Winners and Losers from the AP College Basketball Top 25 Rankings in Week 9
The first men's basketball AP Top 25 of 2015 has been released. The Top Five remains unchanged, but things got a little topsy-turvy beyond that.
The first weekend of January has become predictably unpredictable in recent seasons. No team has been safe this season, but that was especially true for teams playing their first road game against a conference opponent this week.
Nine teams from last Monday's AP Top 25 suffered losses this week—two of those teams lost twice—so there was a lot of movement in today's poll.
Seton Hall, VCU, Arkansas and Old Dominion each jumped into the Top 25 while Washington, Georgetown, Northern Iowa and Colorado State fell by the wayside.
Read on for the full list of this week's winners and losers.
Winner: Old Dominion Monarchs
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Thanks to all of the losses by the teams previously ranked Nos. 20-28, Old Dominion finally got some love in this week's AP Top 25.
It didn't hurt that the Monarchs picked up a respectable road win over Charlotte, either.
With that game now in the rear-view mirror, the road game against UTEP on Valentine's Day might be the only thing standing between Old Dominion and a 29-1 record at the start of the Conference USA tournament.
Part of that is because the vast majority of the conference is pretty terrible, but Old Dominion already deserved our respect for winning games against VCU, LSU and Georgia State. Much like Cincinnati and Northern Iowa, this is a slow-paced team that plays solid defense while doing enough on offense to get by.
More importantly, the Monarchs extended their winning streak to nine games during a week in which nobody was safe.
They earned enough 24th- and 25th-place votes to secure the No. 25 spot in this week's poll—the first AP ranking in school history.
Loser: Washington Huskies
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It's never good to be a loser in consecutive weeks, but bad things happen when you lose back-to-back games you should have won.
Eight days ago, Washington was undefeated and on top of the world. Our Top 25 posted a day earlier than usual last week, and we had Washington at No. 12. The Huskies responded to that vote of confidence with an awful home loss to Stony Brook on Dec. 28, dropping from No. 13 to No. 21 in the AP Top 25 the following morning.
They had a great chance to rebound in a road game against a California team that was (and still is) struggling, but they allowed the Golden Bears to score 81 points in an upset win bookended by home losses to Washington State and CSU Bakersfield.
Washington further compounded the error by letting a late lead slip away at Stanford on Sunday night—an understandable loss under normal circumstances, but a win the Huskies really needed in order to prove they're ready to compete in conference.
Just like that, they went from a likely Sweet 16 candidate to a three-loss team hoping that wins over Oklahoma and San Diego State will be enough to keep them on the right side of the bubble.
The Huskies dropped from No. 21 to just 13 votes.
Winner: Seton Hall Pirates
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About two weeks ago, Seton Hall was on the verge of cracking into the AP Top 25. The Pirates were 9-1 with an understandable loss at Wichita State. Not only were they playing well as a team, but things were finally starting to click for super freshman Isaiah Whitehead.
But then Seton Hall lost by 18 points at Georgia and found out a few days later that Whitehead would be out for a few weeks with a stress fracture in his foot.
In less than a week's time, the Pirates went from a quality team that could surprise us in the NCAA tournament to a struggling club that might crumble to pieces in Big East play.
Naturally, they came out and immediately won consecutive home games against St. John's and Villanova—two teams who entered conference play with a combined record of 23-1. In Whitehead's absence, senior guard Sterling Gibbs had 45 points and 12 assists in the pair of upsets.
Not a single person voted for Seton Hall last week, but the Pirates picked up 448 votes this week to make their debut in the poll at No. 19. It's their highest ranking since January 2001.
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Loser: Rest of the Big East
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Over the past six seasons, DePaul has a Big East record of 10-98. The Blue Demons haven't won four conference games in the same season since 2007-08. They entered this conference season on a six-game losing streak, including a loss to Loyola Marymount and a 31-point loss to Oregon State.
So, yeah, a 2-0 record for DePaul means it was a pretty rough week for the Big East.
Xavier picked up a nice 17-point win over Georgetown on New Year's Eve. It probably would have been noteworthy enough to propel the Musketeers into this week's poll if they hadn't lost to DePaul three days later.
Similarly, Providence nullified a nice win over Creighton with a bad loss to Marquette.
Georgetown was ranked No. 25 a week ago, but the Hoyas are now on the outside looking in after the aforementioned loss to Xavier.
Villanova's perfect season came to an end at the hands of Seton Hall—despite a remarkable 19 points and 24 rebounds from Daniel Ochefu.
St. John's had the worst showing of all, though. Previously one of the best defenses in the nation, the Red Storm allowed 151 points in 125 possessions at Seton Hall and at home against Butler.
They lost both games they played and also lost a key player when point guard Rysheed Jordan took a mysterious and indefinite leave of absence, though, our Jason King reports he'll be back soon. The sophomore lost his starting job at the end of November, but he was still a huge factor, playing more than 26 minutes per game off the bench.
One week ago, St. John's was No. 15 in the country and well on its way to just its second NCAA tournament appearance since 2002. Now, the Johnnies are down to No. 24, 0-2 in conference play, temporarily shorthanded and likely trying to fight through a "Not this again" mentality after opening Big East play with an 0-5 record in 2013-14.
Winner: VCU Rams
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The week of Christmas was an atypically stable one for the bottom half of the AP Top 25. Not a single team ranked Nos. 14-25 suffered a single loss.
Those teams made up for lost time this week.
As previously mentioned, No. 15 St. John's lost a pair of games. Nos. 20-25 each lost a game as well. Even No. 26 (TCU) and No. 28 (San Diego State) suffered losses, leaving No. 27 (VCU) as something of an inevitable winner.
It wasn't a particularly challenging or spectacular week for Virginia Commonwealth. The Rams won a home game against previously 6-7 Cleveland State by just a nine-point margin before forcing approximately one million turnovers against annual A-10 bottom-feeder Fordham.
However, it's been clear for a few weeks that the AP voters have just been looking for a good excuse to put VCU back in the poll. The Rams played one of the more challenging nonconference schedules in the country, dropping games against Villanova, Virginia and Old Dominion—teams who are a combined 38-2 at the moment.
Not only are those "quality losses," but VCU has gotten back to imposing its trademark will on defense. The Rams have averaged 12.1 steals per game since the beginning of December. They will carry a six-game winning streak and the No. 20 ranking into an intriguing battle with Davidson on Wednesday night.
Loser: Teams That Entered Week Undefeated
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Well, it wasn't a bad week for every team that was undefeated last Monday. Kentucky didn't play and Duke comfortably won a trio of games.
The other four, however, went through a bit of a rough patch.
TCU was the only unranked undefeated team, but the Horned Frogs proved they didn't belong in the Top 25 by losing at home by double digits to a West Virginia team whose best player was out with the flu. Even though there were some lowly ranked teams that suffered worse losses, TCU's vote count dropped from 132 to 33.
Colorado State also fell from the ranks of the undefeateds, suffering a road loss to a New Mexico team that hadn't shown much of anything this season. Yes, Stanton Kidd injured his ankle early in the game, but we're talking about an opponent that lost to Grand Canyon University less than two weeks ago. The Rams went from No. 24 to receiving just 31 votes.
Villanova's perfect season ended at the hands of the same team that ended the Wildcats' bid for a No. 1 seed in last year's NCAA tournament, as Sterling Gibbs and Seton Hall pulled off the upset. Villanova dropped from No. 6 to No. 8.
Lastly, Virginia remained undefeated, but it wasn't pretty.
The Cavaliers had trouble keeping Davidson off the scoreboard before needing double overtime to beat a Miami team that had been blown out in its last three games against the RPI Top 200. Virginia retains its No. 3 ranking, but its margin over No. 4 Wisconsin dropped slightly from 62 votes to 49.
Winner: SEC's Also-Rans
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We handed the 2015 SEC regular-season championship to Kentucky on a silver platter about nine months ago. That foregone conclusion hasn't exactly changed, but we're finally getting a sense for which teams are most likely to join the Wildcats in the semifinals of the SEC tournament.
LSU had a horrible start to the season. The Tigers needed overtime to win a home game against Texas Tech before losing neutral-court games to Old Dominion and Clemson.
Turns out they just needed a couple of weeks to adjust to life without five of their seven leading scorers from 2013-14, because the Tigers have won eight straight since Thanksgiving—most of them in convincing fashion.
Arkansas, on the other hand, got out to a hot start before one rough week on the road against Iowa State and Clemson. We're still waiting to see if the Razorbacks can win away from home, but they are 10-0 in Bud Walton Arena with each of those wins coming by a margin of at least 14 points.
Neither faced anything close to a challenge this week at home against Southern Miss, Savannah State and Utah Valley, but simply not losing was good enough to improve one's stock in what was a slightly chaotic week around the country.
Arkansas jumped from 27 votes to the No. 24 ranking while LSU improved from seven votes to 50—good for 29th in the poll.
Meanwhile, South Carolina picked up a huge neutral-court win over Iowa State on Saturday. The Gamecocks extended their winning streak to seven games and made their season debut in the "Others receiving votes" portion of the poll with 16 of them.
Throw in Alabama's win over UCLA and Georgia's road win over Kansas State and it ended up being a pretty solid week for SEC teams not named Florida—the Gators lost to both Florida State and Connecticut.
Loser: Iowa State Cyclones
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After losing to Maryland by a score of 72-63, Iowa State went out and won seven straight games by double-digit margins, scoring at least 83 points in six of those seven games. We finally bought into the Cyclones as a potential Final Four team that could put an end to Kansas' streak of 10 straight Big 12 titles.
Then they scored 60 points in a loss to South Carolina on Saturday in Brooklyn.
Iowa State shot 1-of-18 from three-point range and 57.6 percent from the free-throw line. As Rob Dauster of NBCSports.com tweeted, the Cyclones left all sorts of points on the floor and still had a chance to win.
You could commend them for playing good enough defense to not get blown out on that type of awful shooting night, but it's simultaneously discouraging that this high-octane offense has been shut down twice before the start of conference play.
With all due respect to South Carolina's stingy defense, running and gunning has been Iowa State's game for the past several seasons. If the Cyclones can't execute their bread and butter against a middle-of-the-SEC team, how can they expect to do so against the upper tier of the Big 12?
We're clearly not the only concerned party, as the AP voters drop-kicked Iowa State from No. 9 to No. 17.
Winner: Baylor Bears
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It's not easy to lose a game and actually move up a spot in the poll, but that's exactly what Baylor did this week. The Bears went from No. 22 to No. 21 after suffering a loss at Oklahoma.
They did play well, and we do feel they deserve to be ranked, but this is merely a microcosm of how difficult it was to fill out a top 25 ballot this week.
Had Baylor suffered this loss one week ago, it would have fallen out of the Top 25 without a doubt. But because there is such a short supply of teams actually worthy of votes today, the Bears remain in the Top 25—giving the Big 12 six representatives in the poll for a second straight week.
We'll be curious to see how these six Big 12 teams are treated in the future, now that the precedent has been set that they won't be penalized for losing to one another.
This week alone, we will have Oklahoma at Texas, Kansas at Baylor and Iowa State at West Virginia, ensuring at least three losses by ranked Big 12 teams.
Loser: Iowa Hawkeyes
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It ended up being a pretty rough week for the state of Iowa.
Iowa State dropped eight spots, Northern Iowa dropped out of the Top 25 and Iowa didn't get the respect it deserved for an impressive road win over Ohio State. The Hawkeyes failed to crack the rankings, even though teams were falling out of the poll left and right.
Some teams struggle like crazy to win away from home, but Iowa has now won both of its true road games this season—a five-point win over North Carolina and a six-point win over Ohio State.
The victory over the Buckeyes was Iowa's only game this past week, and it could have been a lot uglier than the final margin suggests. The Hawkeyes had an outstanding first half and still led by a dozen with nine minutes remaining before Ohio State did exactly what it did earlier this season against Louisville and North Carolina in putting together a too-little-too-late run to lose by single digits.
As has been the case for most of the season, Jarrod Uthoff and Aaron White led the way with 18 points each. Between those stud forwards and big men Adam Woodbury and Gabriel Olaseni, Iowa just might have the best roster to go to war with Wisconsin.
We'll find out soon enough. The Hawkeyes play the Badgers twice before the end of January.
Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter at @kerrancejames.
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