As we head into the sixth week of the regular season, we are once again blessed with some great games on the horizon even though most of them will happen at the end of the week. Last week, we saw several upsets including Illinois beating FAU, Grand Canyon beating SDSU, Saint Mary’s beating Colorado State, Utah beating BYU, Washington beating Gonzaga, Colorado beating Miami, and Memphis beating Texas A&M. Now, those teams will be back in the mix fighting for better rankings. Here are the top four games happening this week.
Texas A&M at No. 3 Houston
Henry Coleman III and Wade Taylor IV had brought Texas A&M to a place of being ranked No. 12 in the nation before losing to ranked Florida Atlantic and unranked Virginia in almost back-to-back games. After dropping to No. 21 they then lost to Memphis dropping out of the rankings. However, that does not diminish how electric those two and this team can be. They will be going up against one of the best defensive teams in the nation coached by Kelvin Sampson. However, Houston is one of the few top-10 teams to not have played a ranked opponent yet with Xavier being the team’s biggest win so this will be a huge test game for the No. 3 team.
No. 9 North Carolina vs. No. 14 Kentucky
North Carolina bounced up into the top 10 after knocking off former No. 20 Arkansas and No. 10 Tennessee in back-to-back games. However, after a short break with Florida State in between, they took on No. 5 UConn in New York and lost 87-76 while allowing UConn to shoot 52% from the floor. Kentucky took a significant drop in the rankings after beginning December with an unranked loss to UNC Wilmington. Although it wasn’t far seeing as it has just beaten former No. 8 Miami before that. However, UK now had two losses on its resume. The matchup between RJ Davis and Antonio Reeves will be an exciting one.
No. 5 UConn vs No. 10 Gonzaga
College basketball fans should be encouraged that this matchup is not the best of the week. It is not often that we have four single-digit teams competing against each other in the same week. UConn came off back-to-back games against top 10 opponents losing to Kansas and beating North Carolina. Now, they will go back against a former top-10 opponent in Gonzaga. The loss to Kansas was the team’s only loss this year before losing to unranked Washington last week. Mark Few and Gonzaga have played their hardest schedule in years as well already having taken on Purdue and USC two current/former top-25 teams.
No. 1 Arizona vs. No. 3 Purdue
This college basketball season has given us nothing short of a dynamic matchup between top teams with Marquette, Kansas, Purdue, Arizona, and UConn all having played each other in some form. Now, we get a matchup between the current No. 1 team in the nation and the former No. 1 team. Arizona is undefeated this year and has demolished top-25 teams beating Duke by five, Michigan State by six, and Wisconsin by 25. This will arguably be their biggest test of the season. Purdue is not shy of tests and has already played Gonzaga, Tennessee, Marquette, and Alabama who were all ranked inside the top 25 at some point in the season with three of the four being top-10 teams.
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