The first week of the college basketball season was unquestionably highlighted by four of the RTC Preseason Top 10 suffering defeats. It all started last Monday when #9 Virginia went into a hostile road environment at George Washington and left with a 73-68 setback. Tuesday’s Champions Classic then saw #7 Duke fall to #1 Kentucky, 74-63, and #4 Kansas unable to hold off Denzel Valentine’s heroic performance en route to a 79-73 loss. Finally, #11 North Carolina — sans senior point guard Marcus Paige — stumbled on the road at Northern Iowa, 71-67. While it is way too early for any of these squads to panic, expect these highly-ranked preseason teams to ensure one loss does not spiral into multiple defeats. On the other hand, it will also be surprising if Feast Week fails to provide a few more surprising results. This week’s Quick N’ Dirty is after the jump.

Quick N’ Dirty Thoughts.

• Miami (FL) had a terrific start to the season. The Hurricanes were just outside our Preseason Top 25 poll, but they check in at #12 this week after a furious start to the season. Jim Larranaga’s squad is off to a scorching 5-0 mark, highlighted by dominating victories over fellow ranked teams Utah and Butler. When watching Miami play, it is difficult to understand why it was so undervalued in the preseason. The veteran trio of Angel Rodriguez, Sheldon McClellan and Tonye Jekiri provide the Hurricanes with veteran play on both ends of the court. Conference action is still a ways off, but it is probably not too early to begin considering what this squad might be able to accomplish in the ACC this season.
• Uncertainty near the top of the poll. It is not unusual for opinions on teams to vary this early in the season, but the difference on some top teams is staggering. For instance, #10 Iowa State is ranked as highly as #3 by one pollster while the Cyclones are not even ranked by another. Additionally, one pollster did not discount Virginia for its setback and still ranks the Cavaliers at #2, while another pollster dropped Tony Bennett’s squad all the way down to #16. Polling is an inexact science and this level of variance serves to illustrate that fact. Things will most likely even out as the season progresses, but the current amount of uncertainty on certain teams is definitely noteworthy.
• Kentucky is now the unanimous #1. The Wildcats were already the top-ranked team to begin the season and now claim the top spot unanimously. John Calipari’s squad has been quite impressive in getting out to a 4-0 start, highlighted by a convincing victory over Duke at the Champions Classic. The Wildcats spent the entire season at #1 last season, so seeing Kentucky at the top of the poll again is something we should all be used to by now.

Game of the Week. Battle 4 Atlantis. (Field: Gonzaga, Connecticut, Michigan, Texas A&M, Syracuse, Washington, Texas, and Charlotte).

Keep Tabs On. Maui Invitational (Field: Kansas, Indiana, Vanderbilt, UCLA, Wake Forest, UNLV, St. John’s, Chaminade), AdvoCare Invitational (Field: Notre Dame, Wichita State, Xavier, Iowa, Dayton, USC, Alabama, Monmouth).

Conference Call – Big Ten (6),  ACC (5), Pac-12 (4), Big Ten (2), SEC (2),  Big East (2), AAC (2), WCC (1), MVC (1).

WCarey (318 Posts)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2015 at 11:33 am by Walker Carey and is filed under blogpoll, Regular Features. Tagged: duke, feature, iowa state, kansas, kentucky, miami, michigan state, virginia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.