Winners and Losers of AP College Basketball Top 25 Poll in Week 13
It has been said a few thousand times this season that there are no elite teams, but don't tell that to Oklahoma and North Carolina, as they enter their third straight week ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in the AP Top 25.
A lack of movement doesn't typically register as one of our big winners, but given how unpredictable this season has been, it certainly feels like the Sooners and Tar Heels are doing something pretty special. After all, the top six teams in Week 3 were Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan State, Iowa State, Kansas and Duke, and only one of those teams (Maryland) is still in the top six today.
The two other biggest winners of the week are Dayton and South Carolina. The Flyers and Gamecocks benefited from losses by Duke and Notre Dame, climbing into the polls at No. 24 and No. 25, respectively.
Read on for the rest of this week's AP Top 25 winners and losers.
Winner: Oregon Ducks
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For most of the season, the Pac-12 has been a great big cluster of teams with a good enough computer resume to make the tournament, but not a good enough eye test to be picked to the Sweet 16.
At long last, Oregon has broken away from the herd with a road sweep of Arizona and Arizona State, resulting in a jump from No. 23 to No. 16 in this week's AP poll.
When healthy, it really doesn't get much better than Oregon's primary seven-man rotation.
Dillon Brooks has been one of the nation's best-kept secrets for a second straight season, as the sophomore wing is averaging 20.5 points per game over his last six. And yet, Chris Boucher might be the most valuable player on the roster, as evidenced by his absurd line against Arizona State on Sunday night: 26 points, 10 rebounds, seven blocks and four made three-pointers.
The point guard combo of Tyler Dorsey and Casey Benson has been working wonders, Elgin Cook provides a little bit of everything with his senior leadership, and getting to bring Dwayne Benjamin and Jordan Bell off the bench is a luxury that just about any coach in the country would kill to have.
Aside from occasionally poor defensive rebounding, Oregon is one of the few teams in the country without an obvious weakness to exploit.
The Ducks have been doing extremely well in projected brackets over the past few weeks, and the AP poll finally caught up. We'll see how the next few weeks shake out, but don't be shocked if this team ends up with a No. 1 seed on Selection Sunday.
Loser: Duke Blue Devils
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"Duke" and "unranked" aren't supposed to go together, unless it's in a context such as, "Duke has won (insert large number) consecutive home games against unranked opponents." However, after the Blue Devils lost at Miami on Jan. 25 to extend their skid to four losses in five games, they are in an extremely unfamiliar position outside of the AP Top 25.
With the exception of one week in mid-February 2007, Duke has been ranked in every single in-season AP poll since the beginning of the 1996-97 season.
In other words, Duke is unranked for just the second time in the lives of its freshman class.
The Blue Devils aren't quite in immediate danger of missing the NCAA tournament, but AP poll history would suggest you shouldn't expect them to go far if they do dance.
Dating back to 1988, Duke has failed to win a tournament game in every season that it spent time outside the AP Top 20:
1994-95—Unranked for most of the season; missed tournament.
1995-96—Unranked for most of the season; lost in first round to No. 9 Eastern Michigan.
2006-07—Unranked for one week in mid-February; lost in first round to No. 11 VCU.
2013-14—Ranked as low as No. 23 in mid-January; lost in first round to No. 14 Mercer.
You're welcome to believe that everything will get better once Amile Jefferson returns—even though there has been no news whatsoever to suggest he actually will be back this season—but things aren't looking great in Durham.
Winner: Xavier Musketeers
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Over the past two months, Xavier has been bouncing around the Nos. 5-12 range like a Ping-Pong ball on lottery night. With the exception of the Monday after Christmas, the Musketeers have either moved up or down at least two spots in eight consecutive polls.
Fortunately for them, this was one of the weeks where they bounced upward.
In winning road games against Providence and DePaul, Xavier had one of the more impressive weeks in the country. The Friars and Blue Demons shot a combined 10-of-46 from three-point range in what served as the 11th and 12th games of the season in which Xavier limited its opponent to less than 27.0 percent shooting from downtown.
If we take out the four games played without Edmond Sumner—a 6'6" guard whose length can be a real nuisance on the perimeter—Xavier's opponents are shooting 28.3 percent from beyond the arc this season, which would be the fourth-lowest rate in the country.
And yet, teams just keep letting it fly against the Musketeers. The average opponent has attempted 23.6 three-pointers against Xavier, due to some combination of trailing on the scoreboard and getting dominated on the glass.
The X-men—ranked No. 7 in last week's poll—also got some help in the form of losses by Nos. 3, 4, 5, 9 and 10. Even if they had merely won home games against St. John's and Marquette (their schedule for the upcoming week), the Musketeers almost certainly would have moved up a bit in the polls. It's even better that they picked up a marquee road win over Providence, because though they only moved up one spot to No. 6, they're just 40 votes behind No. 3 Villanova.
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Loser: More ACC Teams
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Duke necessitated its own slide as the biggest loser, but there were quite a few other ACC teams that had less-than-ideal weeks.
Miami was responsible for the final blow to knock the Blue Devils out of the rankings, but the Hurricanes turned around and got smoked by N.C. State this weekend. They were completely dominated on the boards, missed 18 three-point attempts and had no answer for Cat Barber. As a result, they managed to drop two spots in the AP poll following a week in which they beat Duke. How often has that happened in the past 20 years?
Elsewhere, Louisville lost at home to Virginia in the type of blowout that forces voters to look through the losing team's resume to try to decide if it's actually any good. The Cardinals beat up on a lot of bad teams during the nonconference portion of the season, but they've got some serious work to do to regain our trust after that 63-47 loss to the Cavaliers. They dropped from No. 16 to No. 19.
At least Louisville is still ranked, though. Notre Dame's first stint in the AP Top 25 in more than two months ended in a hurry, as the Fighting Irish lost by 15 at Syracuse. They probably deserve a mulligan for needing to play the game without Demetrius Jackson (hamstring), but they didn't exactly have much wiggle room after entering the week ranked No. 25. On the bright side, games against Miami and North Carolina this week could really send Notre Dame flying back into the rankings.
And just outside the AP Top 25, Pittsburgh was ranked No. 29 before becoming the latest team to draw what is suddenly an unwinnable road game against Clemson. For the Panthers, it was their third loss in five games and one too many for nearly all of the AP voters. Their vote count dropped from 38 to just four.
All of a sudden, North Carolina is the only team in the ACC we can even remotely trust, and there's a pretty good chance that will change after road games against Louisville and Notre Dame this week. It should be a wild and crazy final five weeks of regular-season play in the ACC.
Winner: Virginia Cavaliers
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Well, at least it wasn't all bad news for the ACC.
Virginia started its week with one of the most incredible comebacks of the past 15 years. It doesn't quite hold a candle to Duke's Miracle Minute against Maryland on Jan. 27, 2001, but this was just about as ridiculous.
Trailing 61-52 with 95 seconds remaining, Virginia was 1-of-13 from three-point range, and Wake Forest was 11-of-14 from the free-throw line. Given those shooting percentages, the Cavaliers probably had a better mathematical likelihood of winning the Powerball than completing the comeback.
But then the Demon Deacons shot 8-of-15 from the charity stripe, while the Cavaliers made their final four three-pointers, including a buzzer-beating desperation bank shot from a guy (Darius Thompson) who had been a combined 0-of-7 from beyond the arc in his last eight games. They won 72-71 in regulation.
However, it was the subsequent dominant performance at Louisville that led the AP voters to vault Virginia from No. 11 to No. 9.
Louisville's Chinanu Onuaku accomplished nothing while battling a stomach bug, which at least partially explains why the Cavaliers shot more than twice as well as the Cardinals from inside the arc (65.6 percent versus 31.6 percent). But the Cavaliers held Damion Lee and Trey Lewis scoreless for the first 28 minutes of the game in a defensive effort from Virginia that we really hadn't seen yet this season.
This team has been quite efficient on offense all year, so Virginia is a serious threat to win the national championship if that defense is finally going to start playing like it did in the last two seasons.
Loser: Iowa State's Opponents
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During the week of Jan. 18, Oklahoma lost a hard-fought game at Iowa State early in the week, but the Sooners bounced back with a quality win against another ranked foe (Baylor) to maintain their No. 1 ranking. Thus, it was established that losing at Iowa State is forgivable, provided it is buoyed with another win against a ranked opponent.
Or so we thought.
Kansas lost at Iowa State on Jan. 25. Though the final margin (85-72) was a bit wider than Oklahoma's loss to Iowa State (82-77), the Jayhawks never trailed in the game until Hilton Magic kicked in for the final 10 minutes. But they rallied nicely for a win over Kentucky in easily the most high-profile nonconference game in more than a month.
Even though the teams that were ranked No. 3 and No. 5 each suffered a loss, Kansas dropped three spots in this week's poll to No. 7.
Texas A&M suffered an even worse fate in its week with a game against the Cyclones.
The Aggies beat Iowa State on Saturday afternoon in arguably the best tug-of-war battle of the weekend, but this came a few days after a three-point loss at Arkansas in which the officiating was less than stellar.
In most weeks full of carnage, that wouldn't be so bad. However, there were only five instances this week of a ranked team losing to an unranked team, and A&M's loss to Arkansas was the worst of them all.
Despite picking up its most impressive win of the season to date, Texas A&M dropped three spots in this week's poll to No. 8.
Winner: Wichita State Shockers
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Sunday's road game against Evansville was supposed to be the final major hurdle in Wichita State's regular season, but the Shockers faced minimal resistance in the 78-65 win.
Fred VanVleet scored a career-high 32 points against the Purple Aces, and when someone records a career-high anything in his 127th collegiate game, it's pretty darn impressive.
Between beating Evansville and trouncing Loyola-Chicago earlier in the week, Wichita State extended its winning streak to 11 games. The average margin of victory during that time is 21.1 points, and only one of those games was decided by less than 13 points.
We certainly weren't expecting much from the Missouri Valley Conference this season. However, after losing four of its first six games and five of the six nonconference games played away from home, whether Wichita State would even make it to the NCAA tournament was looking quite questionable.
With a healthy VanVleet, though, the Shockers are playing like a team that could do some serious damage in the Big Dance.
Tough to say where they'll ultimately be seeded, given how poorly the difficult portion of their season went, but we do know the AP currently views Wichita State as the 21st-best team in the country—up one spot from last week.
Loser: Arizona Wildcats
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On Thursday night, Arizona suffered one of the strangest losses of the entire season.
The Wildcats shot 61.0 percent from the field, 70.4 percent from inside the arc and 76.0 percent from the free-throw line. They recorded eight more rebounds than Oregon and doubled the Ducks in assists (18-9), and every Wildcat who played at least seven minutes recorded an O-rating of at least 102. To put up those numbers in an arena where they had won 49 consecutive games, you would think the Wildcats won in blowout fashion.
Instead, they were minus-13 in turnover margin and lost the game by eight points, effectively making the Pac-12 Oregon's to lose.
In case it's not clear from those stats or the photograph above, it was a frustrating night for Sean Miller.
"I've never been more down looking at a team I've coached than what I just saw," Miller said after the game, according to Bleacher Report's Brian Pedersen. "Right now, things are going to get worse before they get better."
Despite the 17-point win over Oregon State two nights later, things certainly did get worse in the polls. Arizona dropped five spots from No. 18 to No. 23.
On the bright side, Miller said that stud freshman guard Allonzo Trier could be back on the court as soon as Wednesday, according to Jon Gold of the Arizona Daily Star. And with a pretty favorable remaining schedule, things should take a turn for the better for the Wildcats.
Winner: Big Ten
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At this point in the season, it's typically pretty difficult for a conference to collectively emerge as a winner. Loser is much more feasible, because there's always a chance that multiple ranked teams lose to the cellar-dwellers of the conference. However, it's hard for multiple teams to impress voters in the same week without damaging the reputations of other noteworthy members of the league.
Somehow, though, the Big Ten pulled it off.
Maryland was the big winner, picking up a desperately needed marquee victory over Iowa before securing a road win over Ohio State that also ranks among its five best of the season. We've been waiting a long time for the Terrapins to finally beat a surefire NCAA tournament team, and the AP rewarded them with a jump from No. 8 to No. 4.
(Better yet for the Big Ten, Iowa wasn't much penalized for suffering its first conference loss, dropping just two spots from No. 3 to No. 5.)
Elsewhere, Michigan State built on the momentum of the Jan. 23 win over Maryland with a pair of wins over Northwestern and Rutgers by a combined margin of 65 points. It's not easy to impress the AP voters when facing two of the worst teams in one's conference, but the Spartans pulled it off and jumped up two spots to No. 10. Suddenly, that mid-January three-game losing streak feels like ancient history.
Like Michigan State, Purdue had a successful week by simply not losing to bad teams. The Boilermakers eked out a win at Minnesota without Caleb Swanigan before A.J. Hammons exploded for 32 points, 11 rebounds, five assists and four blocks in a comfortable home win over Nebraska. They were No. 21, but the Boilermakers are back in the Top 20 at No. 18 this week.
Even Michigan got some love for wins over Rutgers and Penn State. The Wolverines received one vote last week, but that count now stands at 21 in advance of a humongous week at home against Indiana and Michigan State.
Too bad the Hoosiers lost to Wisconsin and nearly lost to Minnesota, necessitating a drop from No. 19 to No. 22. It was otherwise a pretty perfect week for the Big Ten.
Loser: West Virginia Mountaineers
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Two weeks ago, West Virginia was one bucket away from a road win over Oklahoma that almost certainly would have resulted in some first-place votes.
With the way the Mountaineers have been playing since then, though, it's getting pretty difficult to trust them to get a first-round win in the NCAA tournament.
It started with a home loss to Texas and continued with a win over Texas Tech in which they trailed for most of the second half. But they've really hit a nadir between Thursday night's announcement that Jonathan Holton has been suspended indefinitely for a violation of team rules and the subsequent 17-point loss at unranked Florida on Saturday.
Almost without question, Holton has been West Virginia's most important player this season. He leads the team in both O-rating and box plus-minus, according to Sports-Reference.com. He is the fourth-best offensive rebounder in the country and is by far the Mountaineers' most reliable two-point scorer.
It's hardly his fault that Florida had its best three-point performance of the entire season against the Mountaineers, but it's also hardly a surprise they were unable to win without him.
There's no word yet on when he'll be back, but things could get really ugly if it isn't soon. West Virginia's next three games are at Iowa State, versus Baylor and at Kansas, which could extend the current schneid to six losses in eight games.
At that point, Press Virginia would be in a rather pressing situation, if it isn't already. The Mountaineers were this week's biggest tumbler, falling five spots to No. 14.
Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.
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