Men’s college basketball rankings: Purdue stays on top, while TCU makes big move

With so many ranked teams losing the last two weeks, it was a good time to pull back and look at entire resumes.

I started by listing every team’s record against the Top 25 teams at KenPom. Losses matter, but who have you beat? That’s why Purdue remains No. 1. despite losing at Nebraska this past week. The Boilermakers still have by far the nation’s best resume, going 5-0 in those Top 25 games with three wins against the top 10. While Kansas doesn’t fare great in the computer models, it has a 5-1 record against the Top 25 and almost everyone has a bad loss by this point. (The Jayhawks’ loss at UCF goes in that category.) And while Arizona has been boom or bust lately and dropped its latest at Washington State, it’s still 5-2 against The Top 25. Connecticut, which could end up No. 1 in the AP poll on Monday because it’s the highest-ranked team that didn’t lose this week, has only one win against the Top 25. The Huskies (15-2) don’t have any bad losses, but it’s hard to justify ranking them over a Purdue team with the same record.

Your weekly friendly reminder: The setup of this season’s Top 25 is that I’ll give nuggets on an unspecified number of teams each week. So if a team appears in the table but not the text below, that’s why.

Purdue

Most opponents this season have played Purdue’s Braden Smith/Zach Edey ball screens in drop coverage for fear of Edey rolls, and Smith has been punishing that coverage with his pull-up game. Nebraska had success hedging and getting the ball out of Smith’s hands:

Nebraska was willing to give up some 3s — Purdue made 11 — but it wanted someone other than Smith taking the shots. You have to contain Edey, but the key to beating Purdue might be slowing Smith. Smith had 10 points on 3-of-8 shooting against the Huskers, and in the loss to Northwestern, he had 12 points on 5-of-12 shooting and a season-high six turnovers.

Penn State tried a similar ball-screen plan on Saturday, either hedging or switching whenever Smith got one. Purdue ended up shooting 3-of-8 when Smith gave it up, drew two fouls and had one turnover. Smith scored only six points, but he had a season-high 11 assists.

Painter will make his adjustments and find ways to make the reads easy for Smith. This play below was a smart one to confuse the tags. Painter used a lot of staggered ball screens like this one against Penn State, sometimes the first screener ghosting and sometimes both screeners setting the screen. On this one, Smith attacks an empty side, and while the help-side defenders are trying to figure out who has the tag and who is responsible for the three players on the perimeter, Camden Heide loses his defender by switching sides of the floor:

Penn State got killed in transition and Edey post-ups in a 95-78 Purdue win, but the Nittany Lions fared decently enough against ball screens that the Nebraska coverage could become the new norm.

UConn

Donovan…