Winners and Losers from the AP College Basketball Top 25 Rankings in Week 2

The second Associated Press Top 25 poll of the 2014-15 college basketball season has been released, but there were hardly any changes from the first one.

Save for a dumb loss by the smartest school in the country, the first weekend of the college basketball season went pretty well according to plan.

There were a good number of surprising losses aside from the one suffered by Harvard—particularly by middling teams in the SEC—but the Crimson were the only ranked team to lose in the opening three days of the season. In fact, Michigan State's five-point win over Navy was the only instance of a ranked team winning by less than 10 points.

Of the 35 games played by ranked teams, 12 were decided by more than 30 points.

You could try to read into which teams did the best job of dominating their guarantee games, but as Seth Davis astutely noted on Twitter after tweeting out his Top 25 ballot, "Not much use in overreacting to opening games."

As such, there were almost no changes from the preseason poll, but we were able to cobble together a few winners and losers nevertheless.

Winner: Louisville

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If we're being perfectly honest, Louisville was the only ranked team that actually challenged itself right away, playing a neutral-court game against a very good Minnesota team.

It wasn't exactly a pretty game. The Cardinals and Golden Gophers combined to attempt 75 free throws. A total of 11 players committed at least four fouls in the game—most notably, freshman big man Chinanu Onuaku fouled out in just eight minutes of action for Louisville.

Anton Gill—expected to be one of the primary reserves in the backcourt—scored one point in 19 minutes with five turnovers.

But the key players were huge for Louisville. Montrezl Harrell had 30 points and incredibly drained three three-pointers and 90 percent of his free-throw attempts. Terry Rozier had 18 points, four assists, four steals and no turnovers in his first game since the Cardinals lost Russ Smith.

Other teams beat less noteworthy teams in more dominant fashion, but one could argue that no team was more impressive on the opening weekend of the season than Louisville in its 81-68 win over Minnesota.

Even though Florida took care of William & Mary with relative ease, the Cardinals jumped the Gators for seventh place in the country, turning a 39-vote deficit into a three-vote lead over Florida.

Loser: Harvard

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After five consecutive seasons with at least 20 wins, Harvard finally got enough respect to sneak into the preseason AP Top 25.

All that good was undone by one bad loss to Holy Cross, and we're already left to wonder if the Crimson have any chance of reappearing in the polls this season.

Siyani Chambers (one point, six assists, nine turnovers) had easily the worst game of his college career. Steve Moundou-Missi spent the vast majority of the game dealing with foul trouble. Kenyatta Smith was only able to log three minutes. Top 2014 recruit Chris Egi has yet to dress this season.

It was really Wesley Saunders or bust on Sunday night against Holy Cross, and even though Saunders was able to score 24 points, the team's 24 turnovers led to a bust.

No matter how you slice it, this was an ugly loss. Holy Cross isn't a terrible team—the Crusaders won 20 games last year and could win the Patriot League this year—but this isn't a team that a Top 25 program should ever lose to.

Harvard should turn things around, but this wasn't the start the Crimson needed to remain in the discussion about the best mid-major programs in the country.

Winner: Duke

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It's not easy to make impressive statements against Presbyterian and Fairfield, but the Duke Blue Devils certainly did.

We saw our fair share of blowouts in the first three days of the season, but only two of the 35 games involving ranked teams were decided by more than 47 points: Duke beating Presbyterian by 69 and Duke beating Fairfield by 50.

To an extent, it was gratuitous overkill. Quinn Cook didn't need to attempt 10 three-pointers in the 113-44 rout of Presbyterian. In the same game, Grayson Allen could have taken his foot off the gas instead of driving and scoring 11 points in the final five minutes.

Whether you hate Duke for running up the score or just hate Duke for being Duke, there's no denying that the Blue Devils put on a clinic.

They had 52 assists on 82 made field goals. They grabbed 29 offensive rebounds while holding their opponents to a combined total of 41 rebounds. The three freshmen in the starting lineup (Jahlil Okafor, Justise Winslow and Tyus Jones) combined to score 90 points with 21 assists and 28 rebounds while playing just over 50 percent of each game.

Though the Blue Devils didn't receive a single first-place vote in the preseason poll, they picked up four first-place votes in the second installment. They're still ranked fourth behind Kentucky, Arizona and Wisconsin, but they closed the gap from 68 votes to just 53.

Loser: Week 2 AP Poll

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Why even have a new poll four days into the season?

Zero ranked teams lost in the first three days of last season, and it's only because the preseason poll was actually an AP Top 26 that we had one lose this year.

Despite playing plenty of exhibition games and not-so-secret scrimmages, great teams open the season with cupcakes all the time.

As a result, hardly any of the voters changed their opinions about most teams.

Rick Bozich submitted the exact same ballot on Sunday night as he did in the preseason. Doug Haller moved Oklahoma up a couple spots and Connecticut down a few but left his No. 1 through No. 14 and No. 20 through No. 25 completely unchanged.

The only thing that Seth Davis changed about his ballot was dropping Harvard off from No. 20, moving 21 through 25 up one spot each and bringing Ohio State in at No. 25.

That isn't meant to be a negative statement about those voters but rather evidence of the fact that they shouldn't even be required to submit a second ballot this early in the season.

Winner: Oklahoma

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Month after month, we were left to wonder whether or not TaShawn Thomas would be ruled eligible to play this season for Oklahoma after transferring from Houston.

Big 12 projections, Top 25 rankings and preseason brackets were incomplete without some mention of the impact of the NCAA's forever-pending decision on Thomas.

At long last, the announcement came down late Saturday night that Thomas is eligible to play immediately—which he did, getting the start and playing 23 minutes against Southeastern Louisiana on Sunday.

In the preseason poll, Oklahoma was ranked 19th with 26.2 percent of possible votes. Thanks to a combination of the Thomas news and the poor showings by No. 17 Connecticut and No. 18 Michigan State in their first games of the season, the Sooners jumped one spot and received 29.1 percent of possible votes in week's poll.

Loser: Michigan State

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As mentioned in the intro, Harvard was the only ranked team to lose a game, but Michigan State was the only one to win a game by less than 10 points, narrowly defeating Navy by a score of 64-59.

Yes, it was the first game of the season for the Spartans. Yes, they joined Virginia as the only ranked teams with the guts to play a true road game in the first three days of the year.

But, really? Navy?

The Midshipmen had a 20-70 record over the past three seasons. The Boston Globe projected Navy to finish in dead last in the Patriot League, and it wasn't exactly alone in that assumption.

Some of the AP voters clearly took notice of Michigan State's effort to lose to what was expected to be one of the worst D-I basketball teams in the entire country.

Without actually losing a game, the Spartans dropped from 32.1 percent of possible votes in the preseason poll to just 27.7 percent of possible votes in Week 2, slipping from No. 18 to No. 19 in the process.

Winner: Kentucky

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It's not easy to get people to care about anything other than the NFL at 1 p.m. ET on Sundays in November, but Kentucky sure did have the Twitter-verse abuzz when it trailed 38-33 at the half against Buffalo.

Despite that early scare, though, the Wildcats went on to win the game by 19 points. Not only did they avoid the upset, but they remained the No. 1 team in the country.

They did lose a couple of votes in the process. They received 52 first-place votes in the preseason poll and fell to just 49 in Week 2's poll.

But it could've been worse. Duke won its two opening games by an average margin of 59.5 points. Wisconsin doubled its first opponent (62-31) and came one point away from doing the same in its second game (89-45). Arizona wasn't quite that dominant in wins over Mount St. Mary's and Cal State Northridge, but the West Coast Wildcats didn't give us anywhere near the scare Big Blue Nation did.

Still, the voters showed a strong belief in what John Calipari has put together at Kentucky. His platoon system came under a lot of fire, but it's clear that this team has a ton of talent and will be very difficult to beat.

Loser: George Washington

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In lieu of any other moves in the Top 25, we had to venture down into the "others receiving votes" category to find our final loser: George Washington.

The Colonials had a very impressive opening weekend. They slaughtered Grambling State before beating Rutgers by 17 points in a true road game. Their freshman from Tokyo (Yuta Watanabe) played pretty well, scoring 16 points while making three out of five three-point attempts and grabbing nine rebounds.

And yet, George Washington's vote count dropped from seven to five.

We don't think George Washington deserved to be in the Top 25 before the season began, but clearly a couple of voters did. So, how exactly did those voters watch the Colonials this week and decide that they're no longer as good as expected?

Granted, someone apparently forgot to vote—there were only 64 first-place votes. Maybe the person who failed to submit a ballot was George Washington's biggest believer. Until we know more about that lost ballot, though, we're forced to heap shame upon the voters who failed to stick to their guns.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.