Winners and Losers of AP College Basketball Top 25 Poll in Week 7

It was a weekend fraught with upsets, but Michigan State, Kansas and Oklahoma survived to remain the top three teams in the men's college basketball AP Top 25 for a second straight week.

What started out as a very quiet week quickly devolved into unadulterated chaos with seven ranked teams suffering losses within a span of about nine hours on Saturday. These weren't back-end-of-the-Top 25 losses, either. Four teams in the Top 9 and a total of six teams in the Top 16 were hit with an L, resulting in all sorts of shake-up in the top two-thirds of the poll.

Duke and Kentucky will no doubt draw headlines as the biggest losers for both dropping out of the Top 10, but it's equally noteworthy that the Big East is a pretty big winner with four teams now ranked in the Top 17.

Very little changed in the bottom third of the new poll, but we did have two new arrivals in the AP Top 25 with Utah and South Carolina jumping in to replace UCLA and Connecticut.

Read on for the rest of this week's biggest winners and losers.

Winner: New Year's Eve

John Minchillo/Associated Press

College football owns New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. We won't even pretend to believe otherwise. But when you're in desperate need of something other than a final four hours of college football playoff hype, there are going to be a pair of incredible games played in the early afternoon on New Year's Eve.

There are still some hurdles to cross between now and then—the biggest of which is certainly Xavier's road game against Wake Forest this Tuesday—but if today's rankings hold true for a week, it'll be No. 6 Xavier at No. 17 Villanova at noon and No. 10 Providence at No. 9 Butler at 2:30 p.m. ET.

Perhaps somewhere along the way, there will be a slightly more incredible back-to-back pairing in the ACC or Big 12. However, we really couldn't ask for a better way to signal the start of the conference portion of the college basketball season.

Butler was the biggest winner of the week, soaring from No. 17 to No. 9 for beating former No. 9 Purdue. The Bulldogs shot miserably in the game, but they dominated the turnover battle, competed surprisingly well on the glass and completely shut down Purdue's backcourt offense. Purdue's Caleb Swanigan had 25 points, while Butler's leading scorer on the season (Kellen Dunham) scored just two, and Butler still managed to win the game.

Xavier was a pretty massive winner, too, jumping from No. 10 to No. 6, despite merely winning a home game against Auburn. As it turns out, No. 10 is a great place to be when Nos. 3, 4, 7 and 9 all decide to lose on the same day.

Elsewhere, Providence climbed four spots to No. 10 for eking out a home win over Rider while playing without Kris Dunn. And though Villanova dropped a few spots to No. 17, the Wildcats looked a whole lot better in their loss to Virginia than they did in their previous loss to Oklahoma.

It's easy to forget about the Big East in the "Best Conference in the Country" argument—especially with Georgetown dropping home games to minor conference teams left and right and St. John's playing about as well as an actual dumpster fire—but the top four teams in the Big East have to be considered serious candidates for the Elite Eight.

Loser: College Basketball's Royalty

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On the week before Christmas, tis the AP's decree:
The Top 10 is no place for Calipari or Krzyzewski.
Against unranked foes, Duke and Kentucky fell hard,
Despite some great play from Murray and Kennard.

One weakness that Duke couldn't possibly conceal
Was a glaring lack of frontcourt depth without Amile.
And Kentucky reaffirmed that aside from Jamal
Not a guy on the team knows how to shoot the ball.

Thus concludes our poor excuse for seasonal poetry, but the morale of the story is that both Duke and Kentucky suffered rather unforgivable losses and paid the price for it.

The Blue Devils played the better team and looked a bit better in the process, but the loss to Utah showed just how badly they're going to miss Amile Jefferson while he recovers from a fractured foot.

Chase Jeter played six minutes, and Sean Obi didn't step foot on the court. Instead, Brandon Ingram played 42 minutes at either the 4 or 5 and finished the game with a grand total of five rebounds. That's not going to cut it until Jefferson gets back, but unless Ingram does nothing but eat carbs and fats for the next two weeks, it's not like he's going to magically transform into a legitimate, conventional power forward.

The quality of the loss itself wasn't a big deal for the Blue Devils, but it revealed some massive concerns about this team in the immediate future, causing Duke to drop from No. 7 to No. 15.

Kentucky, on the other hand, just didn't play well in its loss to Ohio State. Jamal Murray was a beast, but everyone else struggled to some degree. There's no injury at play for the Wildcats, but it was a vivid reminder of how young and unpolished this roster is. They, too, plummeted considerably, falling from No. 4 to No. 12.

It actually hasn't been that long since neither Duke nor Kentucky was ranked in the Top 10 of the AP poll. It happened as recently as Feb. 3, 2014, when Duke was No. 11 and Kentucky was No. 18. Prior to the middle of that season, though, you have to go back to Nov. 19, 2007, to find the next-most recent occurrence.

Though it's plenty understandable, there's no denying it's bizarre to not see the Wildcats or Blue Devils in the Top 10.

Winner: Atlantic Coast Conference

ANDREW SHURTLEFF/Associated Press

Not only do 93.3 percent of the fanbases in the ACC enjoy a good old-fashioned Duke loss, but much of the rest of the conference had a pretty great week in the polls, to boot.

Virginia took care of business against Villanova on Saturday, climbing from No. 8 to No. 5 in the AP poll and ascending to No. 1 in KenPom.coms formula of the most efficient offenses in the country. It certainly bears mentioning that each of the top four teams and seven of the top 19 on that list hail from the ACC, so if you like efficient offense, you know which conference to watch for the next few months.

Right behind Virginia on that list and not far behind the Cavaliers in the AP Top 25 is North Carolina. The Tar Heels jumped four spots to No. 7 because of convincing wins over Tulane and UCLA this week. Playing without Kennedy Meeks (knee) for a few games, senior forward Brice Johnson has risen to the occasion, scoring at least 25 points in consecutive games after failing to top 16 in the first month of the season.

Miami also participated in the game of leapfrog, jumping from No. 15 to No. 13 after merely winning a home game against Charleston. It wasn't a week that will much help the Hurricanes' resume on Selection Sunday, but poll logic doesn't subscribe to RPI. Miami didn't lose. A bunch of other teams did. Ipso facto: Jump five spots.

Louisville moved up three spots to No. 16, though I fail to understand how the Cardinals aren't a Top 10 team. They're 9-1 with nine wins by a margin of at least 20 points and a four-point road loss against the No. 1 team in the country. We'll doubtlessly harp on Louisville's nonconference strength of schedule for the rest of the season, but how can you not be impressed by how this team has played? Perhaps a road win over Kentucky on Saturday will do the trick?

Finally, Pittsburgh gained a tiny bit of steam in the "Others receiving votes" category by throttling Davidson on a neutral court on Sunday. It was easily the Panthers' best win of the season, and enough AP voters took notice to bump their vote count from 12 to 16.

Loser: The Little Guys

Mel Evans/Associated Press

It seems we've reached the point in the season where a handful of minor-conference teams have asserted themselves ahead of their counterparts, officially being entertained as options for an at-large bid three months from now.

The problem is there are too many, and the voters can't agree on which one deserves the final spot in the AP Top 25.

Arkansas-Little Rock remains the most egregious omission, as the Trojans are one of the six remaining undefeated teams and the only one that isn't ranked. They have played five true road games, including wins over San Diego State, Tulsa and DePaul. They also beat Central Arkansas and Northern Arizona by a combined margin of 50 points this week. UALR should have been ranked a week ago, and now it's getting downright offensive to still see this team with only 14 votes.

The other big one is Monmouth. The Hawks aren't even close to undefeated—they have losses to USC, Dayton and Canisius—but the MAAC school just won back-to-back road games against the Big East (Georgetown) and Big Ten (Rutgers), adding to a resume that already included a true road win over UCLA and neutral-court wins over Notre Dame and USC.

People love the bench mob, but these guys can really ball. I was at the win over Georgetown, and within about three minutes of the opening tip, it was quite clear that Monmouth was the better team. The Hawks deserve substantially more than six votes.

One other non-major diluting the pool is Northern Iowa. Like Monmouth, the Panthers have three less than stellar losses, but they also own two of the most impressive wins in the country over North Carolina and Iowa State. Better yet, they're likely going to draw Oklahoma in the semifinals of the Diamond Head Classic on Tuesday. If they have one more stone in that giant-slaying slingshot and actually win that eight-team tournament, the Panthers will receive considerably more than 15 votes next Monday.

It would be fantastic if the AP voters could hold some sort of a summit and just pick one of these teams to receive all of the 25th-place votes.

Winner: South Carolina Gamecocks

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There are six remaining undefeated teams, and with South Carolina finally breaking in at No. 25 this week, five of those six teams are now ranked.

The Gamecocks were very close to cracking the Top 25 last week, finishing just five votes behind No. 25 Connecticut. I'm not entirely sure how they're now 41 votes ahead of a Connecticut team that didn't suffer a loss this week, but clearly beating Drexel by 25 before picking up its best win of the season at Clemson was enough for South Carolina to slide into this week's poll.

Their schedule has been nothing special, but the Gamecocks were finally extended the same courtesy that Louisville and West Virginia have received in getting ranked for looking really good against bad teams.

As was the case when George Washington made it into last week's AP Top 25, now the question is: How much higher can South Carolina climb?

The schedule doesn't really get daunting until early February, as KenPom.com has the Gamecocks projected to win each of their next 12 games. The home game against Vanderbilt and road game against Ole Miss should provide a challenge, but it's not crazy to think this team will be 22-0 six weeks from now.

Loser: Texas A&M Aggies

Erich Schlegel-USA TODAY Sports

Texas A&M barely got rewarded for an incredible win. The Aggies slaughtered Baylor by an 80-61 margin but only moved up three spots to No. 21.

The strange thing is the AP voters clearly took notice of the game, as the Bears fell all the way to No. 23 after last week's spot at No. 16.

Jalen Jones and Danuel House each scored a game-high 17 points, while freshman big man Tyler Davis had 15 of his own. Reaping the benefits of the two-point guard offense, Alex Caruso and Anthony Collins combined for 15 of A&M's 23 assists on 30 made field goals, adding to what was already one of the better assist rates in the country.

When they're really clicking, the Aggies move the ball better than any other team. Despite occasional turnover woes, they have a team assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.41.

As the season progresses and freshmen Davis, DJ Hogg and Admon Gilder continue to improve with age, Texas A&M legitimately could end up being the best team in the SEC. But the AP voters evidently need to see more before they entrust the Aggies with a spot in the Top 20 again.

Winner: A Pair of Pac-12 Teams

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Utah caught the right team on the wrong day, upsetting Duke in Madison Square Garden on Saturday to recapture the attention of the AP voters. The Utes are back in the AP Top 25 at No. 24, marking the start of their third stint of the season as a ranked team.

My vote doesn't matter, but I'm not buying stock in this team just yet.

In their three high-profile games (versus Miami, at Wichita State and versus Duke), the Utes committed 54 turnovers while forcing just 15. They were able to beat Duke because Amile Jefferson is out and Grayson Allen couldn't buy a bucket while dealing with the flu, but in the blowout losses to Miami and Wichita State, the opposition shot 45.2 percent from three-point range.

One look at their KenPom.com page, and you'll see those numbers are no fluke. Utah ranks 343rd in defensive turnover percentage and 326th in three-point defense. When opponents are shooting nearly 40 percent from beyond the arc and you turn them over less than once every seven possessions, you're going to have the occasional rough night. But at least the Utes have Jakob Poeltl to correct a lot of their wrongs.

Elsewhere in the Pac-12, Arizona had a strong week and benefited enough from others' losses to ascend five rungs to No. 8 in this week's poll.

Gabe York had a worse-than-lackluster week, but the Wildcats offense was still on point in the 92-37 win over Northern Arizona and 82-70 win over UNLV. Per usual, Ryan Anderson was the star of the show in recording consecutive double-doubles, but Dusan Ristic made some noise, too, with his third consecutive game scoring in double figures.

We're still feeling out this Arizona team after those back-to-back poor showings against Santa Clara and Providence in the Wooden Legacy, but the Wildcats have been playing quite well the past few weeks. If and when they get some consistency out of York and Kadeem Allen, they'll once again enter the NCAA tournament as one of the few legitimate candidates to win the whole thing.

Loser: A Pair of Big 12 Teams

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The Big 12's case for best conference in the country took a pretty big hit this week. Kansas and Oklahoma remain No. 2 and No. 3 for a second straight Monday, but Iowa State and Baylor took quite the tumble.

The Bears dropped from No. 16 to No. 23 after Texas A&M decimated them. Taurean Prince and Al Freeman struggled all night long, and even Rico Gathers' 18 rebounds were only enough to keep Baylor within 19 points of the Aggies.

It was just their second game away from home this season, but they struggled mightily in both of those losses, committing way too many turnovers and shooting poorly when they actually held on to the ball. Baylor's next two road games are against Kansas and Iowa State, which could get ugly in a hurry.

Speaking of the Cyclones, they were the Big 12's other big loser, nosediving from No. 5 to No. 11 for losing to Northern Iowa.

Like Duke, though, it wasn't so much a bad loss as it was a sign of things to come that likely panicked the AP voters. Facing their first legitimate opponent since losing Naz Mitrou-Long for the season, the Cyclones' perimeter game was an unmitigated disaster. They shot 3-of-17 from three-point range—Matt Thomas and Hallice Cooke combined for two points in 43 minutes of trying to replace Long—and allowed the Panthers to hit 13 of their 22 long-range attempts.

Granted, while battling the hip pain, Long wasn't having a good season in the first place. He was shooting 29.1 percent from three-point range and was the team's worst defender by most metrics. But the Cyclones missed his veteran leadership on Saturday.

Getting newly eligible Marquette transfer Deonte Burton into the mix should help in the long run, but this team is probably going to struggle until its shooting guard situation is resolved.

Winner: Maryland Terrapins

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If you haven't yet noticed the trend, it was a good week for high-ranking teams who were able to keep the status quo and watch others fall by the wayside. For taking care of business against Princeton while Kentucky and Iowa State suffered losses, Maryland jumped two spots to No. 4.

This is where the Terrapins belong, though. After some slow starts against Georgetown and Rider early in the season, they've looked much better over the past month. Their last seven wins have been by a double-digit margin, and the one loss during that stretch was a true road game against North Carolina in which Maryland looked like the better team for the majority of the final 30 minutes.

Melo Trimble and Company opened the season as a No. 1 seed in many (if not all) of the projected tournament brackets. Even though Michigan State has bypassed them as the favorites to win the Big Ten, the Terrapins are very much still in the running for a spot on that top line.

If they can both pull it off, it would be the first time since 2001 that the Big Ten had multiple No. 1 seeds in the Big Dance. If nothing else, we're officially waiting with bated breath for the Jan. 23 showdown between the Spartans and Terrapins.

Loser: Purdue Boilermakers

Michael Conroy/Associated Press

The final score didn't look too bad. Losing by a six-point margin on a neutral court to another ranked team is typically pretty forgivable.

If you actually watched the game, though, Purdue did not look one bit the part of a team that had won 11 consecutive games by a double-digit margin.

This wasn't a back-and-forth affair in which Butler's top dogs simply wanted it more in the end. Rather, Butler opened up an insurmountable lead by midway through the second half while getting dreadful performances from its two best scorers.

Despite a drastic size advantage—Purdue ranks fourth in the nation in effective height, per KenPom.com, while Butler ranks 246th—the Boilermakers were unable to get 7'0" A.J. Hammons or 7'2" Isaac Haas going. Freshman Caleb Swanigan (25 points and 11 rebounds) was pretty much their only offense in the game, but he committed more than twice as many turnovers (seven) as anyone else who played for either team.

"When we've got experienced guys, playing like they are not experienced, you're going to get beat," Purdue coach Matt Painter told LaMond Pope of the Post-Tribune after the game. "We need some guys that have played and been through some things to play like it, and [on Saturday] we didn't get that."

It was the type of loss that easily could have resulted in a free fall for a team that had not yet faced another ranked opponent. Instead—because the AP voters felt more compelled to punish Iowa State, Kentucky and Duke for their losses—one could almost argue that Purdue was a winner for only falling five spots to No. 14.

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