I think they’re just having a down year, exasperated by an extremely difficult schedule. This is a team who’d played #7 Jacksonville (won), #2 Georgetown (lost), #16 North Carolina (lost), #6 Virginia (lost), #4 Rutgers (lost), #11 Ohio St (lost), and just today, lost to #1 Maryland.
JHU’s loss to UMd ensured they wouldn’t leap frog Utah. Lehigh and High Point lost to day too (to #15 Boston and #18 Richmond respectively), so they won’t be leap frogging us in Monday’s poll either.
With #9 Notre Dame drubbing #16 North Carolina the night before yesterday, there might be room for one more team moving up into the Top-20 in the next poll, and that team will be either Utah, Villanova, or Bucknell. Of course there’s also still the chance the pollsters won’t drop UNC far. They are a blue-blood program after all, and those teams often get favorable treatment. It sure would have been better for Utah had we’d hammered Bellarmine like how we’d done vs. Mercer, Cleveland St, and Robert Morris.
Next week, we close out the regular season, at Home, vs. the worst team in the conference, and arguably one of the 10 worst teams in the country. I don’t expect much “inspired” play in that game, nor need we play that way. That one is a sure-thing. I’m expecting a lot of “bench” players seeing the field, and keeping our starters fresh for the conference tournament that will start 5-days later in Huntsville, AL.