Winners and Losers from the AP College Basketball Top 25 Rankings in Week 8

Kentucky and Duke will enter 2015 as the best college basketball teams in the country, at least as far as the latest Associated Press Top 25 is concerned.

Beyond those top two teams, though, things got a bit messy this week. It was a short week for hoops because of Christmas, but not short enough to keep Arizona, Louisville, Texas, Kansas, Wichita State and Washington from suffering a loss.

As a result, the gap between No. 3 and No. 8 is razor-thin, but the difference between the top eight teams and the rest of the country is nothing short of a chasm. No. 8 Arizona received 238 more votes than No. 9 Iowa State, but those two spots were separated by just 21 votes a week ago.

Many outlets—Bleacher Report included—will be posting projected NCAA tournament brackets to help ring in the new year. You can safely assume these top eight teams will be No. 1 and No. 2 seeds in those ballots.

In the other half of the Top 25, there wasn't a whole lot of movement—save for the necessary changes to make room for Washington's free-fall from No. 13. We do have one new team in this week's poll, though, making Georgetown this week's biggest winner.

Read on for the full list of teams that are thriving and teams that went diving in the latest AP Top 25.

Winner: Georgetown Hoyas

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Last Monday, Georgetown received 85 votes—enough to be "ranked" 26th in the nation.

The Hoyas played just one game this week and picked up arguably their best win of the season in come-from-behind fashion on a neutral court against Indiana. It was enough for them to finally make their debut in the Top 25 at No. 25 with 140 votes.

Kudos to TCU for winning its first 12 games, but were there ever people out there who thought TCU would win three out of five games on a neutral court against Georgetown? The Hoyas do have three losses, but they have already played five games against teams substantially better than anyone the Horned Frogs have played.

In the Bracket Matrix updated on Christmas Eve, all 17 brackets had Georgetown as a No. 11 seed or better—and that was before the game against Indiana. TCU, on the other hand, was only included in eight of the 17 brackets.

Loser: TCU Horned Frogs

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Did TCU deserve to be ranked last week?

We won't definitively say no, but there were certainly a lot of arguments against the Horned Frogs being considered the 25th-best team in the country for simply failing to lose a game against one of the weakest schedules in the country.

This week, they beat Grambling State by 41 points and did actually get a slight boost in votes from 120 to 132.

However, TCU dropped from the Top 25 because of the jump by Georgetown, putting an end to the potential battle between ranked teams when West Virginia comes to town on Saturday.

Who could have guessed seven weeks ago that sentence would ever be written?

Winner: The Bottom Half

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For most of the season, the story has been that the top 10-12 teams went another seven days without a loss while the bottom half of the AP Top 25 was riddled with chaos.

Evidently, they decided to flip the script for the holidays. Six of the Top 13 suffered a loss this week, while teams ranked 14-25 went a combined 15-0.

There were a couple of nail-biters—Baylor struggled with Southern, and Colorado State needed overtime to beat New Mexico State—but it was smooth sailing for the most part by the collection of teams that has had anything other than an easy go of things this year.

Oklahoma bounced back nicely from last week's loss to Washington, beating Weber State by 34 points and putting together a 39-0 run in the first half. Ohio State also responded very well to its loss to North Carolina by beating Miami (OH) and Wright State by a combined score of 193-110.

Loser: Washington Huskies

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Whoever said "There's no such thing as bad publicity" wasn't thinking about Washington losing a home game to Stony Brook in the final game of the week before AP voters submit their ballots.

Stony Brook is a quality mid-major team, but this was inexcusable. The Seawolves entered the game with an 0-6 record on the road. They were blown out by Cincinnati and Providence, and they most recently lost in overtime to Canisius.

Washington wasn't exactly the patron saint of offensive efficiency coming into the game, but 57 points in a 71-possession game is pretty bad—especially considering the opponent.

Gary Parrish isn't an AP voter, but he had Washington at No. 11 in his "Top 25 (and one)" before the loss, only to drop the Huskies out of his top 26 altogether. The AP was a bit kinder with its punishment, sending the Huskies down eight spots from No. 13 to No. 21.

Their next two games are on the road against California and Stanford. Depending on the half of the glass you see, that's either a chance to bounce right back or to dig an even deeper hole.

Winner: Iowa State Cyclones

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Iowa State hasn't played any games in the past seven days, but the Cyclones apparently had some really great practices as they jumped from No. 12 to No. 9 while on a bye.

In case it isn't obvious, that was tongue-in-cheek, but the Cyclones did get a nice Christmas gift in watching Kansas lose on Monday, Texas lose on Tuesday and Wichita State lose on Thursday. Because Nos. 9, 10 and 11 were upset, No. 12's vote count increased by more than 20 percent to jump three spots.

One could easily argue that Iowa State already deserved to be ranked in the Top 10.

Save for the surprising-at-the-time loss to Maryland back in November, Iowa State is 9-0 and beating opponents by an average score of 87.0-68.1. All nine wins were by double figures. That includes wins over Georgia State, Arkansas, Iowa and Alabama.

This is an extremely good offense that had one bad shooting night. The Cyclones shot 29.7 percent from the floor against Maryland, but they have made at least 46.4 percent of their shots in every other game.

Best of luck to the Big 12 teams hoping to slow them down.

Loser: Wichita State Shockers

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For a few weeks, it felt like Wichita State was on an island between teams we actually believed in and teams we were still feeling out. While the Top 10 was full of legitimate national title contenders, the Shockers were positioned at No. 11—almost out of respect for what they did last season rather than what they have looked like this year.

Outside of the comfortable win over Loyola Marymount, they had been struggling for a couple of weeks, winning games against Seton Hall, Detroit, Alabama and Hawaii by single-digit margins. At long last, it finally resulted in a loss to George Washington in the championship game of the Diamond Head Classic.

The Colonials aren't exactly a bad team, but they were 0-3 against KenPom.com Top 100 teams before the tournament in Hawaii. They shouldn't have had any business winning a neutral-court game against the 11th-best team in the country, and the AP voters agreed.

Wichita State fell five spots to No. 16 and will thus enter Missouri Valley Conference play in nearly the exact same national standing as No. 23 Northern Iowa.

Winner: Wisconsin Badgers

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After briefly dropping out of the Top Five, the Badgers are back at No. 4—where they arguably belonged all along—thanks to losses by Louisville and Arizona.

Wisconsin won back-to-back games this week by a score of 68-56. Nigel Hayes led the way at California with 17 points and 13 rebounds. Frank Kaminsky carried the team against Buffalo with 25 points, 11 rebounds and six blocks. Sam Dekker was no slouch in either game, tallying a combined 27 points and 12 rebounds.

The Badgers have just one loss on the season, and it came against the second-best team in the country in a game where Dekker was dealing with an ankle injury and Hayes played sparingly due to foul trouble.

When their frontcourt is healthy and able to stay on the court, could it be that the Badgers are the biggest challenger to Kentucky?

Loser: Kansas Jayhawks

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Kansas wasn't the only ranked team to suffer a loss last week, but the Jayhawks were dealt the most embarrassing blow by far.

Just two days after beating Lafayette by 27 points and finally getting a good game (23 points, 10 rebounds) out of Kelly Oubre Jr., they lost by 25 to Temple and looked like a gigantic mess.

Against Lafayette, Kansas scored 96 points and had 22 assists against five turnovers.

Against Temple, Kansas scored 52 points and had eight assists against 17 turnovers. Temple is a good team that is only getting better with Jesse Morgan and Devin Coleman finally eligible after sitting out the first semester, but there's no chance the Owls are that good.

Kansas simply remains a young and wildly inconsistent team. At their best, the Jayhawks are a Top 10 team capable of making the Final Four. At their worst, they barely even look like they belong in this year's NCAA tournament.

They somehow only dropped three spots to No. 13, but it may only take one more bad loss before the AP voters decide they've been fooled enough.

Winner: Utah Utes

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It was quite the atrocious week for the Pac-12.

Arizona suffered its first loss of the season to UNLV. Washington now also has a one in the loss column thanks to the aforementioned loss to Stony Brook.

UCLA lost to Alabama.

Colorado suffered two losses to George Washington and Hawaii in the Diamond Head Classic. California had a quality loss to Wisconsin on Monday before a not-even-remotely-quality loss to CSU Bakersfield on Sunday.

But the Utes survived the week unscathed and were rewarded for losses by four of the five teams previously ranked directly ahead of them.

Moreover, the Utes are winners for perhaps finally getting a breakout game from Brekkott Chapman. The freshman forward had 22 points without committing a single foul against South Dakota State in helping Delon Wright (17 points, 10 assists, six rebounds, two steals) pace the team to victory.

Utah's vote count jumped from 796 to 956, good enough to carry a No. 10 ranking into the start of Pac-12 play.

Loser: Xavier Musketeers

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ESPN's College Basketball Power Index (BPI) is loaded with familiar faces up top. Just like the AP Top 25, Kentucky, Duke, Virginia and Wisconsin are all ranked in the top four of the BPI.

Of the top 25 teams in BPI, 24 received at least 100 votes in the latest AP Top 25.

Xavier is the odd man out.

Ranked No. 20 in BPI, No. 29 in KenPom and No. 30 in Sagarin, the 9-3 Musketeers didn't get a single vote of confidence from the AP, despite a strong 14-point win over Florida Gulf Coast on Sunday afternoon.

To be fair, those computer rankings are due to some fortunate scheduling. Xavier hasn't played any particularly great teams this year, but the Musketeers haven't exactly been filling up on cupcakes, either.

They do have three losses, but all nine of their wins are by double digits against moderately respectable opponents.

Led by senior Matt Stainbrook and freshman Trevon Bluiett, the Musketeers offense is among the most efficient in the nation. Xavier is flying pretty well below the radar at the moment, but that could change in a hurry with a win over Georgetown on New Year's Eve.