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College basketball rankings: Gonzaga faces UConn in a battle of heavyweights before loaded Saturday – CBS Sports
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It’s been a slow week as it pertains to interesting college basketball games — evidence being that a ranked team hasn’t played another ranked team since last Saturday. Boring. But our lull in the schedule will end late Friday when UConn and Gonzaga meet in Seattle.
Tip is scheduled for 10 p.m ET and will be shown on ESPN2.
The Huskies are No. 5 in Friday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings. The Zags are No. 12. So this is a top-15 showdown between two of the best brands in the sport.
It’s not often that Gonzaga finds itself as an underdog in its home state, but that is indeed the case in this one, which speaks to the strength of Dan Hurley’s UConn program that enters as a 4.5-point favorite. The Huskies lost three of their top six scorers from last season’s team that won the national championship, including NBA Draft lottery pick Jordan Hawkins and Adama Sanogo, the Most Outstanding Player of the 2023 Final Four. Regardless, they still look like legitimate contenders to repeat as national champions —thanks in part to the emergence of Tristen Newton, who should now be considered the leader to win Big East Player of the Year honors. The 6-foot-5 point guard is averaging a team-high 17.0 points, 7.2 rebounds, 6.1 assists and 1.5 steals in 31.5 minutes per game. He’s the main reason UConn is 9-1 on the season with the lone loss coming by only four points at Kansas.
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