I’m leaving Auburn No. 1 in Sunday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings despite Saturday’s loss to Tennessee simply because I still believe the Tigers have had the best season to date, even with their recent struggles, which is why I also believe Adam Zucker will announce Auburn as the No. 1 overall seed in the 2025 NCAA Tournament shortly after the Selection Show begins Sunday at 6 pm ET on CBS.
Do I love it? No, I don’t love it.
But if you follow these rankings regularly, you might know that I try to mostly stay focused on résumés — without getting too caught up in the day-to-day — in hopes of providing what amounts to a daily snapshot of how the selection committee is likely viewing the sport. It’s usually smooth sailing because teams rarely separate from the pack the way Auburn clearly did before dropping three of four games just before Selection Sunday.
But that’s exactly what’s happened!
Auburn is still 16-5 in Quadrant 1 — which gives the Tigers two more Q1 victories than anybody else while also making them the sport’s only team with zero losses to schools ranked outside of the top 20 of the NET. Undeniably, that’s college basketball’s best résumé. And given that the selection committee is instructed to view games played in November no differently than games played in March, and vice versa, the prevailing thought is that they’ll respect Auburn’s entire body of work and allow it to outweigh the 1-3 record in its previous four games.
And that’s all I’m doing here.
If you understand, great. If not, you should definitely tweet me about it. (Haha.) Either way, it’ll be interesting to see how the public reacts once the bracket is set — because a team has never won the NCAA Tournament immediately after losing three of four games, but the No. 1 overall seed in this NCAA Tournament should be a team that’s lost three of its past four games and thus will be required to make history if it’s going to cut nets on the first Monday in April.
Top 25 And 1 rankings
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