Talisman Red's College Basketball Computer Ratings

Welcome to 2025-26!

This will be the 23rd year of my website. Wow, how time flies. Small screen? There's a menu at the bottom.

D-I game scores this year are again courtesy of Ken Pomeroy. Scores for D-II and D-III games are courtesy of Dr. Kenneth Massey. As always, if you see something out of place, please drop me a line.

Greetings to my loyal D-II and D-III followers...

As I say every year: thank you so much for your continued support. Click over on the menu under the Wilson section, or go directly to the D-II or D-III "everything pages" to get everything you need. Glad you are here.

In '25-'26 I'll again be producing almost the same content for the D2 & D3 women's teams that I produce here -- head over to check out those rankings & standings if you'd like.

Division I Top 25

For any hypothetical matchup, use the Points column to estimate a margin of victory and add 2.5 for home advantage, if necessary. Early in the season, ratings rely heavily on last year's results. A description of the other columns is below the top 25.

Direct links to other items: list of all teams rated  •  conference standings  •  a list of the conferences ranked  •  game predictions for the next few days

Ratings last updated 26-Jan-2026 07 AM EST.

 Rank Team                   W  L   Rating   Points  BCS   Top50   51-100  101+ 
    1 Michigan              18  1     5.78    82.75    1    7  1    5  0    6  0 
    2 Duke                  18  1     5.29    78.59    3    6  1    4  0    8  0 
    3 Arizona               20  0     5.29    77.85    2    7  0    5  0    8  0 
    4 Connecticut           19  1     4.78    73.05    4    6  1    5  0    8  0 
    5 Nebraska              20  0     4.65    71.97    5    6  0    7  0    7  0 
    6 Gonzaga               21  1     4.59    75.84   10    4  1    3  0   14  0 
    7 Michigan St.          18  2     4.53    74.03    6    6  2    3  0    9  0 
    8 Illinois              17  3     4.50    74.88    9    5  3    3  0    9  0 
    9 Purdue                17  3     4.44    74.13    8    6  3    5  0    6  0 
   10 Iowa St.              18  2     4.36    75.36   13    4  1    6  1    8  0 
  
 Rank Team                   W  L   Rating   Points  BCS   Top50   51-100  101+ 
   11 BYU                   17  2     4.22    71.80   11    4  2    4  0    9  0 
   12 Houston               17  2     4.21    72.84   12    3  2    7  0    7  0 
   13 Vanderbilt            17  3     4.15    73.07   14    5  2    3  1    9  0 
   14 Texas Tech            16  4     4.14    70.93    7    3  4    6  0    7  0 
   15 Kansas                15  5     4.02    71.73   15    3  4    7  1    5  0 
   16 Virginia              16  3     3.78    70.64   16    3  2    5  1    8  0 
   17 Arkansas              15  5     3.77    71.29   17    4  5    4  0    7  0 
   18 Florida               14  6     3.75    72.89   27    4  4    3  2    7  0 
   19 Saint Louis           19  1     3.71    70.75   18    2  0    1  1   16  0 
   20 Alabama               13  6     3.65    71.41   23    4  5    3  1    6  0 
  
 Rank Team                   W  L   Rating   Points  BCS   Top50   51-100  101+ 
   21 St. John's            15  5     3.56    70.19   22    2  4    6  0    7  1 
   22 Louisville            14  5     3.56    73.56   34    3  4    2  1    9  0 
   23 North Carolina        16  4     3.41    68.21   20    4  2    2  2   10  0 
   24 SMU                   15  5     3.31    67.81   24    3  4    3  1    9  0 
   25 Georgia               16  4     3.27    69.85   31    2  2    4  2   10  0 

The columns you see above...

• Rank, Team, W-L, and Rating: hopefully self-explanatory
• Points: the column to use if you want to calculate a hypothetical margin of victory for any matchup. Just subtract. Adjust for home court if you need to, about 3 points
• BCS: a ranking system that uses only margin of victory, with no consideration of score margin. The old-timers would call this a more "politically-correct" system, like the ones used in the Bowl Championship Series for many years (hence the title "BCS")
• Top 50, 51-100, 100+: a team's won-loss record against teams in each of those ranking groups

 

 

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