The college basketball rankings are wrong. Not just a little, not only slightly, but appallingly, outrageously wrong. For atop the college basketball world sit the wrong teams, while the deserving No.1 team erroneously is not even situated within the top three in the country.
Villanova, Kansas and UCLA, were ranked one, two and three respectively Monday morning by the Associated Press. They were rewarded for their hot starts to the season, with each team carrying at least one win over a top 25 opponent and records that contained only one loss.
At face value, it seems hard to contest the AP’s rankings. Despite a forgettable loss at now 13th-ranked Butler, Villanova has seemed to pick up right where they left off after last season's championship run. Kansas, since the first game of the season where they lost a heartbreaker to then 11th-ranked Indiana, has won 17-straight games including a captivating, buzzer beating win over a then No. 1 Duke Blue Devils. And UCLA has captured the attention of the whole nation with freshman phenom Lonzo Ball and its manhandling of a Kentucky team that many still believe to be the most dangerous team in the country.
Yet, seemingly forgotten, is the Gonzaga Bulldogs. The undefeated Gonzaga Bulldogs. Behind the defending champions, the buzzer-beating theatrics and the freshman stars, rests an overlooked Gonzaga team.
They are too qualified to be ranked fourth in the country. As the lone undefeated team remaining in college basketball, the basis for their argument to be ranked higher has already been laid. But compounding that is the fact that they already have posted three wins over top 25 opponents, a number that cannot be topped by either the Wildcats, Jayhawks or Bruins.
Their ranking becomes even more disgusting when comparing Gonzaga solely to UCLA. Besides the fact that the Bruins have one loss and only one win against top 25 teams, they also have the 140th-best strength of schedule in the country and the 20th-best RPI. The Bulldogs, in contrast, have the 63rd-ranked strength of schedule and are ninth in RPI.
One may ask, then, why in the world UCLA is ranked higher than Gonzaga. Why, despite more losses, fewer wins over top competition, an easier schedule and overall less impressive start to the season, are the Bruins ranked within the top three when the Bulldogs are not. And for that, I have no answers.
Maybe the press holds more importance in the notoriety of team’s players than the quality of a team’s wins. Maybe they value buzzer beater wins over a team’s ability to not lose. Or maybe, just maybe, they are wrong.