College basketball once again lacks any dominant teams

Four teams ranked in the top ten lost over the weekend as parity continues to be a huge part of the modern college basketball game.

The first weekend in December was dominated by college football, with Georgia‘s loss to Alabama and Washington’s win over Oregon helping to create a chaotic CFP selection show on Sunday – which resulted in an undefeated Florida State getting left out of the playoffs.

However, it was a similarly chaotic weekend in college hoops. Over a matter of hours on Friday we saw No. 4 UConn fall on the road to No. 5 Kansas, followed by No. 1 Purdue falling in overtime to Northwestern, 92-88.

Then on Saturday, we were treated to No. 3 Marquette losing on the road to Wisconsin, No. 7 Duke falling at home to Georgia Tech, No. 12 Kentucky dropping a home game to UNC-Wilmington, who had never won a road game over a ranked opponent, and then No. 18 Villanova losing to Drexel – a pair of results CBB insider Jon Rothstein would describe as ‘the epitome of brutality’.

This is far from an anomaly in college basketball, with the transfer portal and difficulty evaluating recent high school classes due to COVID combining to create a more balanced, less top-heavy college basketball across the 362 Division 1 programs.

While some folks may clamor that the lack of dominant teams is hurting the sport, the less predictable nature of each and every game makes for a lot of close contests and exciting, buzzer-beating finishes – like the one we saw between TCU and Georgetown on Saturday, or even the one between La Salle and Penn.

Hard to say college basketball gets much better than that – even if it means brackets will be even more busted than usual when March rolls around.