Ranking the 10 Worst Losses so Far in the 2015-16 College Basketball Season

Not all losses are created equal. Some are much worse than others.

Four weeks into the 2015-16 college basketball season, we've seen some surprising results in terms of the teams that have come out on top as well as the final margin of victory in other games. It's early enough in the year where these results might eventually get swept under the rug, but not yet.

We've come up with the 10 worst losses of the season so far, ranked based on the surprising nature of the outcome and how bad it was for the losing team to fall the way it did.

10. Alabama State 85, Virginia Tech 82

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Buzz Williams' second season at Virginia Tech didn't get off to the greatest start, as the Hokies fell at home to a team from the lowly Southwestern Athletic Conference on Nov. 14. It didn't help that the Hokies led by 11 points in the first half and five at halftime before giving up 48 second-half points while missing 15 foul shots.

"If you score 82 points and shoot 40 free throws, you probably should win," Williams said, per the Associated Press (h/t ESPN.com).

Tech went 11-22 last season, but this year some improvement was expected. Since that loss, it has beaten the teams it's supposed to—including a 74-65 win at Radford, which beat Georgetown on the road to open the season—with the only losses coming to Northwestern and unbeaten Iowa State.

9. Washington 92, TCU 67

TCU went unbeaten in nonconference play in 2014-15, winning 13 games prior to Big 12 play against some awfully weak competition. The Horned Frogs have had a tougher go of it this year, sitting at 4-4 heading into Friday's game against Prairie View A&M.

They're at .500 because of a humbling trip to Seattle on Tuesday, a game they trailed by 34 points at halftime. The Frogs allowed a 26-4 run to end the first half.

TCU has been hampered by injuries this season, with top players Kenrich Williams and Chris Washburn yet to play so far. But without those standouts, the Frogs only lost by five to unbeaten SMU on Dec. 2.

8. Missouri State 64, Oklahoma State 63

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Travis Ford has led Oklahoma State to the NCAA tournament in five of his seven seasons, but only the first time in 2009 did the Cowboys win a game. The last two trips have seen them arrive as low seeds, the result of finishing below .500 in the Big 12, which is why Ford entered this season on the hot seat.

Another such finish in the conference can still lead to an NCAA tourney bid, but not if OK State drops home games to weak competition in the preseason.

Missouri State went 11-20 last season and came into Gallagher-Iba Arena on Dec. 5 with a 1-5 record. OK State, which had lost at home to in-state rival Tulsa three days earlier, only scored 20 points in the first half.

7. Duke 94, Indiana 74

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Indiana has already had a couple of candidates for this list in 2015-16, which doesn't bode well for the Hoosiers' chances of competing in the Big Ten or for Tom Crean's future in Bloomington.

A deep lineup full of experienced shooters and featuring a promising young big man, Indiana has the tools to be one of the top offensive teams in the country. It's shown that by shooting 54.3 percent, which is second-best in Division I.

It's the complete lack of defense that has done Indiana in to this point. The Hoosiers allowed 82 points to Wake Forest in the first game of the Maui Invitational and then got bulldozed by Duke in a high-profile matchup as part of the Big Ten/ACC Challenge.

Despite shooting 50.9 percent from the field, the Hoosiers allowed 52.9 percent shooting and 11 three-pointers. They also didn't make a basket in the first eight minutes of the second half, going from down nine at the half to down 23.

6. San Diego 53, San Diego State 48

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Outdoor basketball games have become all the rage the last few years, and San Diego took this up a notch by putting on a weeklong string of hoops-related activities inside the Petco Park baseball stadium. The featured attraction of the Bill Walton Basketball Festival pitted the city's two Division I programs together, and despite the unique venue it was expected to be another win for big brother San Diego State.

The upstart Toreros had other ideas and ended up adding to SDSU's frustrations this season.

In what Mark Zeigler of the San Diego Union-Tribune called “arguably (or maybe not arguably) the worst loss in the Steve Fisher era,” San Diego held SDSU to 13 first-half points and just 31.3 percent shooting overall. The Toreros, who began the year 0-5, ended a nine-game losing streak to the Aztecs.

SDSU, which is not really known for its offensive prowess under Fisher, has been particularly sluggish with the ball this season. Its other losses include a 49-43 home loss to Arkansas-Little Rock and a 72-50 setback to West Virginia in Las Vegas, a day after scoring 44 points in the second half to upset then-No. 14 California.

5. Western Illinois 69, Wisconsin 67

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It's quite evident now that Wisconsin is going to have a rough season, the first it's had under Bo Ryan since he took over the program in 2001-02. A home loss Wednesday to Milwaukee only furthered this point, one that began with a shocking loss in the Kohl Center on Nov. 13.

Wisconsin began the 2015-16 season ranked No. 17 in the Associated Press preseason poll, though that ranking was due more to Ryan's coaching ability than the fact the Badgers had lost three key starters and five of their top seven players from the national finalist team.

Nothing went right for Wisconsin in this opener. It only scored 23 points in the second half while shooting 35.5 percent overall. Meanwhile, the Badgers' normally stodgy defense allowed 54 percent shooting.

4. Northeastern 78, Miami (Florida) 77

After plowing through a strong field to win the Puerto Rico Tipoff, Miami leaped back into the Top 25 and gained the distinction of being the biggest early riser of the season. The Hurricanes, who had a similar hot start in 2014-15 but ended up not making the NCAA tournament field, were again picking up some buzz.

Then the 'Canes returned to the mainland, as well as to reality.

Miami's only loss so far came in its first game after the Puerto Rico tournament, on Nov. 27 against a solid Northeastern team that made the NCAA field last season but had graduated its leading scorer. Quincy Ford and the rest of the Huskies didn't care, taking a five-point halftime lead and then winning it on Ford's shot at the buzzer.

Last year's Miami team opened 8-0 with a win at Florida and a successful run through the field at the Charleston Classic, and then the calendar flipped to December and the bad losses started. First was a 13-point home loss to Green Bay, and then two weeks later Eastern Kentucky blew out the 'Canes 72-44 on their court.

Miami has taken care of business since the Northeastern loss, including another notching win against Florida, but upcoming games against Charleston, La Salle and Princeton are the kind it's been known to lose the last two seasons.

3. Charleston 70, LSU 58

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Thanks to superstar freshman Ben Simmons, LSU is going to spend much of this season in the spotlight. It didn't handle the attention well early on, losing to Marquette and North Carolina State in front of dozens of NBA scouts at the Legends Classic in Brooklyn.

Those were the only games against power-conference competition the Tigers would have until Dec. 29, which would give them more than a month to figure out a winning formula off the beaten path. But the first chance to fix what wasn't working went horribly wrong.

LSU's Nov. 30 trip to Charleston wasn't on national television, but that didn't prevent the Internet from keeping tabs on a game via grainy footage. Amid the snow and pixelation, LSU trailed 39-17 at the half and never got within seven points in the second half.

Simmons had 15 points and 18 rebounds but also seven turnovers.

2. Iowa State 83, Iowa 82

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The annual Iowa/Iowa State game is one of the great in-state rivalries in college basketball, and the results rarely disappoint. Iowa State had to make a major comeback two years ago to win at home, but after trailing by 20 points in the second half Thursday, the Cyclones another such comeback seemed impossible.

Then Hilton Magic happened, giving ISU the win to stay unbeaten while also handing Iowa a devastating loss when a key triumph seemed in the bag not much earlier.

“The Hawkeyes looked terrified in the game's final 10 minutes,” ESPN.com's Eamonn Brennan wrote. “Losing a game you led by 20 in the second half is a disaster, regardless of the opponent; it's even worse when it's Iowa State.”

Jarrod Uthoff had 30 first-half points but just two in the second half, while Peter Jok had 14 points in the first 5:04 of the second half and then only attempted (and missed) two more shots.

Oklahoma 78, Villanova 55

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It was a matchup of unbeaten teams, both of which had looked very impressive to this point in the season. The game took place at Bloch Arena in Honolulu, part of a doubleheader in conjunction with the 74th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, with survivors of that attack and other military veterans honored during breaks in the action.

Oklahoma lived up to its No. 7 ranking, draining six three-pointers in the first eight minutes and going 14-of-26 from long range. Villanova, though, looked nothing like the ninth-best team in the country.

“A night that will live in infamy for Villanova's offense,” Bleacher Report's Kerry Miller tweeted in reaction to the Wildcats shooting 31.7 percent overall and making just four of 32 three-pointers.

Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.