The main thing too many college basketball fans were eager to mock in the Associated Press Top 25 preseason poll was FAU’s school-record No. 10 ranking.
Man, people hated that ranking.
The haters swore FAU didn’t deserve that ranking. They swore FAU was nothing more than a mid-major that made a lucky run to the 2023 Final Four. They swore the Owls would prove unworthy of the number next to their name just as soon as the season got started.
Then came the loss to Bryant.
That was obviously bad.
But since somehow losing to Bryant as a 23.5-point favorite in the third game of the season, the Owls have gone 8-1 with the latest impressive performance being Saturday’s thrilling 96-95 double-overtime victory over an Arizona team that was ranked No. 1 in the AP poll just six days ago. It was arguably the game of the year, one dominated by Johnell Davis, the American Athletic Conference Preseason Co-Player of the Year who finished with 35 points in 49 minutes.
“It felt like a high-level basketball game,” said FAU coach Dusty May. “This felt like a February game with the conference championship on the line.”
FAU is now 10-2 on the season with five wins over top-65 teams at KenPom.com. Again, the Bryant loss is horrific. No getting around that. But the only other loss on the resume is a single-digit loss on a neutral court to an Illinois team that’s No. 5 in Sunday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings, and that’s among the reasons FAU is up to No. 7 in the Top 25 And 1, one spot ahead of the Arizona team the Owls just beat in Las Vegas while shooting exactly 50% from the field.
“We told our guys these are the type of teams you’re going to play once you make a deep tournament run,” said Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd. “[FAU is] an incredible team.”
That fact that so many rejected that opinion in the preseason — that FAU is indeed an incredible team — never made much sense to me, if only because it was so clearly true. Contrary to what the lazies suggested, FAU was not just a team that made a lucky run to the 2023 Final Four. Rather, FAU was a team that was 31-3 before the NCAA Tournament even started. Then, sure, the Owls were fortunate to get past Memphis in the first round, but nothing that happened after that was “lucky.” FAU beat Fairleigh Dickinson and Tennessee comfortably, then got past a Kansas State team that had previously beaten Texas, Kansas, Baylor, TCU, Kentucky and Michigan State.
Simply put, you don’t win your league by multiple games, win your league tournament, advance to the Final Four and finish 35-4 with wins over a top-four team in the SEC (Tennessee), a top-four team in the Big 12 (Kansas State), and a top-two team in the AAC (Memphis) by being lucky. You can only do all of that if you’re very, very good. And when it was confirmed that FAU would return all five starters from the team that did all of those very, very good things, nothing other than the Owls being in the top 10 of the preseason polls would’ve made any sense to me.
Now, the skeptics are starting to quiet down.
They’re finally beginning to show respect.
Better late than never, I guess.
Top 25 And 1 rankings
Biggest Movers
3 Florida Atlantic
4 Arizona
