College basketball seems a little out of whack right now.
Has there ever been a time in recent history when The Associated Press top 25 poll did not include either Duke or Kentucky?
The kings of one-and-done are not in the AP poll, coaches poll or every Gary Parrish's Top 25 plus one on CBSsports.com.
More importantly, the Blue Devils and Wildcats are Nos. 92 and 96, respectively, in the NCAA NET rankings, which is part of the formula for selecting teams to the NCAA Tournament.
Since Mike Krzyzewski became the head coach at Duke in 1980, the Blue Devils have won five national championships, and made 12 Final Flours, 16 Elite Eights and won a record 97 games in 35 NCAA Tournaments.
Kentucky's history goes much further back, but under John Calipari since 2009 the Wildcats have been to the NCAA Tournament every year but one. He's made the championship game twice and won it in 2012.
Neither team is currently on the NCAA Tournament bubble.
Granted, Duke took the last two weeks of December off because of covid-19 and missed three games, so the Blue Devils had played just eight games entering Tuesday, sitting at 5-3 overall and 3-1 in ACC play.
No one seems to fully understand what is going on with Kentucky, which is 4-8 and 3-2 in SEC play.
The theory here is Coach Cal is playing cat-and-mouse. He's the Wildcat, the players are the mice, and in a couple of weeks he'll circle the wagons and the team will be us against the world.
The old "We get no respect" card.
It will be an even odder year if neither team makes the tournament. It is odd enough that the whole thing will be played in Indianapolis and the surrounding area.
At the top of the NET rankings prior to Tuesday's games were No. 1 Baylor, No. 2 Gonzaga, No. 3 Iowa, No. 4 Tennessee and No. 5 Michigan.
Gonzaga fans for years have worn T-shirts claiming the Zags are not a Cinderella.
They're right.
Since Mark Few became coach of the Zags in 1999, they have not missed the NCAA Tournament. Few is 613-124, which is a winning percentage of .832.
Gonzaga is currently 14-0.
It doesn't seem possible, but Scott Drew is in his 18th season at Baylor. He has led the Bears to eight NCAA appearances. Before him, they had been to four total.
So things aren't totally topsy-turvy, but a look at the NET shows that if the bids were going out today, the ACC would get four teams in: No. 9 Virginia, No. 28 Florida State, No. 29 Clemson and probably No. 37 Virginia Tech.
That's four from arguably the best basketball conference in the country.
The Big East, which generally stuffs the bracket with seven to nine teams a year, might get four: Villanova, Creighton, Xavier and UConn.
The Big 12 would get seven.
The SEC is looking at five.
The Big Ten would get seven.
The Pac-12 would get five, too.
That would be 35 of 68 teams from the Power 5 plus the Big East.
That's a lot of room for mid-major schools, but don't expect that to happen.
There are a lot of games to be played, including conference tournaments, and it's hard to imagine a NCAA Tournament without Kentucky and Duke.
They have a lot of work to do, but a lot of their remaining games are against Quad 1 opponents, which helps more than it hurts.
So it has been an odd, but interesting, basketball season so far. That's especially true in the SEC, where it appears any team can win on any given night or court.