Winners and Losers from the AP College Basketball Top 25 Rankings in Week 15

Compared to some of the chaos we've witnessed throughout the 2014-15 college basketball season, it was a pretty sedate week for Associated Press Top 25 winners and losers.

Louisville was the only team from last week's Top 11 that suffered a loss this week, but the Cardinals did experience a bit of a tumble in this week's poll, since that defeat came at home against an unranked team.

They weren't the only ranked ACC team to take one on the chin this week, though, as North Carolina was also blown out by unranked Pittsburgh over the weekend.

Elsewhere, Big 12 teams were barely penalized for losing games, Villanova was barely rewarded for winning a pair of huge road games and Kentucky came one step closer to a feat that hasn't been matched in 23 years.

All that and more in this week's AP Top 25 winners and losers.

Winner: Arkansas Razorbacks

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A terrifying thing happened for the rest of the college basketball world this week.

Arkansas remembered it is allowed to win games away from home.

For the past few months, the Razorbacks have essentially been a vicious dog chained to a pole: As long as you didn't venture into their vicinity, there wasn't any reason to be concerned about them. They were 15-1 at home but 3-4 away from home—one of the losses was to 15-10 Clemson, and one of the wins only transpired because 7-18 Missouri missed a pair of free throws in the closing seconds.

But after a 101-point game at Auburn and a one-point win over the Ole Miss team responsible for Arkansas' only home loss of the season, the Razorbacks are officially a threat to make a spirited run in the NCAA tournament.

They jumped six spots to No. 18 in this week's AP Top 25 in advance of games against Missouri and Mississippi State that shouldn't pose much of a problem.

Loser: Villanova Wildcats

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Welcome to the brutal world of voting logic.

As far as tournament resumes are concerned, Villanova just had one of the best weeks of any team this entire season. The Wildcats won consecutive road games against Butler and Providence, both of which rank in the RPI Top 25.

There are only five teams in the country with multiple road wins against the RPI Top 25 this season—Duke, Kansas, Providence, Villanova and Virginia—so to get two of them in the span of three days is pretty ridiculous.

However, because none of last week's top five teams lost a game, Villanova remains at No. 6 for another week. Heck, the Wildcats only gained eight votes from last week, which might be even more unfathomable than the wins they scored.

The AP voters didn't much care for their achievement, but hopefully Villanova fans can take solace in the fact that those wins will absolutely be noticed by the selection committee in less than a month.

Winner: Maryland Terrapins

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In back-to-back games this week, Maryland escaped by the hair on Melo Trimble's chinny chin chin.

The Terrapins first won a home game against Indiana when Yogi Ferrell missed a potential game-winning three-pointer that he could normally hit in his sleep, before subsequently missing a putback shot that could have sent the game to overtime.

Indiana's James Blackmon Jr. scored just five points on 14 shots, yet the Hoosiers never trailed by more than six and tied the game multiple times in the final minutes.

Then, over the weekend, Maryland won by one possession at Penn State, thanks in large part to what Nittany Lions head coach Pat Chambers called after the game "the worst call I've ever seen in my entire life."

Bill Walton throws outlandish phrases like that around all the time when he's announcing games, but it might actually be true in Chambers' case. Jordan Dickerson was called for an offensive foul for being tackled by Evan Smotrycz while trying to set a screen right in front of an official.

Whether there was an officiating gaffe or not, Maryland prevailed once again and jumped three spots to No. 16 for being the only team ranked No. 16-23 last week that didn't suffer at least one loss.

Loser: Louisville Cardinals

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Coming into this past week, the best thing about Louisville's resume was probably that the Cardinals didn't have anything remotely resembling a bad loss. They had been beaten four times, but losing at home to Duke and Kentucky and losing at North Carolina and Virginia is far from inexcusable.

But now they have a home loss to North Carolina State, and it wasn't pretty.

Everything about the game was quite atypical for the Cardinals. They recorded just two steals, they were out-rebounded by 10, they gave up 74 points and Terry Rozier and Montrezl Harrell combined for 14 points.

All things considered, it's kind of surprising they only lost by nine. Just about everything that could have gone wrong did, so they could have easily lost by 30.

However, that's more concerning than comforting, and the AP voters punished Louisville for reintroducing the Wolfpack to the bubble. The Cardinals dropped three spots to No. 12.

Winner: Big 12

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Because the AP voters are required to rank 25 teams, members of the Big 12 seem to have more lives than a junkyard cat.

In explaining why he kept Baylor at No. 13 for a second straight week, AP voter Rick Bozich wrote, "The Bears went 0-2 last week, losing to Oklahoma State and Kansas, but flaws abound for any team outside the Top 10."

That's what the polls have been reduced to. Back-to-back losses are disregarded because everyone has warts. Thanks in part to Bozich keeping the Bears in the same spot, they only dropped four rungs to No. 20 this week.

It wasn't just Baylor that benefited from this logic either.

Iowa State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and West Virginia each lost one game last week without paying much of a price for it. The Cyclones and Sooners didn't move from their respective spots at No. 14 and No. 17, and the Cowboys and Mountaineers each dropped just one spot.

What's more, voters rewarded Texas for winning home games against TCU and Texas Tech—unarguably the easiest two games on every Big 12 team's schedule. The Longhorns ranked third among others receiving votes a week ago but jumped up to No. 26 this week.

Loser: Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks

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In 29 years as a D-I school, Stephen F. Austin has never been ranked in the AP poll, but this could have finally been the week.

After going nearly three months without a loss, the Lumberjacks climbed all the way to 29th place in last week's rankings. The 26th-place team (Iowa) lost twice and the 27th-place team (Providence) lost a home game to Villanova, meaning that Stephen F. Austin should have been one of the primary teams to benefit from the losses suffered by ranked VCU, West Virginia, Oklahoma State and Ohio State.

The only problem is the Lumberjacks endured a worse loss than any of those teams, falling to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on Saturday night.

Regardless of who the opponent was, though, they were incessantly one loss away from disappearing from our radar—both the AP Top 25 radar and the NCAA tournament at-large radar. Stephen F. Austin didn't have any great wins, but we had to pay this team some attention for going so long without a loss.

Now that the loss has occurred, the Lumberjacks didn't receive a single vote this week.

However, one Cinderella's loss is another's gain. With Stephen F. Austin out of the picture, Murray State moves up to No. 29 in the AP Top 25 and becomes the lone mid-major team contending for an at-large bid.

Winner: Kentucky Wildcats

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It's kind of hard for a team to be considered a winner when it was already unanimously No. 1 in the country, but Kentucky has nearly accomplished something we haven't seen in more than two decades.

Not since Duke in 1991-92 has a team been ranked No. 1 in each and every AP poll of the season, but after surviving the road scare against LSU this past Tuesday, the Wildcats are almost there.

And after responding to that close battle with a 34-point thrashing of South Carolina on Saturday, there's almost no reason to believe they'll be unable to seal the deal.

At this point, Kentucky could probably even lose a game and still remain ranked No. 1—provided that loss doesn't come at the hands of Auburn or Mississippi State. However, it's looking increasingly unlikely that the Wildcats will enter the NCAA tournament with anything other than a zero in the loss column.

Loser: North Carolina Tar Heels

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North Carolina had an entire week to prepare for its road game against Pittsburgh, but you certainly wouldn't know it from the end result.

The Panthers shot 64.9 percent from the field and recorded 30 assists in beating the Tar Heels by a score of 89-76.

And really, it should have been much worse. Pittsburgh led by 23 points with less than three minutes remaining before North Carolina went on a small, irrelevant run to make the final look a little more respectable.

Make no mistake about it, though. This was a bloodbath.

The Tar Heels have now lost three of their last four games and are rapidly losing their grip on a protected seed (No. 4 or better) in the NCAA tournament. They also dropped three spots to No. 15 in this week's AP Top 25.

A win over archrival Duke on Wednesday night would go a long way toward righting the ship, but a loss would make their remaining trek an even steeper one.

Winner: SMU Mustangs

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Outside of the Top 10, the college basketball world is filled to the gills with teams insistent on enduring at least one bad loss per month—but SMU isn't one of them.

The Mustangs have not lost to anyone other than Cincinnati since November and have ascended to first place in the American Athletic Conference standings and No. 21 in the AP Top 25.

More impressive than the lack of losses, though, has been the style of the wins. The Mustangs don't bank on three-pointers or flair to win games. They simply outwork their opponents inside the arc night in and night out.

Only once in the past 17 games have the Mustangs allowed an opponent to score more than 62 points. They haven't had any of the absurd defensive efforts that Virginia and Kentucky have had in holding opponents to less than 40 points, but SMU consistently holds its competition to scores in the 50s.

This is critical, because the Mustangs have virtually no perimeter offense. They have attempted a grand total of 26 three-pointers over their last three games.

But it's working because Yanick Moreira, Markus Kennedy, Ben Moore and Cannen Cunningham have been so valuable in the paint.

We'll always wonder how good SMU could have been with Emmanuel Mudiay, but this team has been playing some great basketball over the past several weeks.

Loser: Butler Bulldogs

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The Bulldogs only played one game this week, and they put up one heck of a fight at home against Villanova. If Darrun Hilliard had not shot 8-of-13 from three-point range for the Wildcats, Butler likely would have pulled off the upset.

But even though Villanova's win apparently wasn't impressive enough to improve its national standing, it was evidently a bad enough loss to drop Butler one spot to No. 19 in this week's poll.

The bigger loss, however, was the news that Gary Parrish first reported for CBSSports.com on Sunday afternoon: Sophomore forward Andrew Chrabascz broke his hand during the game and will be out for two to four weeks.

This is a pretty huge loss for the Bulldogs. They rely very heavily on their starting five. According to Sports-Reference.com, Butler's starters have averaged a combined 166.4 minutes per game in conference play, accounting for 81.6 percent of possible minutes.

This likely means more playing time for Kelan Martin, Austin Etherington and Tyler Wideman—none of whom has posted anything close to the offensive efficiency numbers Chrabascz has.

It's not as catastrophic as VCU losing Briante Weber a few weeks ago, but don't be surprised if Butler struggles to find its way until Chrabascz returns.

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