Ballislife’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Power Rankings: January 13

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The latest edition of the AP Poll was released with few surprises on Monday, and while it certainly made sense, we have some different ideas here at Ballislife. As conference schedules across the country descend into a full swing, here are our NCAA men’s basketball power rankings this week.

After Michigan’s stumble against unranked Wisconsin on Saturday, there’s little argument to be had for any other team besides Tommy Lloyd’s Arizona Wildcats in the No. 1 spot. Arizona tops the AP Poll for the fifth consecutive week, earning an overwhelming 60 of 61 potential votes this week. The Wildcats have the nation’s best strength of record to this point according to ESPN’s SOR, with wins over ranked opponents including Florida, UCLA, UConn, Auburn and Alabama. Arizona is currently slotted No. 2 in both the KenPom and Torvik rankings and both statisticians currently have the Wildcats slated to finish regular-season play with a 28-3 record.

TJ Otzelberger’s Iowa State Cyclones aren’t a proven blue blood like Arizona, but they also certainly aren’t a surprising feel-good story like other unbeatens, Vanderbilt and Nebraska. The Cyclones are simply the most dominant team in the country to this point, winning 14 of their first 16 games by double digits (including a 24-point trouncing of then-No. 1-ranked Purdue).

Iowa State’s three-headed monster of Joshua Jefferson, Tamin Lipsey and Milan Momcilovic is the most potent trio in all of college hoops this season on both ends of the floor. The Cyclones rank in the top 15 in both KenPom and Torvik’s offensive efficiency ratings and in the top six in both of their defensive efficiency ratings, which puts them in the same class as Arizona and Michigan in that regard.

The first big surprise, and deviation from the AP Poll, comes in at the No. 3 spot with the still unbeatable Vanderbilt Commodores. Strength of record skeptics could have rightfully pinned their hot start on a relatively calm non-conference schedule, but last week’s 96-90 win over No. 13 Alabama that pushed them to 3-0 in SEC play proved that Mark Byington has a legitimate force on his hands in Nashville. The unbeaten Commodores are absolutely adored by the metrics, clocking an adjusted offensive efficiency rating that ranks in the top five nationally in both KenPom and Torvik, and a defensive adjusted efficiency rating that ranks 10th (KenPom) and 11th (Torvik) nationally.

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It’s hard to give Michigan the benefit of the doubt after Saturday’s dud against Wisconsin, where the Wolverines lost 91-88 as whopping 18.5-point favorites at home in Ann Arbor. Still, the Wolverines were so dominant in their first 15 games that you simply have to. Consecutive 30+ point wins over ranked foes Auburn and Gonzaga in Las Vegas set the tone for their dominant starting run, which also included a 41-point win against Rutgers, a 28-point win against Villanova, and a 30-point win against No. 24 USC, amongst a handful of other very impressive performances.

Michigan is decisively the best defensive team in the country, ranking No. 1 in both the KenPom and Torvik metrics, and they’ve been that dominant against the second-toughest schedule in the country according to ESPN. Count on Yaxel Lendeborg and Morez Johnson Jr. to continue putting on a show despite Saturday’s setback.

Of all the one-loss teams looking to earn their way into a spot on these rankings, none have a better strength of record than Dan Hurley’s UConn Huskies. After a down year last season, UConn is fully back in national championship contention, with ranked wins over BYU, Illinois, Kansas and Florida to prove it. The Huskies are once again playing the hard-nosed style of defense that simply wasn’t present last season, and it certainly helps to have veteran leaders Solo Ball and Alex Karaban playing like they could be a problem in March. It’s hard to see this team slipping up too many times in Big East play. Give them a top two seed in the NCAA tournament and it could be scary hours. And that’s what seems most likely at this point.

The shock of the season so far has been the unbeaten Nebraska Cornhuskers, led by former Iowa State and Chicago Bulls head coach Fred Hoiberg. To put Nebraska’s season into context you only need to look across sports in the Big 10 Conference for an apt comparison. Like the Indiana Hoosiers football team, who will somehow play for a national championship on Monday night, Nebraska’s basketball team has been a lost cause for well over a century. In fact, in 129 years of hoops, the Huskers never advanced past the first round of the NCAA tournament and have only made the Big Dance eight times total.

Enter the 2025-26 squad. A 16-0 start, headlined by a pair or ranked upsets against Illinois and Michigan State and punctuated by a come-from-behind win at Indiana this past Saturday, has heads spinning in Lincoln. The Huskers have the second-best strength of record in the nation, trailing only Arizona, and their No. 8 ranking in this week’s AP Poll is the highest in program history. Well, for now. One thing is for certain, however, and it’s that this Huskers team is must-see-TV.

You could make a legitimate case that Purdue deserves to be ranked higher on this list, but the reality is the one blemish they’ve suffered this season is a severely ugly one. That aforementioned 24-point loss to Iowa State at home on Dec. 7 is a hard one to look past, but another truth is the Boilermakers have the No. 1-ranked adjusted offensive efficiency rating in the country so far this season, and decisive blowout wins against ranked opponents Texas Tech and Auburn have shown that their setback last month was almost certainly more of a fluke than a true indictment.

Duke is another team that’s just one slip-up away from contending for the No. 1 spot in these rankings, but it seems they’re just starting to fully recover from that uncharacteristic 82-81 loss to Texas Tech on Dec. 20. Still, the Blue Devils feature the clear National Player of the Year frontrunner in Cameron Boozer and they’re an equally effective team offensively and defensively, by the metrics, as they play both ends of the floor at an elite level. North Carolina is trailing just off past this Top 10, so expect some real wars on Tobacco Road this season with the ACC crown on the line.

At a point in late November, it looked like there was a very real chance this Gonzaga team was the best group that Mark Few has ever assembled. Having made it to January, I won’t go that far, but you would be making a mistake if you discounted the possibility that this was the team that could bring the trophy back to Spokane. Decisive wins over Creighton, Alabama, Kentucky and UCLA proved the Zags can still topple the big names in a power conference, and their lone (albeit massive) 41-point setback against Michigan has largely what’s kept this team’s hype from skyrocketing.

Houston definitely has its work cut out for it if it wants to return to the national championship game this season, but there’s no reason the Cougars can’t come together to make another run at it. Their lone loss this season was a 3-point decision in Las Vegas against a Tennessee team that was playing at the peak of its powers, although that was the only real chance for Houston to prove its mettle against a top-tier opponent this season. Expect to see them rise up the list as they establish themselves as more of a threat in Big 12 play, led by emerging freshman guard Kingston Flemings.





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