With only 22 days until the tournament, the mighty Volunteers of Tennessee are the #1 team in the country. I can honestly say that I would have never thought this team could be on top of the polls at any point of the season, nonetheless in the final weeks of a tough SEC schedule. This is a well-deserved honor following a great win over Memphis on Saturday. The fact that future All-American Chris Lofton turned in a terrible performance (7 points on 2-11 shooting) makes this win all that more impressive. It is hard to believe this team will win out with a surprisingly tough Vandy, a resurgent Kentucky, and a young Florida team coming up over the next 8 days. A loss to Vandy tonight seems to be in this team's future. This was a tough week to be in the Top 25, as many teams fell. Duke lost again, this time to the overperforming Miami Hurricanes. The Jayhawks lost a typical tough Big 12 game to OSU. Butler lost a great game to Drake in a battle for mid-major supremacy (Drake lost earlier in the week to Bradley). UCONN finally lost another game (Villanova). An overrated Purdue team lost to underrated Indiana (how this team responds to the Kelivin Sampson situation will be telling, a narrow win over Northwestern is not promising). This is typical for this time of year, as teams start to wear down a bit and look forward to conference tournaments and the Big Dance. Now for this week's Top 5:
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1. UNC
2. Memphis
3. Tennessee
4. Kansas
5. Texas
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UNC seems to be hitting its stride without Lawson. Central to this is QT's play at the point. I had recently said that watching him play made me sick, which it did, but he has improved immensley over the last three weeks. He has averaged 7.5 points and 6.5 assists over the last seven games (UNC is 6-1 in that stretch). While I can't forget his terrible play up to this point, I am willing to apologize to to his star father for questioning his son's abilities. Isiah, I am sorry. Memphis and Tennessee cannot shoot free throws, which will come into play late in the tournament. Kansas needs to establish a go-to guy and Texas has the best guards in the country. The number of teams to watch seems to shrink as the season progresses, but UCLA, when healthy, will be tough coming out of the west, Indiana (Gordon on the big stage like Carmelo Anthony in 2003?), Georgetown (can defense win the day?), and Butler (still the best mid-major team) could play a role late in the tournament.
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My current projection-UNC over Kansas
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