February Madness?

Forget about March, so far in February there has been a huge shake up in the top teams of college basketball. The only place that hasn't seen a change is the top 2 teams, being UConn and Oklahoma. Other then that though, the rest of the rankings have been a crapshoot. February started with (at the time) #9 Michigan St. being upset at home by Penn St. (a team URI beat at Penn St. this year). The next day another top 25 team would be upset when #11 Butler lost at Green Bay by 9. The big game that day though was UConn rolling through Louisville at Louisville. This was all followed by #13 Purdue losing to unranked Ohio St. by 8 in overtime. And we can't forget February 4th which really shook up the rankings when # 3 Duke traveled to Clemson and # 6 Wake Forest went to Miami, and both were upset by 27 points. On the same night unranked (now ranked) Missouri went to #17 Texas and upset them. The next night, 2 more upsets when Wisconson knocked off #21 Illinois and Cal beat # 25 Washington. Possibly one of the bigger upsets happened on the 6th when #8 Marquette went to South Florida and lost by 1. 7 days into the month you think we could go upset free, then Nebraska hands #17 Texas their 3rd straight loss, #9 Xavier losses to Duquesne, (now ranked) Florida St. goes to # 10 Clemson and beats them, and Ohio St. upsets another Top 25 team when it beats #19 Minnesota.

So here were are a full week into February and there have already 13 upsets in the Top 25. Of course it wouldn't stop there though as in the next few nights #21 Illinois would beat #13 Purdue, #19 Missouri beat #16 Kansas, #13 Villanova beat #12 Marquette, unranked Dayton knocked off #14 Xavier, and unranked N.C. State beat #8 Wake Forest. So forget about March Madness, February has been crazy already and it's only going to get better as teams start to step their game up in search for an NCAA tournament bid. As for tonights Top 25 games, look for freshly ranked Arizona St. to upset #6 UCLA (who has been flying under the radar) at home to keep the February trend going.