SantaFeToday.com Santa Fe’s Hometown News
By Arnie Leshin
It was perhaps a three-day run of men’s college basketball never before heard of, days of stunning defeats, some ranked teams versus ranked team, some just pure upsets.
Down they went, from No. 1 Purdue, to No. 4 Arizona, to No. 5 Texas, to No. 6 Tennessee, and it’s the double-digit teams of No. 10 Marquette, No. 11 Iowa State, No. 12 Kansas State, No. 13 Xavier, No. 15 Saint Mary’s, No. 17 TCU, No. 21 UConn, No. 22 North Carolina State, and last but certainly not least No. 24 Rutgers.
With this tumbling that left only 11 teams emerging victorious, Purdue was dumped from the top spot after several close games, and to the top of the heap came surprising Alabama, which was No. 3 and got past unranked upset-minded Auburn, 77-69, Saturday.
It’s the first time in 20 years that the Crimson Tide had risen to the top in men’s basketball. Houston remained in second place after rolling over Tulsa, 80-42, also on Saturday. The Boilermakers fell to No. 3, UCLA became No. 4, and Kansas No. 5.
The Player of the Week was Liam Robbins of Vanderbilt, which edged Tennessee, 66-65, prior to the Volunteers then losing to by a point, this one to Missouri, 86-85. And Bama had the Freshmen of the Week, Brandon Miller.
Purdue (27-3) had another tight one and this was a 65-58 setback at unranked Northwestern. Arizona lost at unranked Stanford, 88-79, Texas at least fell to No. 8 ranked Kansas, 89-80, and that’s how it went, four of the top six were dumped.
Then there was Marquette (20-6) getting rolled over by No. 21 UConn, 87-72, Iowa State (16-8) having a double dip, losing to unranked West Virginia, 76-71, and unranked Oklahoma State, 64-56.
Kansas State (20-5) took a 71-63 setback at Texas Tech, Xavier (19-6) lost a close one, 69-67, against Buffalo, Saint Mary’s (22-5) went two overtimes at unranked Loyola Marymount, and lost 78-74, TCU (17-8) also fell twice to a pair of ranked teams, first to No. 12 Kansas State, 74-66, and then to No. 14 Baylor, 72-68.
And for Providence (18-7), it went down against unranked St. John’s, 73-68, it was a close 56-53 defeat for UConn (19-7) versus No. 23 Crieghton, North Carolina State (20-6) went down, 63-50, at No. 8 Virginia, and at the bottom was Rutgers (16-9) taking a 66-60 loss against No. 18 Indiana, and then dropped one to unranked Illinois, 69-60.
Whew, must be parody like never seen before. Kind of like Paul Bunyon chopping down trees back in the day, and this certainly was not a day for the majority of top 25 teams. With the new Monday polls, there could be some of these losers falling off the charts.
And Alabama (22-3), known more as the football school, had a tough go at a packed house at arch-rival Auburn before prevailing. It was a back-and-forth clash of lead changes and ties.
Arizona’s loss to the Cardinal put it at 22-3, Texas’ defeat to Kansas put its record at 20-5, Tennessee’s pair of downfalls dropped it to 19-6, and No. 2 Houston improved to 22-2.
To be fair, some of these setbacks came against other ranked teams, but it was also a ball for underdogs.
