Winners and Losers of AP College Basketball Top 25 Poll in Week 9

With Michigan State losing to Iowa on Tuesday, the Kansas Jayhawks are your new No. 1 team in the AP Top 25 and the fourth No. 1 team in a 2015-16 men's college basketball season that isn't even yet two months old—a far cry from Kentucky's reign in the top spot for all of last year.

That's just one piece of the shifting puzzle, though, as the beginning of major conference play claimed victims all around the country. Nine teams from last week's AP Top 25 suffered a combined 12 losses, resulting in no shortage of winners and losers in this week's poll.

Four teams (Utah, Cincinnati, Baylor and UCLA) dropped out of the rankings, making way for a quartet of newcomers: Iowa, Connecticut, Pittsburgh and Dayton. UConn has already been ranked several times this season, but the other three are each making their 2015-16 debut in the AP Top 25.

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

Winner: Iowa Hawkeyes

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Iowa arguably should have already been ranked. The Hawkeyes entered last week's ballot with wins over Wichita State and Florida State and just a trio of close losses away from home against Iowa State, Dayton and Notre Dame. It was hardly an open-and-shut case, but given the other options for the last few spots in the poll, it's stupefying that Iowa received just seven votes.

Perhaps the Hawkeyes took that slight to heart, though, because—at least until conference tournaments begin—it's unlikely that any team will have a better week than the one they just completed.

Most teams would be content with beating the No. 1 team in the country, but the Hawkeyes proceeded to also win a road game against another very good team. Even after their losses to Iowa, Michigan State and Purdue are still No. 6 and No. 7 on KenPom.com, respectively.

Jarrod Uthoff dealt with foul and turnover woes in the win over the Spartans, but he had a combined 35 points, 11 blocks and nine rebounds in the two wins. Freshman Nicholas Baer—who scored a total of four points in Iowa's three losses—was clutch off the bench in both games, tallying 18 points, nine rebounds and four blocks.

Defense was their calling card for the week, forcing 30 turnovers and blocking 20 shots in the process of officially becoming a player in the Big Ten title race. The Hawkeyes make their AP Top 25 season debut this week at No. 19.

Loser: Butler Bulldogs

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Not only did Butler suffer a pair of losses, but its two best wins lost a lot of value this week, too.

The losses themselves weren't entirely unforgivable. One would hope the No. 9 team in the country could win a home game against Providence and not get completely embarrassed on the road by Xavier, but it was quite the brutal two-game gauntlet at the outset of the Big East schedule. Both the Friars and Musketeers are extremely good this year, and someone had to come away from those games with losses.

Meanwhile, Butler entered the week with just two wins of any real value. Outside of the road win over Cincinnati and the neutral-court win over Purdue, a home win over Tennessee is about as good as it gets, and that's not saying much. And just in case the losses to Providence and Xavier didn't do enough damage to Butler's tournament resume, Cincinnati and Purdue both suffered home losses to unranked teams this week.

On the morning of New Year's Eve, Butler was No. 29 in RPI and No. 19 on KenPom.com. The Bulldogs are now No. 37 in the former and No. 35 in the latter in advance of a crucial home game against Villanova this weekend. Butler is still No. 18 in the AP Top 25, but a loss in that game could be the one that really makes the voters start to question how good this team actually is.

If there's one silver lining on this cloud, it's that Kellen Dunham finally made a few shots on Sunday. In the last four games in December, he was 0-of-21 from three-point range, but he hit three triples in the loss to Xavier. Perhaps that will jump-start a return to normalcy for Butler's most important scorer.

Winner: Big Monday

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We've grown accustomed to getting some great Big 12 pairings on just about every Monday in January and February over the past few seasons, but this one takes the cake. Thanks to Michigan State's loss to Iowa, Kansas and Oklahoma moved up to No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, for a showdown that probably hasn't happened as often as you might think.

According to the NCAA's record books (page 95), this will be the 40th all-time meeting between No. 1 and No. 2, and just the 23rd occurrence during the regular season. Over the past 24 years, this has been a once-every-three-seasons treat—and the team that entered those eight games ranked No. 2 actually has a 7-1 record, so, good luck, Kansas.

But that's enough history, because the present is pretty remarkable, too.

It should go without saying that these are two of the favorites for the 2016 national championship, but they also have two of the top candidates for the Wooden Award in the form of Buddy Hield and Wayne Selden.

Both teams have three incredible guards, one veteran anchor in the post and another frontcourt starter who is mostly in there for defense and rebounding. Oklahoma is No. 2 in the nation in three-point percentage, and Kansas is just a tenth of a point behind the Sooners in third place. And in adjusted tempo, Kansas ranks 51st, while Oklahoma ranks 52nd.

Sometimes No. 1 vs. No. 2 ends up being a real mismatch in talent or style, but these two teams are practically mirror images of each other. It was going to be a great game no matter what, but the allure of No. 1 vs. No. 2 just makes it that much more exciting.

Loser: Pac-12's Second Tier

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On last week's Pac-12 coaches teleconference call, each of the 12 coaches spent a significant portion of his allotted time discussing how difficult these next two months are going to be on account of this being the deepest and most talented the conference has ever been.

It certainly didn't take long for their concerns to be validated, as Utah, UCLA and Oregon went a combined 0-5 away from home against unranked opponents this weekend.

Utah's losses were at least moderately acceptable. The Utes fell in overtime against a better-than-its-record Stanford team before also losing to a California team that has spent the past month finally playing as well as many of us expected in the preseason.

Oregon, however, wasn't even competitive in a rivalry-game loss at Oregon State, and UCLA got swept by the Washington schools that KenPom.com still ranks as the two worst teams in the conference.

Moreover, USC was beginning to look the part of a team worthy of AP Top 25 consideration, but the Trojans blew a 22-point lead in its loss to Washington on Sunday.

A fair amount of cannibalization in the form of parity within a conference can be a good thing, but the Pac-12 may have bitten off too much, too early. Utah (21) and UCLA (25) were both ranked last week, and Oregon was only six votes behind the Bruins, but not one of those teams is even sniffing the Top 25 this Monday, leaving Arizona as the only ranked Pac-12 team.

Winner: ACC's Top 40 Percent

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While the Big East's heavyweights went toe-to-toe, the Pac-12's middle tier dropped games left and right and Iowa ran a freight train through what were supposed to be two of the three best teams in the Big Ten, the beginning of ACC play claimed no victims.

The ACC is notorious for saving its most intriguing pairings until at least a couple of weeks into the conference season, so the top six teams were able to avoid each other and hold serve to build on what is now a combined record of 73-9.

North Carolina did struggle a bit more than it probably should have in home games against Clemson and Georgia Tech, but the Tar Heels were able to leap ahead of Xavier to No. 6 in this week's poll. Virginia was already ahead of Xavier but also benefited from Michigan State's loss, climbing to No. 4 after wins over Oakland and Notre Dame.

Similarly, Miami, Duke and Louisville profited from losses suffered by Butler, Iowa State and Purdue, ascending a combined four spots. And Pittsburgh won its ACC opener by a double-digit margin against Syracuse, while four of the bottom-five teams in last week's poll suffered a loss, allowing the Panthers to finally make their 2015-16 AP Top 25 debut at No. 24.

Loser: Cincinnati Bearcats

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Last week, we pointed out the inanity of Cincinnati losing two games in the span of 11 days and actually climbing one spot in the AP Top 25 in the process.

Unfortunately, the Bearcats decided to really test the limits of the voters' generosity this week by losing a home game to Temple. They played such poor defense that Joe Danneman of Fox 19 in Cincinnati reported Mick Cronin opening the postgame press conference by saying, "I'd like to apologize to all of our former players who had to watch us play defense like that."

They did bounce back nicely with a 76-57 win over Tulsa in which they had 11 steals and held the Golden Hurricane to 4-of-21 from three-point range, but the irreparable damage had already been done.

The loss to the Owls was Cincinnati's fourth in the month of December. Three of them came at home. It was an admirably difficult stretch of seven games—particularly when viewed in juxtaposition to the cupcake buffet the Bearcats feasted on for the first two weeks of the season—but it was simply one too many losses for the AP to handle.

The Bearcats were No. 22 last Monday, but they are long gone this week after receiving just two votes.

Winner: Dayton Flyers

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After a one-week hiatus caused by George Washington's ugly loss to DePaul, Dayton's appearance at No. 25 gives us a much-needed ranked team from outside the seven major conferences.

The Flyers weren't actually all that impressive this week. They just barely eked out a home win over Arkansas before shooting 3-of-25 from three-point range in a narrow win at Duquesne.

However, they did get Dyshawn Pierre back in the mix after his suspension for the first semester, which was more than enough to garner some attention in a world where voters are desperately searching for teams who are actually worthy of being included on the back end of the poll.

There's certainly some rust to shake off, as he shot just 6-of-18 from the field in the two games, but Pierre's veteran presence in the post has been sorely missed. Once the forward who is shooting 39 percent from three-point range in his career gets up to speed, Archie Miller is going to have another team capable of winning at least a couple of games in the NCAA tournament.

And if you haven't already, get yourself acquainted with Charles Cooke. The James Madison transfer has done a little bit of everything for the Flyers and has rapidly evolved into their most reliable scoring threat. We weren't sure if he would be good enough to replace Jordan Sibert in this rotation, but early returns are that this team is at least as good as it was the past two seasons.

Loser: One-Loss Club

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It wasn't until last Monday that we finally got all of the undefeated teams into the AP Top 25, but now that that's taken care of, it's time to turn our attention to the one-loss crowd.

There are a total of 16 teams with either zero losses (only three left) or a single blemish on their record (13). Of those 16 teams, 13 are ranked.

What about the other three, though?

The lack of votes for Arkansas-Little Rock (12-1) we can understand. The Trojans are pretty solid, but it's hard to sell AP voters on Sun Belt teams that aren't undefeated. If they make it another two weeks without suffering another loss, though, we'll have to resume seriously questioning why these guys aren't getting any love.

Texas Tech (11-1), however, deserves more than 40 votes. Not only are the Red Raiders responsible for Arkansas-Little Rock's only loss, but they have wins over Texas, Richmond, South Dakota State, Hawaii and High Point. Say what you will about RPI—particularly still this early in the season—but Texas Tech is No. 4 in the country.

(If the Red Raiders still have one loss one week from today, there's a slight chance they'll get some more votes, considering they play at Iowa State and host Kansas between now and then.)

And Saint Mary's (13-1) is probably the even more egregious omission. The Gaels lead the nation in effective field-goal percentage, three-point percentage and assist-to-turnover ratio, but they only got 23 votes this week. They don't have any marquee wins, but their only loss was a road game against California in which they were leading in the final 20 seconds.

The crazy thing about the Gaels is they lost all five of last year's starters and don't have a single senior on this year's roster. If Randy Bennett doesn't get some National Coach of the Year votes, they should stop even handing out those awards.

Winner: Big East (New and Old)

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It was a big week for the Big East, as its top four teams played three games against each other. Butler paid the price of that semi-round-robin tournament, but the other three teams emerged in pretty great shape.

Villanova looked the best of the bunch in absolutely slaughtering Xavier by a 31-point margin before proceeding to win at Creighton by 14 points. As a result, the Wildcats jumped seven spots from No. 18 to No. 11.

A lot of people will never forgive them for the way they were blown out by Oklahoma in early December, but Villanova has won by at least a 14-point margin in each of its 12 wins. Its only losses were away from home against the teams that were No. 1 and No. 2 overall in our projected bracket last Thursday. As has been the case for the past several years, Villanova is an extremely good team that might occasionally look really bad when the threes aren't falling.

Providence also had a strong week, winning at Butler before beating up on St. John's at home. The Friars inexplicably dropped two spots in last week's poll after a 90-66 win at Massachusetts, but they jumped back up four spots this week to No. 8.

And though Xavier was embarrassed at Villanova, the Musketeers bounced right back with an 88-69 win over Butler to remain a Top 10 team for at least one more week.

Elsewhere, the artist formerly known as the Big East had a solid showing this week, too. Connecticut and Pittsburgh both jumped into the AP Top 25, while Louisville and West Virginia climbed two spots each.

Loser: Purdue Boilermakers

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It certainly didn't take long for Purdue to make the transition from the trendy pseudo-sleeper pick to win the Big Ten to "Wait, are we sure this team is any good?"

The Boilermakers have a few quality wins over Florida, Pitt and Vanderbilt, but they have yet to win a game against a team that was ranked at the time of the game. And now they have a neutral-court loss to a Butler team who is rapidly losing favor in the AP poll and a home loss to an Iowa team who—though currently on a meteoric rise in the polls—wasn't ranked when the game was played.

We haven't completely given up on Purdue. Neither have the AP voters. The home loss to an unranked team only caused the Boilermakers to drop six spots from No. 14 to No. 20.

But their "cushion" is officially gone. This means they probably need at least one more quality win before suffering their next loss if they wish to continue being considered a legitimate threat to reach the Elite Eight.

Unfortunately, outside of a rematch at Iowa on the 24th, their schedule for the next few weeks is full of games that they should win—home games against Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State and Nebraska; road games against Illinois, Rutgers and Minnesota. Going 7-0 through that stretch might be enough to slightly move the needle in the right direction, but should Purdue lose any of those contests, Boilermakers stock will be sold for pennies on the dollar.

They'll have ample opportunity to get back in our good graces. After a fairly light January, Purdue's February schedule (at Maryland, versus Michigan State, at Michigan, versus Northwestern, at Indiana, versus Maryland) might as well be a Mortal Kombat fatality combo. However, they might need those games to prove that they deserve to be taken seriously in March.

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