College basketball rankings: Florida Atlantic soars after knocking off Arizona

Read The Athletic’s latest college basketball rankings. 

Merry Christmas! Time to sneak into the bathroom to get your college basketball fix and not offend your family.

In this week’s Top 25, Arizona-FAU gave us the game on the year on Festivus, Houston’s Kelvin Sampson is about to join Hall of Fame-worthy company, Terrence Shannon Jr. is scary in an open floor, BYU and its deadliest 3-point attack in the country just got better and RJ Davis is playing like an All-American.

Your weekly friendly reminder: The setup of this season’s Top 25 is that I’ll give nuggets on an unspecified number of teams each week. So if a team appears in the table but not the text below, that’s why.

CJ Moore's Top 25 for Monday, Dec. 25

Rank	Team	Last week
1	Purdue	1
2	Arizona	3
3	Kansas	5
4	Houston	6
5	Connecticut	2
6	Tennessee	7
7	Illinois	8
8	Florida Atlantic	10
9	Kentucky	11
10	BYU	15
11	Marquette	4
12	North Carolina	11
13	Clemson	12
14	Oklahoma	9
15	Colorado State	15
16	Auburn	18
17	Wisconsin	19
18	Memphis	24
19	Creighton	16
20	Duke	NR
21	Baylor	17
22	Gonzaga	20
23	Iowa State	22
24	Colorado	23
25	James Madison	25

Arizona

The Wildcats will not be penalized for their double-OT loss to Florida Atlantic in these rankings. We’re only rewarding the Owls. It took 35 points from Johnell Davis and some unreal shotmaking to pull off the win. Arizona has four wins over top-25 KenPom teams. Only Purdue (five) has more.

If there was anything Arizona could have maybe done to adjust, it would have been to not let the Owls dribble into some of their rhythm jumpers out of ball screens. They shot 7-of-10 on jumpers against drop coverage. Tommy Lloyd did go small some down the stretch, moving Keshad Johnson to center. That’s something he couldn’t have done last year. This is a very good defensive team. It just ran into a really smart coach with big-time shotmakers.

Houston

The four best defenses on a per-possession basis are all Big 12 schools, but Houston is far ahead of the crowd. The Cougars are allowing only 77.4 points per 100 possessions, nearly five points ahead of second-place Iowa State. Assuming the Coogs finish in the top 10 of adjusted defensive efficiency — which is as close to a lock as anything happening in college basketball in 2024 — then that would be four straight seasons with a top-10 defense.

Here’s a list of the coaches who have pulled that off in the KenPom era (since 1999):

• Rick Pitino
• John Calipari
• Bill Self
• Tom Izzo
• Leonard Hamilton
• Tony Bennett

Elite company.

Connecticut

Donovan Clingan is out for the next three to four weeks with a foot injury, and that’s worrisome for the Huskies. They are clearly better on both ends with Clingan on the floor. It is also Big East season, which means UConn is contractually obligated to remove its Superman cape. Big, physical teams that can switch (Kansas) and/or play a matchup zone seem to be this team’s kryptonite. The schedule does provide some relief. UConn’s next four are all against opponents expected to be bottom-half Big East teams.

Illinois

The scariest thing in college basketball is Terrence Shannon Jr. coming at you in transition. He just never stops attacking. He scored 20 of his 30 points against Missouri on Friday in transition. He is now scoring a college basketball-best 7.5 points in transition per game, according to Synergy. His stamina and will are impressive. This is a play he made against the Tigers when the game was already out of hand:

Then after scoring his 30th point and with the Illini ahead by 30 with 3:44 left, he dove on the floor to go for a steal. Shannon was once considered a terrific talent who would disappear from some games. He has changed that narrative.

Florida Atlantic

Arizona was ahead 17-3 early and on a 14-0 run, and Dusty May never called timeout. He looked as calm as ever. The Owls are always composed, and the possession that set up the game-winning free throw was so FAU. With two seconds on the shot clock, Giancarlo Rosado had the wherewithal to shot fake — not once, but twice!

May never panics, and neither does his team. Another March run feels like it’s coming. For now, the Owls just won the game of the year.

Kentucky

Kentucky has had five different players score at least 20 points in a game this season. John Calipari’s deepest team was the 2015 group when he subbed hockey lines, and that team also had five guys score at least 20 points in a game that season. (Wild statistic from that season: Devin Booker, who has averaged 24.1 points per game in his NBA career, never reached 20 playing for Kentucky.)

We’re only 11 games in, and there’s a good chance another Wildcat joins the list, which so far includes Antonio Reeves, Tre Mitchell, Rob Dillingham, DJ Wagner and Reed Sheppard. Not included is Justin Edwards, who came into the season considered the best draft prospect on the roster. Our Sam Vecenie had Edwards at No. 1 in his first mock. Edwards’ season-high is 16 points, and if you drop the number to 16, then eight Cats have reached that mark. My bet is the Cats get seven players in the 20 club, with Edwards and Aaron Bradshaw (season-high 17) eventually getting there. Knowing that many guys can go off in one night makes it really tough to game plan for opposing coaches.

BYU

BYU already leads the country in 3s made per game (12.5), and now it adds transfer Dawson Baker, who missed the first 10 games with a foot injury. Baker, UC Irvine’s leading scorer last season, has made 90 3s and shot 37 percent from deep for his career. Oh, and he can pass:

This team’s ball and body movement is fun to watch. Baker fits perfectly. He had 10 points and three assists in 18 minutes in his second appearance on Friday night against Bellarmine. It was BYU’s highest efficiency game of the season, a ridiculous 1.506 points per possession in the 101-59 win. That’s the highest points per possession against Bellarmine in its four years as a Division I program.

Marquette

Marquette returned four of five starters and replaced Olivier-Maxence Prosper with a better shooter (David Joplin) in the starting lineup, but this team isn’t shooting as well as it did a season ago, particularly on open catch-and-shoot opportunities and shots off the bounce.

In their three losses, the Golden Eagles have made only 16-of-66 (24.2 percent) of their 3s, and they’re shooting 35.2 percent from deep in wins. They went 4-of-20 in the 72-57 loss to Providence last week. I charted those attempts, and I’d say 19 of 20 were quality looks. Five were wide open (they made three of those), and a majority of the attempts were either going under on handoffs, short closeouts or late closeouts. A return to the mean could be coming.

Joplin is another key. He needs to be more consistent. He was better as a microwave man off the bench last season. He’s averaging fewer points (9.0 ppg, down from 9.2) while playing 5.5 more minutes per game. He scored only five points in the loss to Providence — he’s averaging 5.7 ppg in the losses — but he bounced back with four 3s and a season-high 20 points in Friday’s win over Georgetown. Maybe that will be the game to get him going.

North Carolina

The Caleb Love breakup is going well for both parties, with RJ Davis being the main benefactor for the Tar Heels. If I were building a first-semester All-America team, Davis would be in consideration for one of the guard spots.

If building a first-semester All-American team, feel like there are four locks: Zach Edey, PJ Hall, Terrence Shannon and Kevin McCullar.

Who deserves final perimeter spot?

— CJ Moore (@CJMooreHoops) December 23, 2023

* My editor Brian Bennett informs me this should read “All-America team.” I’d like to inform him he doesn’t get to edit my tweets too!

Not sure there’s a wrong pick among that group, which should also include Marquette’s Tyler Kolek, Colorado State’s Isaiah Stevens and Love in that list. Davis is going to be under consideration if he keeps scoring like this. He has seven straight games of 23 or more points. He’s averaging 21.7 points and 3.0 assists for the season. His efficiency has gone up; he has a 120.2 offensive rating — it was 114.3 last season — and he’s doing it while taking 31.2 percent of the shots when he’s on the floor compared to 23.9 shot usage last year.

Creighton

Is anyone as reliant on three players as Creighton is with Trey Alexander, Ryan Kalkbrenner and Baylor Scheierman? That’s a great Big Three, but the Jays struggle if one of the three is off.

Here’s a recap of their losses:

• Against Colorado State, Alexander and Scheierman combined to go 5-of-33 from the field.

• Against UNLV, Scheierman and Kalkbrenner had good games, but Alexander went 2-of-13 in 39 minutes.

• Against Villanova (the latest loss, by two in OT), they all scored in doubles figures but went a combined 0-of-10 from 3 and combined for 10 turnovers.

The others are averaging 19.7 points in those three losses.

Duke

Duke looked soft defensively for the first month of the season, but we saw something entirely different against Baylor. The Blue Devils fought through screens and made some smart switches, and Baylor felt them. Possessions like this are what Duke needs to be:

Jeremy Roach is the one who seems to set the tone. This is a top-10 — maybe even top-five — team from a talent perspective. It’s all about whether Duke continues to play with intensity and physicality.

Baylor

Duke must have seen something on tape that made it want to go at Baylor freshman Ja’Kobe Walter, because Duke regularly picked on the freshman, especially in the middle of the floor. Blow-bys like this one were way too easy:

Baylor is better defensively this season and better set up from a personnel standpoint, but the Bears allowed 1.21 points per possession in their losses to Michigan State and Duke. They also turned it over 35 times. They’ve obviously got to reduce the turnovers, but the defense is the bigger concern. Big 12 coaches will find the holes. Walter is a terrific offensive talent, but he needs to be better than he was against Duke on the defensive end.

James Madison

JMU got hit by The Athletic curse! After Kyle Tucker’s fantastic feature published Friday on the Dukes, they only beat Morgan State by 14. In their previous six games, they’d won by an average of 31.2 points.

We’re down to only three unbeatens — JMU, Houston and Ole Miss — and JMU has a chance to enter the NCAA Tournament with a perfect record. The Dukes are favored in every game the rest of the year at KenPom. The next test is at Louisiana, the third-best team in the Sun Belt, on Jan. 4. Then JMU plays Appalachian State twice. The Mountaineers are 9-3 and own a win over Auburn.

Dropped out: Virginia

Keeping an eye on: Providence, Villanova, Indiana State, Utah, Ole Miss, Alabama, South Carolina, Grand Canyon, Ohio State, Mississippi State, New Mexico, Nevada

(Photo of Johnell Davis: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)