On Monday, it was rather significant that the BYU Cougars men’s basketball team was ranked No. 10 in the Associated Press’ weekly Top 25 poll — even as the Cougars fell one spot from last week’s poll.
As several college basketball observers noted Monday, even though the national championship game is still almost four whole months away, every single national champion over the last 21 years has been ranked in the top 12 of the poll in Week 6 of the season.
The last time this didn’t happen was in 2003, when Syracuse won the national championship.
This trend was first recognized by John Gasaway at this time seven years ago.
“Naturally, the eventual national champion tends to be highly ranked in any given week, but the week six poll in particular has, over the last 14 years, proven to be better than the rest all the way to Selection Sunday,” Gasaway wrote on December 10, 2018.
Later in the same piece, he wrote, “...AP pollsters have learned a good deal by week six but aren’t yet too caught up in regular-season noise. Their rankings of eventual champions therefore tend to be a bit more accurate by this point than they are in the preseason.”
BYU’s AP rankings have thus far been rather consistent in the early part of the season. The Cougars started at No. 8, then moved up to No. 7 before dropping to No. 9, where they were the last three weeks before slotting at No. 10 on Monday.
Will the trend noted by Gasaway come true again this season? Check back on April 6.