College Basketball Power 10: Watch Out For Baylor Bears

10. Butler (8-0)

Butler basketball is back to being a threat on the national landscape. While lacking a Gordon Hayward or Shelvin Mack, Kelan Martin is quietly averaging 18.1 points per game and quietly leading Butler to one of the more impressive resumes in the early season.

Along with quality wins over Northwestern and Utah, the Bulldogs also took down Arizona, then ranked in the top 10, 69-65. Butler’s three most impressive wins have all come by single-digits, but they’re still showing they can beat quality teams early in the season.

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Plus, against mid-majors, they haven’t won by fewer than 24 points and beat a Power 5 Vanderbilt team by 10.

Therefore, while they might not be blowing out great teams, simply taking care of business against them and blowing out bad teams says a lot.

In a conference with Villanova, Creighton and Xavier, Butler is being battle-tested early and is learning how to handle close games in crunch time.

The Bulldogs also held Northwestern, Arizona and Utah to less than 70 points. They’re not going to score a ton of points, however they’ve forced teams to play at their tempo and win with defense.

Maybe Butler will need a scoring option outside of Martin to eventually develop, but right now their defensive-minded style of play is working.

Butler travels to Indiana State and hosts Cincinnati this week.