Each week throughout the college basketball season,  Jesse Schule
will dissect the new Top 25 rankings, looking for betting value. He’ll showcase
the most overrated team, along with the most underrated ranked team, and an
unranked squad that he feels should be in the Top 25.

Most underrated Top
25 team: Wichita State Shockers (19-0 SU, 12-3-1 ATS)

It’s tough to make
an argument that the Shockers aren’t underrated. After all, they have the best
record in the country at 19-0 and yet they’re ranked behind both Villanova and
Michigan State, despite the fact that both those teams have suffered at least
one loss this season. There is also the fact that the Shockers are covering the
spread in 80 percent of their games so far, a truly amazing statistic
considering we are more than halfway through the season.

Critics will say
that the Shockers’ schedule doesn’t see them play a single ranked opponent all
season. That doesn’t mean they haven’t played any quality teams. They have
registered impressive double-digit victories over BYU and DePaul, and they beat
Saint Louis and Alabama on the road. We saw what this team was capable in last
year’s tournament and there is every reason to expect them to be a contender
once again this March.

Most overrated Top 25 team: Villanova Wildcats
(16-2 SU, 12-4 ATS)

The Wildcats climbed all the way to fourth in the
national polls this week. But on the very same day the new rankings came out,
they were blown out on their own court by the Creighton Bluejays. They didn’t
just lose that game – they lost by a staggering 18-point margin at
home.

The Wildcats play three straight road games over the next 10 days,
then return home to host a dangerous Xavier team. It seems inevitable that
Villanova will slide downward in the rankings as the season
progresses.

Unranked team that should be ranked: Creighton Bluejays (15-3
SU, 12-5 ATS)

The AP dropped the Bluejays from the rankings this week,
after their 10-game winning streak came to an end on the road against
Providence. Creighton, though, is almost guaranteed to shoot back up into the
rankings after its upset win at Villanova.

Doug McDermott and the boys
shot 60 percent from 3-point range in the win over the Wildcats, hitting 21
3-pointers. Any team that is capable of doing that on the road versus one of the
nation’s Top 5 teams is going to strike fear into any opponent.

By Jesse Schule of VegasTopDogs.