Men's Power Rankings: UConn, Tennessee win big; Kansas, Duke fall - ESPN

Kansas is tracking to be one of the bigger conundrums for the NCAA tournament selection committee. More immediately, it's tracking to be one of the tougher teams to slot in the Power Rankings.

The Jayhawks have been near the top of the rankings and seedings all season, while the predictive metrics — KenPom, BPI, BartTorvik.com, EvanMiya.com — have been comparatively lower for weeks, instead ranking them in the teens. From a résumé standpoint, the Jayhawks have the best collection of high-end wins in the country: against UConn, Tennessee and Kentucky, three teams ranked inside the top five of this week's Power Rankings. Those are somewhat mitigated by bad losses at UCF and West Virginia.

So, is Bill Self's squad closer to the 1-seed it was projected as before Saturday's loss to the Mountaineers? Or will the metrics and bad losses remove the Jayhawks from consideration? There's still plenty of time left for them to solidify their credentials, but there are some real negatives worth monitoring.

Who else falls into this bucket? Kentucky has been playing better than Kansas in recent weeks, so it's not as big of a talking point, but the Wildcats have a great win over North Carolina… and not much else. There's a home loss to UNC Wilmington, and the Wildcats' rankings in most metrics are actually lower than those of Kansas.

We've discussed Houston and Auburn before, but both are metrics darlings despite not having much heft to their profiles thus far.

The Cougars are No. 1 in predictive metrics with a historically good defense, though their best wins this season are over Dayton and Texas Tech. Road trips to BYU and Kansas in the next couple of weeks will be telling.

Meanwhile, the Tigers are top five in both KenPom and BPI,