Conference ball is underway, and the games are coming fast and furious.  Since I started the article that follows, Michigan State barely survived against Ohio State.  Two other teams mentioned are playing as I write this sentence.  This coming Thursday features a slew of big match-ups, the most important (of course) involving everyone’s beloved Marquette Golden Eagles.  If you hope to have any idea what these teams are made of come March, now is the time to start paying attention.

And so, onto the rankings:

1)  Memphis – Unless the next team on this list really kicks it into gear against substantially tougher competition, I can’t see anyone making a better statement of belonging at the top of college ball than Memphis did over the first two months of this season.  The coming game against Tennessee stands as the next Biggest Game of the Season, but a meager C-USA isn’t scaring anybody down in Graceland.  By this point, why would it?

2)  North Carolina – Time to give credit where it’s due: the Tar Heels, officially, are awesome.  Hansbrough commands the paint like few others in the game (you see him dunk on the 7’7” dude last week?  YouTube it if not), and Ellington is a perfect perimeter compliment.  If/when Ty Lawson becomes the consistent, steadying floor general the Tar Heels need, they will be nigh unstoppable.  The unforgiving ACC will be their litmus test.

3)  Kansas – The thirty point beat down of Oklahoma, on top of the twenty-one point destruction of Nebraska, put everyone on notice that we can’t forget about the Jayhawks.  They, too, are undefeated.  They, too, played a decent nonconference schedule.  And they, too, are a team chockfull of badass mothers ready and willing to dominate inferior competition, i.e. everyone that follows on this list.

4)  UCLA – Big win over Washington State last weekend to get the season back on track.  Twenty-seven points and fourteen rebounds by Kevin Love proved once and for all he is the freshman of note in the conference this year.  More proof of his dominance: against one of the best defensive teams in the nation, he shot seventy-five percent from the field, seventy from the foul line, and even tied for the team lead in assists.  Off to a 4-0 start in the nation’s most competitive conference.

5)  Tennessee – The win over Ole Miss showed these Vols do indeed have backbone.  But no one down South is quite sure what’s wrong with Chris Lofton: he has an awfully pedestrian stat line following his heroic end to last year and all the preseason accolades.  Ramar and JaJuan Smith are this team’s sparkplugs so far, and Lofton’s only shooting thirty-four percent from the field, thirty-three from downtown.  As of this moment, his regression hasn’t hurt the Vols too much.  Huge game Thursday vs. Vandy.

6)  Duke – Nothing like the Cornell/Temple/Virginia trifecta to get the season back on track after the Pittsburgh loss.  Now get ready, America: the Blue Devils NEXT TEN GAMES will be broadcast nationally, so I hope you’re intrigued by this team.  Over the course of those ten games, how many times do you think we’ll get to see Coach K’s AmEx commercial?  Ten thousand?  Twenty?

7)  Washington State – All it takes is a profile in Sports Illustrated to end a perfect season.  Well, that and man-child Kevin Love.  Don’t feel too bad for the Cougars, though, the loss came in Westwood.  The catch is the schedule gets only slightly easier from here.  They’ve held serve against everyone else, and they’ll keep winning ugly with an eye out for February 7, when the Bruins head north.

8)  Texas A&M – As under the radar as a Top Ten team can possibly be, the Aggies currently ride an eight-game win streak into their next contest at Texas Tech.  They follow that up in Manhattan, KS, against the Gus Macker All…er, Kansas State.  Both games are nationally televised, so we should know a bit more about these guys in due course.  The closest anyone has come to beating them during this current winning streak, by the way, has been two seventeen point A&M Ws. 

9)  Indiana – The Hoosiers survived a scare against Illinois last weekend to maintain their solid season.  They are off to an undefeated start in the Big Ten, and still have two weeks before throwing down with Wisconsin.  Eric Gordon’s torrid pace has cooled (he’s now averaging only twenty-three a game), and the unsung hero in Bloomington right now is junior swingman JaMarcus Ellis, who leads the team in assists and steals and is second to D.J. White in rebounding.

10)  Marquette – No one has separated themselves other than the nine previously mentioned, so, by golly, how about those Golden Eagles at number ten!  The West Virginia loss hurt, but it appears Bob Huggins is cooking up something good down there in Morgantown.  MU responded with a twenty-six point shellacking of Notre Dame and is staring down a real test Thursday night at Louisville.  A statement will be made, one way or the other, for how much faith can truly be invested in these feisty, diminutive gunners.  Let’s hope it’s a positive one.

11)  Michigan State – Failing to break forty points over the course of an entire game is reason enough for me to knock what had previously been one of the more consistent teams in the nation.  Seriously, only thirty-six points?!  Against Iowa!?!?!  I understand the way Tom Izzo does business, and I know Big Ten basketball is all about playing ugly, but that’s not just ugly.  That’s perverse.  Barely topping Ohio State doesn’t help their cause.  We need 600 CCs of scoring over here, stat!

12)  Pittsburgh – Two wins over Top Ten teams means more thus far than two road losses to Top Twenty teams.  Pittsburgh looks to be one of the toughest outs in the Big East this year, and they proved as much against Georgetown.  The Panther’s roller coaster season is back on the upswing, and they are looking at a favorable three-game stretch to gain momentum heading into the rematch with Villanova.

13)  Vanderbilt – Kentucky is really bad this year, we all know that.  Two things, though: first, no team has ever beaten the Wildcats three straight times at Rupp Arena, which Vandy stood to do with a win last Saturday.  Never ever.  Second, the Commodores could not have had a worse first half, Ogilvy and Foster front and center.  So I’m not holding the UK loss against them too much, considering it came in double OT to a fired-up Kentucky playing for whatever pride remains in Lexington.  More disconcerting is that Vandy leads the SEC in turnovers.  That has to change if they are going to do anything this year.

14)  Ole Miss – A two-point loss on the road to Tennessee is nothing to be ashamed of.  It stung, no doubt, but Ole Miss rebounded nicely against LSU.  This is an entertaining bunch, led by freshman Chris Warren’s sixteen points and five assists.  They let LSU back into the game late, and need to work on finishing opponents off, something they didn’t have much practice with in the early part of their schedule.  With so many historical powers down this year, some team had to rise to the top of the SEC.  It appears this year that team is Ole Miss.

15)  Georgetown – And here we have the Paper Tigers of the Year.  The Hoyas are living on their name and last year’s showing.  They haven’t beaten a single good team all season, had trouble putting away UConn prior to the Pitt loss, and can’t establish any rhythm on offense.  Roy Hibbert is too damn big to disappear as often as he does in tight games.  One would hope his buddy Jeff Green showed him a thing or two about asserting his will in crunch time, but apparently that conversation never happened.

16)  Dayton – The honeymoon continues, and the Flyers aren’t looking in the rearview.  They go to Xavier next week, and no matter how good either team is in a given season, those games are always intense.  With both teams in the thick of the national picture, the game should border on epic.  Brian Roberts appears to be claiming the spot vacated by Chris Lofton as “nation’s smallest, gutsiest scoring machine,” with 53 points in UD’s first two A-10 games and a twenty point average overall thus far.

17)  Wisconsin – The Badgers are on a seven-game win streak that includes a victory over Texas and an unbeaten start to the Big Ten season.  What’s more, they don’t play a good team again until January 31, when they get Indiana at home.  Trevon Hughes and Brian Butch combine for a formidable one-two, and Wisco is allowing an average of  only fifty-four points a game so far this season.

18)  Texas – To recap: since I placed Texas atop these rankings some weeks back after the big win against UCLA, they have lost three of five games and seemingly gone into a tailspin.  Yes, they had the nice win against a then-ranked St. Mary’s, but opening the conference with a blowout loss at Missouri doesn’t augur things being under control.  Rick Barnes wasn’t the greatest coach when he had the best player in the universe on his team, so something tells me the Longhorns’ rough patch isn’t over just yet.

19)  Villanova – I know, I know, they lost at Cincinnati.  But it appears most teams will lose in Cincinnati.  And they lost on a last-second three, which negates some of the loss’s impact.  That DePaul loss looks a lot worse, but they handled Pitt and at the very least are the best team in all of Philadelphia right now.  That doesn’t really count anymore, you say?  Well, then, you look at the rest of the teams mentioned and tell me who definitely deserves to be ranked in this spot more than the Wildcats.  I can’t find one.

20)  Butler – I’m not sure what the national press and coaches are smoking to think Butler deserves a top twelve ranking in both national polls.  They’ve only lost once, but the toughest team they’ve played is one of the following: Ohio State, Virginia Tech, Texas Tech, Michigan.  Butler didn’t follow Memphis’ lead and schedule tough opponents to compensate for a crappy conference.  What’s more, they lost to Wright State!  Come on, everybody, why don’t we just calm down a bit and see this team for what it really is, i.e. a very good mid-major who hasn’t beaten anybody.

Noses pressed against the glass:

Rhode Island – Had they beaten Dayton, different story.  As it stands, they are at least the second best team in the A-10, which counts as something of a compliment this year. 

Miami, FL – They lost to Winthrop, and haven’t really beaten anyone, but the Hurricanes represented big-time against Ga. Tech in their ACC opener.  We’ll know more about this team after they head down Tobacco Road for the state university doubleheader.

Clemson – They lost to the Tar Heels but played them as well as anybody could, then followed up the performance with a no-show against Charlotte at home.  Wait, haven’t we already seen this movie?  Don’t tell Ollie Purnell it’s happening again.

Arizona, Stanford, Oregon– I’m telling you, this year’s Pac-10 is absolutely out of control.  Any one of these three can win it all if something happens to UCLA or Washington State.  Arizona gets Bayless back soon, too.

Whoops, once again I’ve jumped the gun:

USC – The Trojans’ 0-3 start gives everyone the go-ahead to completely lose faith in the O.J. Mayo era.  Now, the losses came against one solid squad and two teams previously mentioned in these rankings, so they were not by any means unforgivable.  But sitting at 10-6 right now is not the way anyone involved imagined this scenario playing out through the first sixteen games, I promise.