On the same day Auburn’s Johni Broome suffered an ankle injury at South Carolina that sidelined him for two weeks, Duke’s Cooper Flagg scored a career-high 42 points in a victory at Notre Dame.
That’s when the Player of the Year race flipped.
With Broome on the mend and Flagg on the rise, a decent percentage of us who cover the sport started publicly suggesting that the Wooden Award, and every other National Player of the Year Award, was Flagg’s to lose. In fairness, they probably are; there’s data to support the claim.
But if you thought the Player of the Year race was over, think again. In just his second game back from that ankle injury, Broome delivered a monster performance of 26 points, 16 rebounds and three blocks in Wednesday’s 87-74 win at LSU that tightened what’s starting to feel like a two-man race between the two best players on the two best teams.
“That’s a Quad 1 win,” said Auburn coach Bruce Pearl. “That’s a great win for our ball club.”
This season has been filled with great wins for Pearl’s ball club, evidence being that Auburn (19-1 overall) is 12-1 in Quadrant 1 games. It’s a body of work so good that the Tigers are No. 1 in Thursday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings for the 23rd consecutive day — and I’ll even take it a step further. It’s a body of work so good, and so superior to anybody else’s body of work, that AP voters should keep Auburn No. 1 on Monday even if the Tigers lose Saturday at Ole Miss.
I know I will.
Obviously, ranking basketball teams is a subjective process and different people do it different ways. Whatever. This deep into any season, the body of work should be the biggest factor. Auburn’s body of work will still be far superior to anybody else’s on Monday regardless of what happens between now and then. That’s a fact.
Best to think of Auburn as a golfer with a four-shot lead on the field. The Tigers could bogey the next hole, so to speak, watch everybody else par or even birdie, and they’d still be in the lead. From my perspective, that’s Auburn right now as it sits at No. 1 in the Top 25 And 1. The NCAA committee takes a similar approach when selecting and seeding for the tournament.
No. 2 Duke is just 5-2 in Quad 1. Yes, it owns a victory (at home) over Auburn, and that’s an important data point. But that one data point isn’t enough to offset the dramatic advantage Auburn holds when it comes to evaluating both teams’ entire bodies of work, and it still won’t be on Monday regardless of what happens over the next four days.
Top 25 And 1 rankings
2
Maryland
7
Wisconsin
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