Winners and Losers of AP College Basketball Top 25 Poll in Week 8

It was an unusually quiet week in the world of college hoops—a grand total of 17 games were played over the past four days—but there was just enough action to necessitate a new AP Top 25 and our weekly reaction to it.

Only three ranked teams suffered losses in the past seven days, and two of them lost to teams higher in the polls. As a result, movement was pretty limited, and even the slightest change was worth considering for this list.

George Washington was the only team to fall out of the poll this week. UCLA was the only one to move into it. Thus, our top winner and loser should come as no surprise. However, Cincinnati was a big winner, as well, despite suffering a loss. And for a team that won a road game by a 24-point margin, Providence was quite the loser in this week's AP Top 25.

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

Winner: UCLA Bruins

Young Kwak/Associated Press

Poll logic is a crazy beast.

UCLA was not ranked in the preseason. Heck, the Bruins weren't even close to ranked in the preseason. They received just two votes. Even if it was the AP Top 45, they wouldn't have made the cut.

They proceeded to lose three of their first six games—at home to Monmouth, blown out on a neutral court by Kansas and clipped on a neutral court by Wake Forest. By the start of December, UCLA was borderline unworthy of a spot in the projected NCAA tournament field, let alone the AP Top 25.

But then the Bruins won games against shorthanded Kentucky—Marcus Lee played four minutes and Tyler Ulis was still not 100 percent recovered from a hyperextended elbow—and shorthanded Gonzaga (no Przemek Karnowski) to jump all the way up to No. 22 in the Dec. 14 poll. Because if you beat two Top 25 teams in the span of 10 days, you must yourself be a Top 25 team, right?

They subsequently lost to North Carolina but just barely dropped outside the poll to No. 26. But with George Washington losing and nary an unranked team with a marquee win in the past week, UCLA was "next man up" for the No. 25 spot in this week's poll.

Are the Bruins really the 25th-best team in the country?

Better question: Is there a particularly compelling case for Connecticut, Gonzaga, Oregon or Pittsburgh to take their place?

Here's hoping conference play helps clarify the situation that nonconference play has muddied up because the bottom of the AP Top 25 is littered with teams whose Sweet 16 stock I wouldn't take if you were giving it away. Regardless, the Bruins will open Pac-12 play marked by the AP as one of the teams to beat.

Loser: George Washington Colonials

Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

It's never a good idea to lose to DePaul—let alone by a 21-point margin in a week otherwise completely devoid of ranked teams losing to unranked teams—and George Washington paid the price for it.

Not only did the Colonials drop from last week's spot at No. 20 with 366 votes, but they received just 40 votes this week to fall out of the Top 25.

(Frankly, it's incredible they got that many votes. I'm betting a handful of voters let the Christmas break cause them to forget this game even happened.) 

Such is life, though, for what was the only ranked team that didn't hail from a major conference.

Surely any Top 25 squad would have taken quite the tumble for getting embarrassed by DePaul, but there would be more forgiveness if it were, say, Georgetown who entered the game against the Blue Demons with wins over Virginia, Seton Hall and Tennessee and merely one neutral-court blemish in a closely contested game against Cincinnati.

"They were too focused on finals and the holidays," we would say, finding any excuse to believe in a non-major conference team that had proved itself worthy over the first five-plus weeks of the season.

George Washington, though?

"Throw those frauds in the trash," the AP voters effectively said, probably too busy watching Michigan State vs. Oakland followed by Virginia vs. California to note that GW's star player, Tyler Cavanaugh, was hobbled early by an ankle injury on a night where Joe McDonald and Patricio Garino combined to miss all 13 of their field-goal attempts.

It was a terrible loss. You won't hear us argue otherwise. But let's try to not completely write this team off just yet.

One thing to note if you're wondering about George Washington's tournament chances, though: Getting blown out by DePaul hasn't been a great formula recently. In the past nine years, the Blue Demons have won 43 games by a margin of at least 10 points. Only one of those teams (Mississippi Valley State in 2012) made it to the NCAA tournament—and those Delta Devils proceeded to lose to 15-18 Western Kentucky in the play-in game.

Winner: Cincinnati Bearcats

John Minchillo/Associated Press

There are more than a few extremely vocal conspiracy theorists who cry foul when a team like Duke, Kansas or Kentucky suffers a loss and slips just one or two spots in the polls, but have you noticed Cincinnati's voodoo magic over the past few weeks?

The Bearcats lost by a double-digit margin to Xavier on Dec. 12 but still had the exact same ranking on Dec. 14, staying at No. 23 for a second straight week.

They moved up one spot the following Monday after wins over Norfolk State and VCU and remained at No. 22 for a second straight week, despite losing a home game against Iowa State.

To recap: Cincinnati has lost two of its last four games, didn't pick up a marquee win in the process and moved up one spot in the poll.

It's pretty remarkable, but it really speaks to the lack of better options out there.

Cincinnati now has three losses, and its three best wins have each come by a two-possession margin over George Washington, VCU and Nebraska. Yet, it's more than challenging to find 25 teams more deserving of a spot in the AP Top 25. You could probably make the case for an Iowa or Connecticut to jump ahead of the Bearcats, but every team this season has warts, and every team outside the Top 20 is absolutely covered with them.

Loser: Louisville Cardinals

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Did head coach Rick Pitino flip off the fans at Rupp Arena on Saturday? We'll never know for sure. But the voters gave him and his Cardinals the finger in the new AP Top 25, dropping them from No. 16 to No. 18 for a two-point road loss in what is inarguably college basketball's greatest nonconference rivalry.

(You can safely bet Duke won't drop two spots in the subsequent poll if it comes within a last-second shot of winning at North Carolina later this year.)

The anti-Louisville crowd cannot seem to get past the fact that Louisville has not beaten a marquee opponent. While 100 percent true, it completely disregards how strong this team has looked all season.

It'd be one thing if Louisville's strength of play was on par with that of Northwestern.

Like Louisville, the Wildcats are winless against teams in the KenPom Top 100 but have compiled an impressive record by playing a lot of cupcakes. However, Northwestern didn't look all that great in its one loss on a neutral court against less-than-full-strength North Carolina and has beaten five of its weak opponents by a margin of seven points or less—three of which required overtime. There's a good reason this team isn't getting many votes at all.

Meanwhile, each of Louisville's 11 wins has come by a margin of at least 20 points. And the Cardinals' two losses were true road games against legitimate title contenders in Michigan State and Kentucky—and they were down by just two points with seven seconds remaining in both of those games.

Yes, the schedule has been quite weak outside of those two challenges, but let the tournament selection committee determine how badly they should be penalized for that. The AP Top 25 is meant to identify the 25 best teams, not the 25 best resumes.

How fans can come away from any of Louisville's 13 games to date without feeling like they had just watched one of the 10 best teams in the country is a mystery.

Winner: Michigan State Spartans

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As far as mid-majors go, Oakland is a pretty good one. The Golden Grizzlies had a couple of not-great losses to Colorado State and Southern Illinois in the first two weeks of the season, but they've been solid since then, winning at Toledo and Washington after nearly winning at Georgia.

Though Kahlil Felder is one of the best players in the country, Oakland is not the type of team that the near-unanimous No. 1 team should struggle with. Can you imagine the panic that would have ensued if Kentucky had been taken to overtime by Buffalo or Eastern Kentucky last season?

But that's exactly what happened in Michigan State's first game with Denzel Valentine on the sideline.

Bryn Forbes was on fire. Matt Costello and Deyonta Davis played well in the post. Eron Harris finally had the breakout game we had been waiting to see. And the Spartans just barely survived. If they duplicate that defensive and rebounding "effort" against Iowa on Tuesday, they might lose their Big Ten opener by a 20-point margin.

It was a game that easily could have led to AP voters taking a step away from Michigan State and instead awarding their first-place votes to Kansas or Oklahoma, but that didn't happen. The Spartans received 64 of the 65 first-place votes for a third consecutive week.

Loser: Providence Friars

Jessica Hill/Associated Press

Like most of last week's Top 25 teams, Providence played just one game in the past seven days and looked dominant in the process.

Ben Bentil's campaign for unofficial Most Improved Player in the Country continued in earnest with 32 points, 12 rebounds and a pair of blocks in a 90-66 win at Massachusetts. Playing for the first time in nearly two weeks due to a stomach virus, Kris Dunn had a typical (for him) 14 points, 11 assists and six rebounds in just 24 minutes of action.

If you were skeptical about the Friars being one of the 10 best teams in the country, it was the type of win that might change your mind. Massachusetts isn't a great team this year, but true road wins by a margin of more than 20 points are few and far between. In fact, Miami (95-49 over La Salle) and Cincinnati (83-50 over Bowling Green) are the only other ranked teams who can boast such a victory.

For the impressive performance, Providence dropped two spots to No. 12.

Wait, what?

Truly, the Friars were a victim of circumstance. Their win was nice but not nearly as shiny as Iowa State's win at Cincinnati, Kentucky's win over Louisville or Purdue's win over Vanderbilt, and those teams were Nos. 11, 12 and 14 in last week's poll, respectively.

They deserved better, but they'll have an immediate shot at retribution in the form of Thursday's road game against No. 9 Butler. If Providence beats the Bulldogs, it will jump back to No. 10, if not higher.

Winner: Monmouth Hawks

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If Providence was a victim of circumstance, Monmouth was a benefactor of it.

As already mentioned, George Washington not only lost a game, but also lost so badly to a disrespected program that it virtually lost all of the respect it worked so hard to obtain.

Due to the hole left by the Colonials, some teams were contractually obligated to move up in the rankings. But the pool of candidates from last week's "Others Receiving Votes" category got mighty shallow over the last seven days.

The "Little Guys" detailed in last week's AP Winners and Losers was reduced to Little Guy. Arkansas-Little Rock suffered its first loss of the season at the hands of Texas Tech, and Northern Iowa lost to both Hawaii and BYU in the Diamond Head Classic, leaving Monmouth as virtually the only non-Gonzaga, non-major conference team worthy of considering.

Elsewhere, former No. 22 Cincinnati lost to Iowa State, Colorado and Vanderbilt both dropped a game and Connecticut was dealt a pretty big blow with the news that Amida Brimah will be out for up to two months with a broken finger.

UCLA was No. 26 in last week's poll, and no one from the aforementioned pool scored a big win this week, so poll logic kind of dictated that UCLA move up to No. 25. But hold the phone because Monmouth has the head-to-head trump card against the Bruins.

Monmouth merely beat Cornell by a nine-point margin in its lone game this week, but an awful lot of circumstances were working in conjunction for the Hawks to jump from six votes up to 11 this week—now just eight spots and 40 votes away from being ranked.

Win at Army on Monday and get just a sprinkling of luck at the start of major conference play and Monmouth might crack into next week's AP Top 25 for the first time in school history.

Loser: Purdue Boilermakers

Michael Conroy/Associated Press

Three ranked teams picked up quality wins last week.

Kentucky beat Louisville and jumped from No. 12 to No. 10.

Iowa State beat Cincinnati and remained No. 11, but its vote count increased from 907 to 938.

And Purdue beat Vanderbilt by 13 only to lose 15 votes in this week's poll.

I fully appreciate that, even though Purdue was behind both Kentucky and Iowa State in the consensus Top 25, there were several ballots in last week's poll that had the Boilermakers just ahead of the Wildcats and the Cyclones. Purdue was a sacrificial lamb necessary for those other teams to move up.

That would be fine if, like Duke, Purdue had been idle this week. Or if, like Providence and Villanova, Purdue had beaten a weak opponent.

However, Vanderbilt is still ranked No. 18 on KenPom, so smoking that team by a double-digit margin was arguably more impressive than the pair of two-point wins that Kentucky and Iowa State had.

The Boilermakers were just 18 votes behind Miami in last week's poll and probably should have jumped ahead of the Hurricanes because of the win. Instead, with Miami getting rewarded for blowing out La Salle, Purdue is now 49 votes behind the Hurricanes.

That hardly seems fair.

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