When the new Associated Press Top 25 poll is released Monday afternoon, the Villanova Wildcats will almost certainly be the new No. 1 team in college basketball.
The Baylor Bears deserve to be college basketball’s new No. 1 team
Villanova will be the new top dog in college basketball this week, but there’s another team with a more worthy claim to the throne.
Sean Pokorny-USA TODAY Sports
Following Kentucky’s upset loss to UCLA, Jay Wright’s team is certainly an understandable choice to be the third squad to wear the crown in 2016-17. The Wildcats have won their first eight games by an average of 19.4 points, they have a road win over a top-15 team in Purdue, and even though it’s not supposed to matter, they are reigning national champions.
While ‘Nova is the team most likely to get the nod, they aren’t the most deserving.
That title belongs to the Baylor Bears, who hammered No. 7 Xavier 76-61 on Saturday to improve to 8-0. The victory was the Bears' fifth over a team ranked in Ken Pomeroy's top 50, the most of any team in Division-I.
Baylor made its first audible statement to the college basketball world on Nov. 15, when it destroyed then-No. 4 Oregon, 66-49. Scott Drew and company then traveled to The Bahamas for the Battle 4 Atlantis, where they dispatched VCU, Michigan State and Louisville on consecutive days to claim the tournament title. A week later, it was the decided toppling of the seventh-ranked Musketeers that had hoops heads buzzing.
Despite losing his leading scorer, rebounder and assist man from last season's 22-win that earned a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament, Drew spent a solid chunk of the summer telling anyone willing to listen that he believed this group could be superior to that one. Miami transfer Manu Lecomte (13.9 points per game/5.3 assists per game) looks like the point guard Baylor has been sorely lacking in recent seasons, and versatile forward Johnathan Motley (16.3 points per agme/8.1 rebounds per game) is showing why NBA scouts have been waiting two years for him to break out.
However, Baylor and Villanova aren’t the only teams with early claims to the throne.
UCLA is undefeated and owns the most impressive victory of the season with its 97-92 triumph inside Rupp Arena on Saturday. Indiana, even with its bizarre road loss at Fort Wayne, has the best one-two résumé punch of anyone thanks to its victories over North Carolina and Kansas. And how about Gonzaga? The ‘Zags are 8-0 after finally getting over the hump against Arizona, and also have wins over San Diego State, Florida and Iowa State.
Still, through the season’s first three weeks, no team has been more consistently impressive against quality competition than the one in Waco.
We’re still less than a full month into the season, which means the sample size across the country isn’t large enough for résumés alone to tell the whole story. That said, when one team has done that much more than the other 350 teams in Division-I, they probably deserve at least a temporary moment in the spotlight.
Baylor won’t be college basketball’s new No. 1 this week, but they should be.
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