Ranking Saturday’s Most Shocking Finishes
This weekend was a crazy day in college basketball, four different top ten teams went down, three to teams that are un-ranked. I’m going to rank these outcomes from most to least surprising (5 is the least, 1 is the most). And don’t forget, this is all my takes and opinions!
5. #14 Norte Dame falls to Georgia Tech
In my eyes, the writing was on the wall for this game, the Irish are coming off a tough loss to Virginia and were looking ahead to their next two games, which are against Duke and North Carolina, respectively. It’s safe to assume the Irish didn’t bring their A game for this matchup, mentally or physically. And, with Georgia Tech’s confidence through the roof after a blowout of Florida State, this outcome was inevitable.
4. #4 Kentucky falls to #2 Kansas
You may be wondering, Kansas is the number two team in the country, and Kentucky is coming off a loss to an unranked team. Why is this not the least surprising? If you know me, I am not a Kansas believer at all, but they 100% proved me wrong. The experience played a smarter and overall better game than the young superstars at Kentucky. Even with that, I’m still shocked that the talent that Kentucky has, at home, couldn’t take care of business. But, Kentucky must stop playing like an AAU team full of stars if they want to make something of this season, this is a new level.
3. #6 Florida State falls to Syracuse
This was shocking to me. You would think that after embarrassing themselves against Georgia Tech earlier in the week, the Seminoles would come back with a better performance. But instead, they go into the home of a mediocre Syracuse team and lose by double digits. I really like the talent of this Florida State team, but this is a good test for them, I’m intrigued to see how they respond.
2. #9 North Carolina falls to Miami
Although Miami has been playing a lot of teams tough, North Carolina is usually the team that will always take care of business. They don’t have a bad loss on the season (Indiana was a different team and Georgia Tech is a different team). Joel Berry II was surprisingly off, and they cannot win without him.
1. #10 Oregon falls to Colorado
My preseason national champions (yes, I am sticking with that), had been playing their best basketball winning 17 in a row, including a win over UCLA and a rout of then number 22 USC. But then a loss to a mediocre Colorado team, out of the blue, doesn’t make much sense. Although the Ducks were only number 10, they were definitely playing some of the best basketball in the country. I’m curious to see how the Ducks react, they haven’t lost since November when they played Georgetown in Maui, that’s a long time.
As they said on ESPN, this January Madness means March is going to be insane. It’s impossible to even think about brackets. A possible reason for this inconsistency is that the freshmen are carrying college basketball (for the most part). With this talented freshmen class comes greatness and moments of inexperience and immature play. The winner in March will be the team who settles in, learns from the losses and leverages the talent as a cohesive unit.