Tennessee Among 11 Top 25 Teams to Fall on Saturday

It’s beginning to feel like March. While Kentucky fans celebrated a victory over No. 5 Tennessee, Top 25 college basketball teams were dropping like flies. Eleven teams ranked in the AP Poll lost on Saturday, nine were to unranked foes. It’s the most losses by AP Top 25 teams on a single day since Jan. 29, 2011, according to ESPN Stats and Info. Pure madness.

Top 25 Upsets — Jan. 14

• No. 5 Tennessee 56, Kentucky 63
• No. 9 Arizona 68, Oregon 87
• No. 11 Kansas State 68, No. 17 TCU 82
• No. 14 Iowa State 60, No. 2 Kansas
• No. 15 Arkansas 84, Vanderbilt 97
• No. 16 Miami 81, NC State 83 (OT)
• No. 18 Wisconsin 45, Indiana 63
• No. 19 Providence 67, Creighton 73
• No. 20 Missouri 64, Florida 73
• No. 23 San Diego State 67, New Mexico 76
• No. 24 Duke 64, Clemson 72

Some of these results are shocking on paper, but nine of these Top 25 losses were on the road. It’s hard to win away from home in college basketball. Nevertheless, arguably the two most eye-opening were in SEC play and they both happened in Tennessee. The Wildcats upset the Vols and Vanderbilt had a big 13-point win over a popular Final Four pick, Arkansas. The Tuesday trip to Memorial Gymnasium on Jan. 24 will not be an easy one for John Calipari’s squad.

Jacob Toppin Knew Kentucky was going to Win

There are wild variances in college basketball on a game-to-game basis, much more so than college football. Applying the transitive property to scores of common opponents is a silly practice. While fans live and die by each game, the players knew this season was a marathon. “It’s a long season,” Sahvir Wheeler said several times after the Alabama loss. Jacob Toppin knew the team had the confidence to win at Tennessee.

“There was no doubt in our mind though, no doubt in anybody’s mind. We knew what type of team we were. Obviously we were in a slump, we were losing some games, but we came together. A lot of teams can’t do that,” said Toppin. “A lot of teams splinter and start fighting each other, but we came together.”

Friday morning Toppin was in the trainer’s room with CJ Fredrick. He told him it was Kentucky’s turn to produce a shocking upset.

“This is going to be the definition of college basketball,” he said. “We just lost to South Carolina. We’re going to go to Tennessee and we’re going to beat them. That’s the definition of college basketball. Anybody can beat anybody. That’s the conversation we had. We all came in here understanding that if we fought and did what we needed to do as a team, we can win.”

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