College Basketball

Men's College Basketball Top 10, Bubble Team NET Rankings: Duke, Gonzaga Slip

Updated Jan. 6, 2026 2:05 p.m. ET

The top 25 rankings are important for understanding just who is killing it in college basketball, but we can go deeper — all the way to the bubble and beyond.

The NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET, is a rankings system used in Division I basketball to help figure out which teams are going to participate in March Madness. As the NCAA puts it, NET "takes into account game results, strength of schedule, game location, net offensive and defensive efficiency, and the quality of wins and losses," the latter of which is determined by placing every Division I matchup into different quadrants, ranked 1 through 4, with 1 being the strongest teams and 4 the weakest — Quads aren’t just determined by record, but also whether a game was played at home, on the road or at a neutral site.

Using NET, we can get a sense of which teams are the best at a given moment, as well as which ones are on the bubble for selection in March. While updated daily by the NCAA, we’ll track changes weekly.

With that, here are the top 10 men’s college basketball teams through Jan. 5, according to NET.

The Top 10

10. Illinois (previous: 10)

Illinois played just the one time in the past week, in a 73-65 win over Penn State. While the Fighting Illini didn’t win by enough (or against a tough enough opponent) to move up in the rankings, they can also thank a pair of close Nebraska wins that similarly kept it in place and Michigan State suffering a loss over the weekend for their sticking in the top 10. With Illinois, Nebraska, Michigan State and Iowa ranking 10-14 in NET, it sure feels like the Big Ten has dibs on this spot. Fitting!

9. BYU (previous: 9)

BYU played once in the past week — against Kansas State — and won. It was a 10-point victory over a bubble team, though, which is good but not exceptional, so just like with Illinois part of the equation here is a lack of anyone else stepping up to grab the spot from the Cougars.

8. UConn (previous: 8)

UConn picked up a pair of wins in the last week against Big East opponents Xavier and Marquette, and while that impressed the voters, who kept them No. 4, NET isn’t moved. Part of that might be the lack of road games, as UConn has three of them to its name at this point. The Huskies schedule has been no joke regardless of location, however, as they have had the third-most difficult schedule among the top-10 teams per NET’s calculations, and 19th-toughest overall.

7. Duke (previous: 3)

Duke defeated Georgia Tech and Florida State in the last week, but the issue as NET sees it is that it won those games by a combined 10 points. Prior to losing to Duke by just six points, one week ago Georgia Tech ranked 178th in NET, while Florida State was 128th. The Blue Devils should have crushed those teams, is the mathematical reasoning, so winning is good but not good enough to stick at 3rd in NET.

Braden Smith is leading the nation in assists per game, and Purdue to win after win. (Photo by John Fisher/Getty Images)

6. Purdue (previous: 6)

Purdue played just once since last week, an 89-73 win over Big Ten opponent Wisconsin. The Badgers are a bubble team that would look a whole lot better in the standings if they didn’t already have five Big Ten games behind them at this point — that conference is just wild this season, and Purdue’s performance is part of that.

5. Vanderbilt (previous: 7)

Vanderbilt is looking pretty legit, but we will have a better sense of just how legit after it takes on No. 13 Alabama — both in the poll and in NET — at home on Wednesday in its fifth Quad 1 matchup of the season.

4. Gonzaga (previous: 2)

Gonzaga responded to climbing all the way to second in NET by nearly losing to San Diego. Not San Diego State, but San Diego, which ranked 212th in NET entering the matchup. A win is a win, but it wasn’t one becoming of the second-ranked spot.

3. Iowa State (previous: 5)

One of six remaining undefeated teams, Iowa State took on West Virginia and won last Friday, 80-59. The Cyclones have had by far the softest schedule of the top-10 teams by NET, with an average opponent NET ranking of 178 that itself ranks 168th out of 365 teams, but they also crushed Purdue back in early December, beat Creighton by 18 and survived Iowa, so it’s not like Iowa State is untested.

2. Arizona (previous: 4)

Taking care of business against Utah, 97-78, combined with Gonzaga’s failure to hang onto this spot and Duke sliding backward, helped Arizona close the gap between itself and Michigan. But…

1. Michigan (previous: 1)

…only by so much. Michigan has played the second-toughest schedule of anyone in Division I, not just the top-10, and despite this its average margin of victory is 30 points. Which is also what the Wolverines trounced then-ranked USC by over the weekend, a result that booted the Trojans from the poll but didn’t even get NET to move them in the rankings at all, as it was a terrifyingly expected outcome.

Michigan has crushed opponents all season long, ranked or not. (Photo by Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images)

Risers and Fallers

In the span of a week, some teams can see their spot in the rankings dramatically shift. Here are the five teams that rose the most in men’s college basketball in the last week…

5. Portland State, 180 to 148: The Vikings won two overtime games in a row — the first against Weber State, the second against Idaho State — and it’s that second one that gave them much of the bump here, as the Bengals are still ranked ahead of Portland State even after the defeat.

4. Missouri State, 235 to 200: UTEP and New Mexico State both fell to Missouri State in the past week, and the latter was ranked 110th in NET this time last week. That’s a pretty great W for the Bears.

3. Utah Tech, 221 to 184: An interesting jump for Utah Tech, as it only faced Abilene Christian and basically swapped with them in NET after a convincing 79-64 dub.

2. Saint Peter’s, 290 to 249: The Peacocks defeated Marist in their one game of the week, which was something of a shock: Marist isn’t a top-level team this year by any means, but they began the week ranked 160 in NET and then actually rose in the rankings since this defeat against Saint Peter’s after squashing Iona, 83-38. That’s a lot of moving pieces, but it all worked out for Saint Peter’s.

1. Texas A&M Corpus-Christi, 227 to 164: The Islanders won three games since the last check-in, taking down New Orleans, Texas Rio-Grande Valley and Houston Christian, and while none of those are tourney-level teams or anything, the first two were ranked better than A&M Corpus-Christi.

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…and the five that fell the furthest.

5. USC Upstate, 213 to 250: Losses to Radford and Presbyterian dropped USC Upstate under .500 and down the NET rankings, as both teams were in the bottom 70 or so, but now each is right around the Spartans.

4. North Alabama, 274 to 313: North Alabama played twice, and dropped both games. The first to Stetson in a close one, 70-67, and the second in a much less close affair, 72-55 to Florida Gulf Coast. The closer loss was actually the worse one: Stetson was the 16th-worst team by NET prior to that matchup.

3. Coastal Carolina, 207 to 248: An overtime loss to Georgia Southern followed by Georgia State — a bottom-tier team — beating Coastal Carolina by 18 points caused this slide.

2. Towson, 143 to 186: Hampton and Monmouth handed Towson defeats in the last week, with the last of those the real issue: Towson dropped from 158 to 185 from that defeat alone, as Monmouth was ranked 238th in NET.

1. Tennessee Tech, 233 to 280: Tennessee State defeated the Golden Eagles, 88-76, then Little Rock beat them even worse, 77-58, a couple of days later. Not just by score, but also by context: Little Rock ranked 340th of 365 teams in NET before the W, and that loss alone shot Tennessee Tech back 30 spots.

On the Bubble

Of the 68 March Madness teams in the tournament, 31 of them are conference champions who receive automatic entry into the tournament. The other 37 spots are at-large bids. With that in mind, we will look at the teams ranked between 64-to-73 in NET each week, as those are the ones who are the most on the bubble for the tourney.

73. Belmont (previous: 61): Beating Bradley by 10 points to kick off the new year was a positive, but Belmont followed that up with a loss to Southern Illinois and found itself back in bubble territory because of it.

72. UNI (previous: 75): Northern Iowa moved up a few spots thanks to wins against Indiana State and Evansville; neither is a big-time opponent, but UNI won by 9 and 14, respectively, and that helps.

Texas slipped with an OT loss to Mississippi State. (Photo by Scott Wachter/Getty Images)

71. Texas (previous: 54): The Longhorns haven’t played much of late, as they were off during the holidays after Dec. 22, but then lost to Mississippi State in overtime in their return to the court over the weekend.

70. Colorado (previous: 77): A win over Arizona State — which sits right around where Colorado does in NET — got them right into the bubble. The Buffaloes take on Utah then No. 14 Texas Tech before next week’s check-in, so we’ll see if they can keep climbing that wall or crash right into it soon enough.

69. San Diego State (previous: 83): The Aztecs took down San Jose State to end 2025, then defeated Boise State in overtime, 110-107, to kick off the 2026. Boise State is a top-50 team even after taking that L, hence the jump by San Diego State.

68. Nevada (previous: 72): Wins against Colorado State and Fresno State gave Nevada a little push, but it wasn’t a larger one since that second W was by a single point despite the Bulldogs not being particularly well-regarded by NET.

67. Notre Dame (previous: 76): A 47-40 win against Stanford was a boost, and losing to Cal by just one point actually moved the Irish up another couple of spots owing to how good the Golden Bears are this year.

66. George Washington (previous: 81): The Colonials toppled Richmond and La Salle, with both dubs being convincing enough to leapfrog George Washington into bubble territory for NET.

65. Kansas State (previous: 60) Kansas State lost to No. 9 BYU, 83-73, which probably would have hurt a little less considering how good the Cougars are if K-State had played more than just the one game since last time out. Next up for the Wildcats? No. 1 Arizona.

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