Who's the 1?

Arizona, Iowa State, Michigan, UConn -- take your pick about the sport's best team. Plus: The SWAC and Southland had great games on a night of light hoops, Kentucky loses Lowe for the season, Kansas City will make a change change, and the trying times for leading scorers.

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1. The debate about the sport’s top team

Arizona solidified its hold atop the AP poll — it got 60 of 61 first-place votes on Monday — after Michigan’s surprising loss to Wisconsin over the weekend.

AP voters dropped the Wolverines to 4th, behind Arizona, Iowa State and UConn. But every other ranking metric? Those still prefer Michigan.

And that’s not surprising. Michigan crushed teams for a six-week stretch and built a statistical profile akin to some of college hoops’ best teams. One loss won’t derail that. That said … there wasn’t a consensus on Michigan as the nation’s best team.

Beyond the AP, both Randolph Childress and Terrence Oglesby though that Arizona’s wins over the likes of Alabama, Auburn, Florida and at UConn (among others) justified their spot atop the polls. (And fwiw, the statistical gap between the Cats and the Wolverines is razor thin.)

Beyond those top two, Iowa State is also unbeaten, and comparable from a statistical POV. Those three are grouped together.

One also could make an argument for UConn or Duke as the sport's best team. Both of them have more Top 25 NET wins than Arizona and Iowa State, but that's really an argument more for NCAA Tournament seeding purposes.

We'll see how all this play out over the next two months, but particularly in February, which is when the schedules get increasingly more challenging for both Big 12 schools and Michigan.

2. SWAC stole the show on light night of hoops

There were only 17 men’s hoops games on Monday night, but we still had plenty of notable results, especially in the Southwestern Athletic Conference.

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