College basketball rankings: UConn drops in Top 25 And 1 after Xavier hands Huskies their first loss of season

The last day of 2022 delivered two incredible and dramatic college football playoff games. Congratulations to Georgia and TCU. Their victories over Ohio State and Michigan, respectively, dominated the sports conversation, and deservedly so.

But it was also a great day for college basketball.

From late morning until New Year’s Eve, there was one fun game after another – among them Xavier’s 83-73 win over UConn that knocked Dan Hurley’s Huskies off the roster undefeated and in the CBS Sports Daily Top 25 and 1 updated Sunday morning. college basketball rankings, where Purdue remains No. 1 for the 22nd straight day.

UConn is now No. 3 — just behind No. 2 Houston and just ahead of No. 4 Arizona and No. 5 Kansas. In my opinion, these four schools, at this point, could reasonably be placed in any order. But I believe these are the four schools that should follow Purdue in Monday’s Associated Press Top 25 poll update, and I suspect they will.

Honestly, I had a hard time deciding what to do with #26.

There are plenty of sensible options, including Kansas State, Auburn, West Virginia, Marquette, Florida Atlantic, and Iowa State. But I chose to give that spot to Jamie Dixon’s TCU Horned Frogs, who are 12-1 and on a 10-game winning streak after Saturday’s 67-61 victory over Texas Tech. Yeah, I know, TCU has a horrible loss on its resume — specifically a 64-63 loss to Northwestern State that qualifies as a Quadrant 4 loss. Yuck. But the circumstances surrounding that loss should matter, and the circumstances are that TCU played that game without leading scorer Mike Miles Jr. and third-leading scorer Damian Baugh. In other words, the Horned Frogs were missing two big chunks in this contest. If they had them, or even just one of them, it’s safe to assume that TCU would still be undefeated like Purdue and New Mexico.

Ranking Top 25 and 1

FR: TCU | OUT: West Virginia