Sports
College basketball rankings: Alabama jumps to No. 1 in Top 25 And 1 after Purdue's loss to Northwestern – CBS Sports
Play Now
Football Pick’em
Play Now
College Pick’em
Get Ready for the NFL Season
A Daily SportsLine Betting Podcast
Road games in hostile environments against projected NCAA Tournament teams can prove challenging even for the best of the best. Purdue was reminded of this reality for the second straight weekend on Sunday, falling 64-58 at Northwestern eight days after losing 79-74 at Indiana.
“Just got to show more poise and toughness,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said following the game at Northwestern, where the Boilermakers lost despite once leading the game by double-digits.
More shooting would’ve also helped.
The Boilermakers took 22 3-pointers at Northwestern and missed 17 of them. That translates to 22.7%. That’s not good enough.
Does Purdue still have the nation’s best body of work?
Arguably, yes.
The Boilermakers are still 23-3 overall, 12-3 in the Big 12 and 9-3 in Quadrant 1 with zero additional losses. That’s still super-strong. But Purdue is also just 1-2 in its past three games, and only 10-3 in its past 13, which is among the reasons I’m compelled to move Alabama to No. 1 in Monday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings.
As I detailed Saturday, Alabama is 22-3 overall, 12-0 in the SEC and winning its league games by an average of 21.1 points. That’s nearly four points better than the margin of victory the Kentucky team with future NBA All-Stars Devin Booker and Karl-Anthony Towns recorded when the Wildcats went 18-0 in the SEC before losing to Wisconsin in the 2015 Final Four. In other words, Alabama is in the midst of a historically great run through its conference. Since losing to Gonzaga in December, the Crimson Tide are 13-1 and performing like the best team in the country, according to data available at BartTorvik.com.
© 2004-2023 CBS Interactive. All Rights Reserved.
CBS Sports is a registered trademark of CBS Broadcasting Inc. Commissioner.com is a registered trademark of CBS Interactive Inc.
Images by Getty Images and US Presswire
