Duke has overtaken Auburn as the new No. 1 in the latest college basketball power rankings. The Blue Devils, who have won a nation-leading 12 consecutive games, have a net rating of 36.71 en route to a 16-2 start — the best in KenPom.com’s database since 2014-15 Kentucky — and are the only team in the sport with both a top-five offense and defensive unit in adjusted efficiency ratings.
Don’t hear what I’m not saying: Auburn is a great college basketball team. It is 17-1 overall (5-0 SEC) and cruising at a high level even without star Johni Broome, once considered the favorite to win National Player of the Year.
But Duke, which beat Auburn by six on Dec. 4, is itself its own force worthy of recognition. The latest 12-game winning streak gets it to No. 1 for the first time this season at a time when it will likely be favored in each of its remaining regular-season games.
There’s much to unpack in the latest power rankings, so let’s dive in with the guidelines as we always do and make clear how we operate in this space. I promise to abide by these as closely as I can throughout the season.
Power Rankings definition: Ranking teams with an emphasis on recent performance based on their level of competition. These are heavily unscientific in nature and can be distilled down to a “vibes” ranking — with things like margin of victory, injuries, performance vs. top competition, momentum and other sometimes subjective factors weighing into the equation. The power rankings can be thought of in a weekly setting as a reaction — or sometimes even an overreaction — to the small sample of the week that was.
Let’s get to it.
College Basketball Power Rankings
