Winners and Losers from the AP College Basketball Top 25 Rankings in Week 14

In what has become commonplace during this college basketball season, more than half of last week's Associated Press Top 25 teams suffered at least one loss during that span, leading to plenty of winners and losers in this week's AP Top 25.

The majority of the movement was confined to the bottom half of the poll—though Virginia did reclaim its spot at No. 2 in the country behind still-undefeated and unanimously No. 1 Kentucky.

Oklahoma State and Arkansas were the new additions to this week's Top 25, replacing Georgetown and Texas. Outside of those teams, the biggest movers come courtesy of the Big 12, with Oklahoma moving up four spots and West Virginia dropping six.

Read on for more on this week's biggest winners and losers.

Winner: Big 12 Trio

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This entire slideshow could have realistically been about the Big 12, as it was moving week in the nation's most complete conference. But let's save a few slides for some other teams by lumping three Big 12 teams together as this week's biggest winner.

Oklahoma and Baylor were nothing short of dominant last week, as the Sooners and Bears took turns annihilating TCU and West Virginia, winning their four games by a combined total of 69 points.

Per usual, Buddy Hield had a great week for Oklahoma, tallying 37 points and 15 rebounds between the two wins. For Baylor, it was Rico Gathers who reigned supreme, racking up 31 points and 33 rebounds.

Baylor jumped three spots this week to No. 16, and Oklahoma moved up four spots to No. 17.

But those blowouts pale in comparison to the close wins Oklahoma State had.

The Cowboys opened the week with a road win over Texas. The Longhorns have been in free-fall mode for a few weeks now and got limited minutes from Jonathan Holmes and no minutes from Javan Felix—both of whom are recovering from concussions—but that still reads like an impressive win.

More importantly, they backed up that win with a colossal home victory over Kansas on Saturday. The Jayhawks came out flatter than a pancake in the second half, but Oklahoma State simply wanted it more.

One person who especially wanted to win was junior shooting guard Phil Forte. Fighting the flu, Forte didn't even participate in the team's shootaround leading up to the game. In his own words to Rustin Dodd of The Kansas City Star: "I really didn't think I was going to play. When I woke up (Saturday) morning, it was the worst I've felt in the last two days."

Yet he was able to give his team 29 minutes, scoring 13 points and recording three steals in the season-defining win. Le'Bryan Nash (35 points and 10 rebounds) and Anthony Hickey (30 points and six steals) were also pivotal in the two wins.

The Cowboys received just two votes last Monday, but they picked up enough this week to jump to No. 21 in the new AP Top 25.

Loser: West Virginia Mountaineers

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For every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction. In order for Baylor and Oklahoma to destroy West Virginia, the Mountaineers really had to take it on the chin this week.

Our concern, though, is less about the Mountaineers dropping six spots to No. 21 in this week's poll—they could arguably be considered winners for not plummeting further—and more about the fact that it's going to make people start to really inspect this team and not like what they find.

The cat's out of the bag for West Virginia. This is a very aggressive team—both on the offensive glass and in leading the nation in defensive turnover percentage—but it isn't a particularly skilled team.

The Mountaineers are shooting 29.4 percent from three-point range, 46.7 percent from inside the arc and 65.7 percent from the free-throw line as a team. According to KenPom.com, their national ranks in those categories are 316th, 215th and 288th, respectively.

They're not going to beat you with their shooting. They want to beat you by forcing you into enough mistakes to make up for their poor shooting.

That's been a great formula against weak teams without much of an interior presence that also commit a lot of turnovers, but they've been exposed over the past few weeks. Feed the big men in the paint and protect the defensive glass, and you can beat West Virginia by a comfortable margin.

After Wednesday's home game against Kansas State, WVU's remaining schedule consists of two games against Kansas, road games against Iowa State, Baylor and Oklahoma State and home games against Texas and Oklahoma State.

Good luck.

Winner: Arkansas Razorbacks

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Roughly 10 AP voters tweet out their ballots each Sunday night or Monday morning, and many of them expressed a similar sentiment about it being very difficult to find deserving teams beyond the top 16—hence the giant gap of 232 votes between No. 16 Baylor and No. 18 Butler in votes received.

However, more than enough voters agreed on Arkansas that the Razorbacks were able to get back into the AP Top 25 this week at No. 24.

They bounced back nicely from a Jan. 31 one-point loss at Florida with a pair of 20-point home wins over South Carolina and Mississippi State.

More impressive than the margin of victory was their defensive intensity. The last time they played consecutive home games, they gave up 96 points to Ole Miss and 91 points to Alabama, but they forced 44 turnovers against the Gamecocks and Bulldogs in holding them to a combined total of 96 points on 145 possessions.

On the offensive end of the court, Bobby Portis was the star, as usual. He had 37 points and 24 rebounds between the two games, pacing an offense that was otherwise pretty anemic.

The bigger test for the Razorbacks comes on Saturday when they travel to Ole Miss. They are 15-1 at home but 3-4 on the road, including losses to Clemson and Tennessee and a near-loss to Missouri. They need another good win away from home to really convince us that they've finally turned the corner.

Loser: Georgetown Hoyas

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Georgetown has done an excellent job of avoiding bad losses, but the Hoyas have now been swept by both Providence and Xavier.

Worse yet, they retroactively added an asterisk to their marquee win over Villanova by losing the rematch with the Wildcats by a 16-point margin on Saturday.

We're in a constant state of trying to figure out the hierarchy of teams in the Big East. A week ago, it was Villanova on top with Butler, Georgetown and Providence not far behind.

Now, though, the Hoyas have clearly slipped below those two teams and could even be considered the conference's fifth-best team behind Xavier—considering they're 0-2 against the Musketeers with both games decided by double digits.

Now with eight losses and their best nonconference wins over Indiana and Florida looking less impressive by the day, the Hoyas have vanished from the AP Top 25 with little hope of returning.

Winner: Butler Bulldogs

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Butler has taken full advantage of a relatively easy stretch in its schedule over the past few weeks, jumping four spots to No. 18 in this week's AP poll.

Since their two-point loss at Georgetown, the Bulldogs have played four out of five games at home and played their lone road game against the team that's next to last in the Big East standings, Marquette.

They went 5-0 in those battles. Home games against Seton Hall, St. John's and DePaul were each won by double-digit margins. 

Defense has been their calling card for most of the season, but they exploded for some points last week against the Red Storm and Blue Demons.

Kellen Dunham led the way in both games, scoring a combined 45 points. Roosevelt Jones (33) and Andrew Chrabascz (30) each poured in their fair share of buckets, too, as the Bulldogs scored 83 against DePaul and 85 against St. John's.

They couldn't have picked a better time to be playing their best basketball of the season, either. They have a huge home game against Villanova on Saturday. A win there would put Butler in a tie for first place in the Big East and very much in the discussion for a No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament.

Loser: VCU Rams

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VCU was our biggest loser last week, and the Rams were back in the mix for that dishonor again in this week's AP Top 25. This should go without saying, but it's generally not a good thing to be considered a loser in back-to-back weeks.

But how could they not be? They suffered their worst loss of the season (Jan. 31 vs. Richmond) and then did it again last week, dropping a road game against St. Bonaventure.

To be fair, Briante Weber is out for the year, and Treveon Graham did not play because of an ankle injury that he reaggravated in the game against George Mason on Wednesday. If Wisconsin got a mulligan for losing to Rutgers without Frank Kaminsky and Traevon Jackson, we should be willing to overlook this transgression by VCU.

The AP voters did not do that, though, dropping the Rams another two spots to No. 20 this week. You get the feeling that they would have been kicked completely to the curb if there were viable options for replacing them.

Winner: The Little Guys

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With so many teams playing like they want no part of a spot in the AP Top 25, the minor-conference juggernauts are finally sneaking into a surprising number of ballots.

AP voter Mark Berman detailed in his blog why he placed which teams in which spots on his ballot. He had Stephen F. Austin at No. 24 and said about the No. 25 spot, "While I wait for WVU, Maryland, Georgetown, Texas, SMU, Cincinnati or Arkansas to get some more wins, I decided to give this spot, at least for now, to Murray State."

Seth Davis also has both Stephen F. Austin and Murray State on his ballot this week, at Nos. 23 and 24, respectively.

In total, the Lumberjacks received 22 votes and finished in 29th place, and the Racers took 31st place with 20 votes.

Since Nov. 30, those two teams have won a combined 35 consecutive games. Beating up on the likes of Austin Peay and Central Arkansas is nothing to brag about, but at a certain point, suffering no losses for more than two months makes them look better than the middling power-conference teams who can't seem to string together three straight wins.

Loser: Maryland Terrapins

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Hey, remember when Maryland was almost in the discussion for a No. 1 seed? That was fun.

The Terrapins have now lost three consecutive road games, each by a margin of at least 16 points.

We were willing and able to forgive the lopsided losses to Indiana and Ohio State because the Hoosiers and Buckeyes simply caught fire from three-point range, shooting a combined 64.1 percent from beyond the arc.

But what's up with scoring two points in the first 9:50 against Iowa on Sunday? Maryland committed eight turnovers before making its second field goal and allowed the Hawkeyes to shoot 71.0 percent from two-point range in the game.

With all due respect to Iowa, this game was a statement that Maryland isn't anywhere near as good as we once thought. The Terrapins only dropped two spots to No. 19, but they've lost a lot of confidence points over the past few weeks.

Winner: Utah Utes

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There wasn't a ton of movement in the top half of this week's AP poll, but the Utes benefited nicely from losses by the five teams previously ranked directly ahead of them.

None of those losses were bad. No. 8 Kansas lost a road game in Big 12 play but also beat No. 11 Iowa State to make up for it—and the Cyclones rebounded from that road loss to the conference leader by destroying Texas Tech.

No. 9 Louisville and No. 12 North Carolina each lost to Virginia, while No. 10 Notre Dame lost to Duke.

However, those losses opened up the door for Utah's second consecutive 28-point road beatdown to count for something.

For laying the smack down on Colorado for the second time this season, the Utes jumped two spots to No. 11 in advance of an important homestand against Stanford and California.

Loser: Gonzaga Bulldogs

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At this point in the year, it's hard to drop a spot without losing a game, but that's exactly what happened to Gonzaga.

Much of that equation was completely out of Mark Few's control. Virginia, Duke and Wisconsin each looked incredible last week in beating teams twice as good as anyone Gonzaga has played in the past two months.

But the part that the Bulldogs could control, they didn't.

They struggled early with both Santa Clara and San Francisco, committing an uncharacteristic amount of turnovers before eventually prevailing by double-digit margins that don't begin to tell the whole story.

Gonzaga had climbed all the way to No. 2 in last week's poll but didn't look anything like the second-best team in the country last week. Finding itself in a tight game against a team in the bottom half of a major conference is acceptable, but having trouble putting away teams in the bottom half of the WCC is grounds for concern.

The Bulldogs have been perilously hanging on to a projected No. 1 seed for the past few weeks, but the prevailing sentiment has been that they were just keeping the seat warm for if and when teams like Arizona, Duke, Kansas or Wisconsin decide to play like they actually want that spot. And unfortunately, Duke and Wisconsin did so last week, while the Zags looked less than stellar.

They dropped just one spot to No. 3, but they could be headed for a No. 2 seed in a few weeks.

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