There’s excitement all over the college hoops landscape this week, not just the Volunteer State I call home, about the no-bullshit Game of the Year this weekend, #1 Memphis hosting #2 Tennessee.  How did Calipari luck out and get it at the 18,000 seat FedEx Forum and not the Vols 24,000 seat mausoleum in Knoxville?  That happenstance might play as big a role as anything in Saturday night’s game, with the city of Memphis out in full force with full throats in support of the Tigers. 

Predictions won’t mean much of anything once that whistle blows and the cauldron begins to stir, but what the hell, I live here so I may as well throw in my two cents.  I’ve been in the Forum, and it was loud with 10,000 in attendance for a Grizzlies-Sonics game on a cold night in January.  The emotion and the moment will carry the Tigers Saturday night, though it will be tight throughout.  And fast, I’m thinking, back and forth, with Memphis’ defense being just that much better than UT’s.

#1 Memphis 87, #2 Tennessee 85

For those of you paying attention, this means you should immediately throw fifty down on UT.

Now, with that out of the way, onto the full rankings:

1) Memphis – Calipari and Pearl could not have planned this any better.  I mean literally, it is not possible for the two of them to have re-instated the rivalry at any better time than right now.  The UAB game almost ruined everything, but the Tigers are a little too mentally tough to have allowed that to happen (though not so tough to not fight with fans afterward).  Oh, these teams are also 1-2 in the RPI.  Seriously!

2) Tennessee – The highest Tennessee has ever been ranked in its history, #2 in both polls, has serendipitously happened the same week they play arguably the biggest regular season game in the program’s history.  No one in the Volunteer State has talked about anything else this week.  Tickets are going for as much as $10,000 on StubHub.  There is one statistic, however, that proves exactly the kind of uncharted territory the Vols are in right now: this is the first time in eighteen years that the men’s program has been ranked higher than the women’s.  You better be watching Saturday night in primetime.

3) Kansas – The only two teams Kansas has lost to so far this year are other teams that appear on this list, both on the road.  So that’s two top-twenty five road losses and a string of rampant beat downs on everybody else.  The crowd was a little too fired up for them to win in Austin.  Same goes for the K-State loss in Manhattan.  No one else has really been close, and Darrell Arthur, if there’s any justice, is the Big 12 player of the year.
4) North Carolina – The Tar Heels spun out a little in the two games following the Duke loss, one an overtime W over Clemson and the other a one-point victory at Virginia.  They need Ty Lawson back by the Duke rematch or they have almost no chance.  They could also use Deon Thompson for more than the nine minutes he played in their last game, along with Thomas, Green, and Ginyard to get over their various ailments.  In short, this team is a little banged-up right now.

5) Duke – Finally.  Thank you, Wake Forest.  Smack a little sense back into the Dukies, bring them down a notch.  I would not, however, want to be any of Duke’s next five opponents before the Carolina rematch: none of them are very good, and all of them are going to think very bad things about themselves after the torrential beatings Coach K unleashes in the run-up to UNC in Durham March 8. 

6) Texas – So once again we are trying to figure out exactly how good Texas is.  The three-point win over Kansas is not swaying my opinion as much as the twenty-seven point ass-whipping of Texas A&M.  They also bested Baylor, a team badly needing a win over a quality opponent, on the road, revealing a mean streak that is crucial to tournament success.  Twenty bucks they lose by fifty to Kansas State, just to keep us on our toes.

7) UCLA – Losing by ten to Washington doesn’t sound so terrible, until you realize that UW is third-to-last in the Pac-10, they roughed up UCLA to the point of actually drawing blood, and the loss came sandwiched between defining UCLA victories over Wazzou and Southern Cal.  What’s more, the win was Washington’s only one in a six-game swoon that effectively eliminated them from contention.  So what, exactly, happened in Seattle last week?

8) Stanford – Stanford is hanging tough as well as anybody can in the Pac-10, and their win over Arizona Saturday in Tempe helped them keep pace with UCLA.  But these past two games they have blown leads of eight to the Wildcats before recovering to win (by one, on what may have been a goaltend) and fifteen against Arizona State two days prior in what ended up being an overtime loss.  This is an inauspicious start to their stretch run.

9) Georgetown – Been a rough couple weeks for Georgetown, what with getting pasted by Louisville before robbing Villanova and then getting popped by Syracuse.  All this Roy Hibbert as Big East player of the year talk needs to stop now: he’s efficient, sure, but he’s 7’2”.  What’s more, he plays almost totally joyless basketball, and his teammates respond in kind.  That is not a Player of the Year candidate.

10) UConn – Hassem Thabeet is a beast and UConn is a rocket ship.  This is the only way to describe what’s going on in Storrs right now.  It has been exactly a month since they last lost, and their ascent has been at once epic and by the seat of their pants.  There are only so many ways a team can win, and UConn has exhausted most by now.  So much for rebuilding.

11) Indiana – Indiana knew exactly what they were getting with Kelvin Sampson and they went ahead with it anyway.  The high-and-mighty stance their president took last week in launching the investigation that will eventually lead to Sampson’s dismissal was absurdist comedy at its best.  Except he was serious, and the Hoosiers now have their second embarrassing coaching scandal of the new millennium.  Well done, sirs.

12) Purdue – It’s their defense.  The one thing they do better than anyone else in the Big Ten and the one reason they hadn’t lost a game in over a month until going to Bloomington is their defense, combined with a patient offense catered to finding the best look on each possession.  This sounds so easy and makes them seem like an above-average high school team, but even at this level that stuff can turn your team from an afterthought into a conference leader.

13) Xavier – They’ve been tested recently and have yet to be broken.  They head into the University of Dayton arena this coming Saturday, and that may be the next and probably last time they will lose a regular season game.  Maybe.  Or their defense will answer the call, Drew Lavender will lead the team with a steady hand, and X will once again do what it has done all but once this conference season: win.

14) Wisconsin – So long as they don’t play Purdue, the Badgers cannot be stopped!  The two-point W over Indiana was huge, as they have now swept the presumptive conference favorite.  With all the focus on Butch and Hughes everyone is forgetting about third-option Marcus Landry, currently averaging eleven and five.  All good teams have such a guy filling up the stat sheet and holding it all together.

15) Butler – This Butler team has “15 over 2” upset written all over it.  Come on, a top ten team from the Horizon League?  I’m not expecting them to lose for the rest of the year, conference tourney included.  Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2008 Gonzaga Bulldogs!  Both schools have the same mascot and similarly crappy conferences that won’t test their mettle before tournament time, thus opening the door for a too-lofty seed and a crushing upset loss.

16) Washington State – The Oregon swing popped up at exactly the right time for Wazzou.  Blasting Southern Cal also helped them regain some mojo.  The Cougars still have to play Stanford and Arizona, both of whom beat them in the midst of their last swoon, and they will need some of that toughness and defense we were all talking about this season’s first couple months in both contests.

17) Notre Dame – Tough loss to UConn, almost shocked on the road by Rutgers.  Who are these Fighting Irish?  What are we dealing with here?  Can’t fault them for the UConn showing, and they did win in Jersey.  But they need convincing performances against reeling Pittsburgh and schizophrenic Syracuse to validate the last few weeks’ worth of buzz.

18) Marquette – A pair of nice wins were the appropriate response to that wrenching Notre Dame loss, particularly the thrashing of Pittsburgh.  My boys need to get some convincing road wins heading into March to boost the confidence.  Starting Wednesday night, they have chances against St. John’s, Villanova, and Syracuse.  These aren’t quite must-wins, more like they-better-wins, for the team’s collective confidence playing in foreign territory more than anything else.

19) Kansas State – Did you see Beasley’s stat line against Missouri last weekend?  40 and 17?!?!  And what’s more, no one was particularly surprised by the outburst, as it was his twenty-first double-double of the season.  A talent like that can do a lot in March, and therefore Kansas State is to be feared.  By everybody.

20) Louisville - Six in a row and a two-point loss to UConn away from nine in a row is stellar.  Louisville is all the sudden healthy, motivated, and on the warpath.  I am not as quick to forgive their early season woes as the national pollsters, only because it hurt so much.  They, however, are a freight train right now, one hell-bent on validating that preseason buzz.

Those on the comeback trail and those that desperately need to find it:

Vanderbilt – The ship, it appears, has been righted with five wins in a row, including demon-exorcising ones over Florida and Kentucky.  It’s still hard to believe this resurrected squad is all that far removed from that of the tailspin three weeks ago.  That February 26 home game against UT will show how far they’ve truly come.

Michigan State – The Spartans have lost three of four, including two in a row to the best their league has to offer.  No one knows what happened to Drew Neitzel, but he is killing these guys right now.  They got EMBARRASSED by Indiana.

Drake – Two losses in three games!  Wait…so maybe these guys really aren’t very good?  Here’s how this will play out: if they win their conference tourney, they will be a three-seed.  If they lose in the conference tourney, they will be a five-seed, maybe a six.  In each scenario they will lose in the first round to a lower-seed from a big conference.  Write it down.

Texas A&M – Blown out by Texas and losers of two straight, this team may have cycled back to the place they were at to start the new year, i.e. bingeing on losses and apparently directionless.  Their schedule on out doesn’t look too rough, aside from the Baylor/Kansas capstone.  They need to win out until those last two games, however.

Enjoy the game Saturday night, and until next time, may you always make it rain.