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A fun, busy and eventful Saturday of college basketball concluded after midnight on the East Coast with a showdown between two programs possessing legitimate Final Four aspirations.
Final score: Arizona 75, Tennessee 70.
The five-point victory represented Arizona’s fourth Quadrant-1 win of the season and improved second-year coach Tommy Lloyd’s record to an incredible 41-5 since replacing Sean Miller, who was fired following the 2020-21 season. The Wildcats got 19 points and nine rebounds from Azuolas Tubelis, and 18 points and eight rebounds from Oumar Ballo, to improve to 10-1 on the season, 6-0 at home.
“Oumar and Zu, I mean, we’ve got to get that out of them every night, no matter how they guard us,” Lloyd said after the win. “They’re a force in there. You just don’t see that type of one-two punch in there. Those two are dominant guys, and you’re probably going to go back and wish we would have gotten them the ball a little bit more.”
With the win, Arizona is up to No. 4 in Sunday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings; Tennessee remains No. 13. And Purdue is still No. 1 after improving to 11-0 with a 69-61 win over Davidson in which national player of the year candidate Zach Edey finished with 29 points and 16 rebounds.
One note: I made the unusual move of removing a team from the Top 25 And 1 after a 50-point win. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever done this before.
Let me explain.
I’ve had Texas Tech ranked for a while based on the idea that when I added the Red Raiders they had 1) good computer numbers, and 2) nothing but losses to teams ranked ahead of them. Neither of those things remain true. One of Texas Tech’s two losses is to a Creighton team that’s now lost six straight games. That’s obviously not good. Beyond that, the Red Raiders are down to 66th in the NET, 48th in Sagarin, 37th at BartTorvik.com and 36th at KenPom.com. Literally no reputable computer still has the Red Raiders in the top 30. They’re 0-2 in the first two quadrants with zero wins over schools ranked in the top 150 of the NET.
Simply put, it’s pretty inarguable that Texas Tech shouldn’t be ranked right now, so the Red Raiders have been removed from the Top 25 And 1. They’ve been replaced by a North Carolina team that spent Saturday beating the Ohio State team that owns a win over Texas Tech. UNC is now 4-4 in the first two quadrants with zero losses to sub-45 KenPom teams