College basketball rankings: UCLA slides up to No. 2 in Top 25 And 1 after finishing strong

Multiple outright power-conference champions and projected No. 1 seeds for the 2023 NCAA Tournament — Kansas and Alabama specifically — took losses on the final Saturday of the regular season. But UCLA didn’t. The outright Pac-12 champs beat Arizona 82-73 inside Pauley Pavilion to win the league by four games with an 18-2 conference record.

“We did it — but, at the same time, we’re not done,” said UCLA forward Jaime Jaquez Jr., who finished with 22 points and 10 rebounds against the Wildcats. “Now we got to go into the next half. To me, it’s like a whole new season.”

The victory improved UCLA’s winning streak to 10 games and pushed the Bruins to 16-4 in the first two quadrants heading into the Pac-12 Tournament. Only top-ranked Houston has a better winning percentage inside the first two quadrants, which is among the reasons UCLA is up to No. 2 in Sunday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings

UCLA has eight Q1 wins and all four of its losses are in Q1. That makes the Bruins the nation’s only team with a résumé featuring at least eight Q1 wins and fewer than five total losses.

Kansas remains No. 3 in the Top 25 And 1 despite Saturday’s 75-59 loss at Texas based on the strength of the total body of work. The Jayhawks are 20-6 in the first two quadrants with 15 Q1 wins and zero losses outside of Q1. Simply put, I do not believe anybody below the Jayhawks deserves to be above the Jayhawks. So KU is still No. 3 followed by No. 4 Alabama and No. 5 Purdue.