Wins against Wyoming and Air Force have them trending back in the right direction.