With a little more than two weeks until Selection Sunday, the battle for #1 seeds in this season’s NCAA Tournament is coming into focus. The specific teams that will sit atop each region have yet to completely crystallize, but the available scenarios are starting to make sense. As regular season conference champions are crowned and the conference tournament brackets are set, the variables in each candidate’s resume fade away and the pathways to a top seed become more clear. Looking around the college basketball landscape leads us to 10 teams remaining with a legitimate chance at the top line. Let’s review.

Kansas and Villanova Appear Locked In as Top Seeds (USA Today Images)

Kansas and Villanova are almost certainly locked into #1 seeds in the Midwest and East regions, respectively. Both schools have already clinched at least a share of their conference championships and sport resumes worthy of a top seed, barring absolute disaster (i.e., multiple losses) down the stretch. Gonzaga, 29-0 against the 147th-ranked schedule in college basketball, is likely to earn the top seed in the West region. When the Selection Committee provided its sneak peek of the top 16 seeds a couple weeks ago, the Zags occupied the fourth overall #1 seed. Those rankings were released prior to Gonzaga’s decisive victory that evening at St. Mary’s as well as consecutive losses by Baylor, the third overall seed If Mark Few’s club loses its regular season finale against BYU or the WCC Tournament championship game to St. Mary’s, they’d still be in good position to earn a top seed. A loss to any other team in the conference tournament, however, would definitely knock Gonzaga to the #2 seed line.

The fourth available #1 seed is where things get tricky. The likely front-runner for that slot as of today is North Carolina, which is leading the ACC by two full games. An outright regular season title would likely include victories over Duke or Virginia, sealing up a regular season resume well-situated to earn a #1 seed. Assuming a decent performance at the ACC Tournament in Brooklyn, the Tar Heels would head to the South Region. If North Carolina slips down the stretch, ACC colleagues Louisville and Duke would be in best position to gain. Even though both teams lost on Wednesday night, a strong closing push that results in an ACC Tournament championship could elevate the Cardinals or Blue Devils to the top line. In the end, the ACC is so strong that any of these three teams can earn a #1 seed by making it clear to the committee that they own the league’s best resume.

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As we enter the home stretch of the college basketball season, the top two teams in the RTC25 have separated themselves from the pack as the best squads in the country. Top-ranked Gonzaga continued its undefeated run with dominant home victories over San Francisco and Pacific. The Bulldogs finish their regular season on Thursday at San Diego and Saturday in Spokane versus BYU, making the likelihood of a perfect 30-0 mark entering postseason play very likely. Second-ranked Villanova extended its winning streak to seven in a row with easy road wins last week over DePaul and Seton Hall — the Wildcats are now 26-2 overall and 13-2 in Big East play. They will have a chance to improve on those marks with looming home showdowns this week against #22 Butler on Wednesday and #23 Creighton on Saturday. Of course a lot can still happen between now and Selection Sunday, but it certainly looks like Gonzaga and Villanova will be pleased with where they end up on the evening of March 12. This week’s Quick N’ Dirty after the jump.

Quick N’ Dirty Analysis.

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This year multiple coaches across the country have conceded publicly that a team’s offense is the biggest factor in its ability to maintain a defense. “Defense wins championships” may still be a treasured maxim, but the truth is that offense is the fuel in college basketball. The question then becomes one of how vulnerable the best offenses in college basketball are to a one-game slump? Since only a single bad night is all it takes to be sent home from the NCAA Tournament, it’s worth investigating the nation’s top five offenses to set some criteria for evaluating the rest of the field. Per KenPom, here are the top five offenses nationally based on adjusted offensive efficiency, along with their corresponding adjusted tempo.

As the tempo column shows, teams can play at both warp speed (UCLA, North Carolina, Gonzaga) or at a relative crawl (Villanova) and still be extremely effective. That said, to the extent that the game slows somewhat in the NCAA Tournament, it is reasonable to suggest that some of these teams may face more trouble than others. The Bruins, Tar Heels and Bulldogs all use a healthy dose of tempo when they play. This is not to say that any of those three teams cannot also win a low-possession game, but their opponents would certainly be better-suited to impose a slowdown game on them to the extent possible. Villanova has already proven its favored pace can win championships. The next question then becomes which of the faster teams are most poised to handle a grind-it-out half-court game?

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Another week of the college basketball season has come and gone, and with it a little more clarity has been revealed regarding the group of college basketball’s top teams. Duke and UCLA both showed on Thursday night that they must be included in the discussion. The Blue Devils, whose dramatically volatile season has been thoroughly documented, stayed on the winning course by earning an 86-78 victory over arch-rival North Carolina. The Bruins earned some revenge from an early Pac-12 loss to Oregon by riding its home crowd and a rejuvenated defensive effort to an impressive 82-79 comeback win. February is normally the month where elite teams begin to separate themselves from the pack, so it will be interesting to observe whether UCLA and Duke, along with a handful of others above them in the rankings, are ready to make a push. There are many opportunities for teams to earn impressive wins and bolster their NCAA Tournament résumés. It just comes down to which teams will actually take advantage of those opportunities. This week’s Quick N’ Dirty after the jump.

Quick N’ Dirty Analysis.

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With one month left in the regular season, it’s no longer too early to consider which of the remaining conference unbeatens have a legitimate chance to enter March without a loss. So let’s dig in. (Chances of going unbeaten based on KenPom win probabilities).

Mark Few Appears to Have It All Figured Out (USA Today Images)

Gonzaga (25-0, 13-0 West Coast). America’s only remaining undefeated team, Gonzaga tops almost every relevant poll and metric thanks to nearly three full months of flawless basketball. Of the Bulldogs’ 25 wins, 22 have come by double-figures, including an astonishing 26.6-point margin of victory in conference play alone (with seven wins by 30-plus). Point guard Nigel Williams-Goss (15.8 PPG, 5.9 RPG, 4.7 APG) has been worthy of All-America consideration; freshman forward Zach Collins (10.8 PPG, 5.9 RPG) has been one of the most efficient players in the country; center Przemek Karnowski (12.1 PPG, 5.6 RPG), who was sidelined nearly all last season with a back injury, hasn’t missed a beat. It’s been an all-around remarkable season, especially for a unit whose top five scorers weren’t on the active roster in 2015-16. Up until last month, Gonzaga was projected to lose at Saint Mary’s—college basketball’s 16th-best team according to KenPom—this Saturday night. Now, the Bulldogs are favored to win by two. If they can escape Moraga unblemished, Mark Few’s team would almost certainly enter the postseason without a loss.

Chances of going unbeaten: 56.3%

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This Saturday gave college basketball one of the most chaotic days of the regular season, and no conference felt that impact more than the Big 12. The league’s top three teams were all defeated, with two of those losses coming to unranked foes at home. The chaos started with #4 Kansas having its 54-game home winning streak snapped in a 92-89 overtime loss to Iowa State. At the same time the Jayhawks were losing to the Cyclones, #10 Baylor‘s offense struggled its way to a 56-54 home loss to Kansas State. To conclude the afternoon, #13 West Virginia blew a four-point halftime lead to allow Oklahoma State to leave Morgantown with an 82-75 victory. A host of other top 10 teams also lost on Saturday. There is always going to be that one crazy day in a college basketball season, so it’s worth wondering if Saturday was this year’s or if even more craziness is yet to come. This week’s Quick N’ Dirty Analysis is after the jump.

Quick N’ Dirty Analysis.

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In what turned out to be perhaps the nuttiest week of college basketball this season, seven of last week’s top 10 RTC25 teams lost at least once. Villanova (at Marquette), Kansas (at West Virginia), Kentucky (Kansas), UCLA (at USC), North Carolina (at Miami), Florida State (at Georgia Tech; at Syracuse) and Oregon (at Colorado) all took defeats last week. With so much chaos among the top tier of the poll, the corresponding result is that not very much actually changed — six of the top seven are still within that range. New #1 Gonzaga is the clear beneficiary, but with a number of teams behind the Bulldogs awaiting a slip-up, the top of the RTC25 might yet have several more residents by the end of the season.

This week’s Quick N’ Dirty Analysis of the RTC25 is after the jump.

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The College Football Playoff has caught a lot of flak for a system that rewards four teams in an environment where five power conference champions all feel that they are deserving. The NCAA Tournament with its 68 teams is obviously a lot more inclusive, but the pursuit of the four top seeds shares some of the flaws of the football system. College basketball features a less defined definition of its power conferences, but depending on your opinion of the Big East and American, our landscape features a minimum of six power conference champions which presumably would have a shot at the top line. On top of that, there are always a handful of mid-majors capable of having a stake in selection of the #1 seeds. With the American sitting at eighth in the RPI this season, Cincinnati would likely need to run the table for a chance at a top seed, an unlikely outcome. That leaves seven entrants, loosely defined to include conferences, for only four spots. Let’s examine each in turn.

Are Wisconsin fans gearing up for a possible #1 seed? (Photo by David Stluka)

• Big Ten. Thanks to a pair of unexpected swoons by Indiana and Michigan State, Purdue and Wisconsin seem to be the only Big Ten teams with a semi-realistic chance of making a run at a #1 seed. However, the margin of error is already thin for both. The Boilermakers have four reasonable losses with wins over Notre Dame and Wisconsin, while the Badgers’ likely best win came at Assembly Hall against a struggling group of Hoosiers. It would be difficult to imagine that these resumes could turn into top-seed material by March. The Big Ten’s best teams appear to have suffered too many hiccups before conference play and are now slowly cannibalizing themselves into the lower seed lines.

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Another action-packed week of college basketball is in the books and with it came a change at the top of this week’s RTC25. Previously top-ranked Baylor relinquished its ranking after suffering its first setback of the season in a 89-68 blowout loss at #7 West Virginia. The Bears rebounded from that loss over the weekend with a solid 77-68 victory at Kansas State. That allowed #1 Villanova to regain the top spot after a week in which the Wildcats dominated #22 Xavier in a 25-point home victory and earned a 70-57 road victory against St. John’s. Jay Wright’s team has a couple of winnable home games this week as it hosts Seton Hall on Monday and Providence on Saturday, but you should know by now that it is not very wise in college basketball to view any conference game as a sure thing. This week’s Quick N’ Dirty Analysis of the RTC25 is after the jump.

Quick N’ Dirty Analysis.

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With 2017 now upon us and conference play ramping up, let’s take a step back and reexamine the best of the best across the O26.

1. Gonzaga (14-0) – West Coast. Despite its cast of untested newcomers, chemistry and balance have not been an issue for Gonzaga this season. The Bulldogs have cruised to a 14-0 start behind a lineup whose top six scorers all average between 9.3 and 13.8 points per game. In fact, only two players—Nigel Williams-Goss and Przemek Karnowski—get more than 30 minutes per night, thanks largely to the effectiveness of bench players like Zach Collins (10.5 PPG, 5.2 RPG) and Killian Tillie (4.6 PPG). Mark Few’s club has been equally excellent on both sides of the ball, ranking among the top 12 nationally in both offensive and defensive efficiency. That well-roundedness helped the Zags notch three neutral court victories over KenPom top-30 opponents, giving them a non-conference resume that should hold up very well in mid-March. A win or two over Saint Mary’s would only strengthen the cause. The Zags are once again a legitimate Final Four contender.

UT Arlington surprise win at Saint Mary’s opened eyes across college basketball. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

2. Saint Mary’s (12-1) – West Coast. Since its jarring, 14-point home loss to UT Arlington on December 8, Saint Mary’s has held five straight opponents under 0.90 points per possession. That’s a positive sign for a unit that has often struggled to win games when its offense goes cold. The Gaels—with victories at Dayton and Stanford—have also proven their ability to win on the road, which is not something they could claim last season (the NCAA Selection Committee took notice). With one of the nation’s elite point guards (Emmett Naar) and a center, Jock Landale, who currently ranks second in KenPom’s Player of the Year standings, it’s hard to imagine this team slipping much in WCC play. January 14, Saint Mary’s first tilt with Gonzaga in Spokane, can’t come soon enough.

3. Wichita State (12-3) – Missouri Valley. The Shockers’ 100-66 dismantling of Bradley on New Year’s Day perhaps best captures this team’s identity. Sixteen different players saw action (Wichita State leads the country in bench minutes); ball movement was crisp (25 assists on 34 made baskets); and the physicality was unrelenting. Put simply, Wichita State is going to pummel a whole bunch of inferior opponents in Missouri Valley play. With an already-tenuous at-large resume, however, one major question remains: can the Shockers avoid losing more than one or two games in the conference? With Illinois State and Missouri State both surging, nothing is guaranteed.

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