Winners and Losers of AP College Basketball Top 25 Poll in Week 17

On a day certain to be filled with leaping puns, Kansas jumped back up to No. 1 in the latest Associated Press Top 25, becoming the first team this season to serve multiple stints atop the nation's most referenced poll.

The Jayhawks had already received 20 first-place votes last Monday, but they claimed 63 of those 65 votes after former No. 1 Villanova lost to Xavier.

It was another week chock-full of losses, as 14 of last week's Top 25 teams suffered a total of 16. However, at least nine of those losses came in battles between ranked teams, so there weren't too many crazy upsets for a change.

Still, there was plenty of movement within the AP Top 25, as teams like Utah, Miami and West Virginia soared while Arizona and Iowa dropped like rocks.

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

Winner: Kansas Jayhawks

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Through thick and thin, Kansas has been the one team to keep us believing that there might be some semblance of order to this season after all.

The Jayhawks went through a bit of a rough patch in mid-January, losing three out of five games, including getting blown out by unranked Oklahoma State. But they're the only team that has not been ranked lower than No. 7 in the AP poll at any point in this season.

Thus, it only seems fitting that we usher in the greatest month on the calendar with Bill Self's squad atop the poll—thanks to the loss suffered by Villanova.

Kansas won games against likely tournament teams Baylor and Texas Tech this week to improve to 25-4 overall and 13-3 in Big 12 play, securing at least a share of a 12th straight Big 12 title—a streak that has all but evolved into the most unbreakable team record in college basketball.

Incredibly, the Jayhawks made that history with Wayne Selden averaging 8.3 points and shooting 21.6 percent from three-point range in February.

Kansas is the consensus best team in the country, and it isn't even playing its best basketball. Keep a close eye on the Jayhawks over the next two weeks to see if they can emerge as the clear favorites to win it all.

Loser: Villanova Wildcats

Darren Hauck/Associated Press

Now, I thought we had established that there's really no penalty when a team is ranked in the top three and it loses by a slim margin on the road to a Top 20 team. Heaven knows Oklahoma was extended that courtesy on multiple occasions this season.

So, for No. 1 Villanova to lose by seven at No. 5 Xavier in a week where three of the other top five teams also lost a game, we should expect the Wildcats to drop no lower than No. 2, right?

Instead, they fell to No. 3—understandably bypassed by former No. 2 Kansas but curiously leapfrogged by former No. 6 Michigan State.

Part of the problem is that many voters felt the need to rank Xavier just ahead of Villanova because of this week's head-to-head result. But Xavier shot itself in the foot by losing to Seton Hall on Sunday, meaning voters really had to punish the Wildcats to put them behind the Musketeers.

The bigger problem, though, is the season-long refusal to buy this team as a true contender. Sure, the Wildcats just spent three weeks ranked No. 1 in the country, but I was asked on a daily basis for those three weeks whether we can actually trust Villanova this year.

Even the voters were begrudgingly putting Villanova atop their ballots. In his ballot for last week's poll, AP voter from Louisville Rick Bozich wrote on WDRB.com, "I didn't say I was picking the Wildcats to win the national title. I'm merely voting them number one."

Here's hoping the Wildcats actually do something in the NCAA tournament this year so we can avoid this song and dance next season when they're chasing a fourth consecutive Big East championship.

Winner: Iowa Hawkeyes

Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press

Throughout the month of January, Iowa was repeatedly one of our biggest winners, ascending from the middle of nowhere all the way to No. 3 in the country by sweeping Michigan State and Purdue during a nine-game winning streak.

But this week, the Hawkeyes are a tongue-in-cheek winner, because it's a borderline miracle that so many AP voters still regard this as one of the 25 best teams in the country.

Once the runaway favorites to win the Big Ten regular season title, the Hawkeyes have lost four out of their last five games to slip into a four-way tie for second place in the conference standings. If the B1G tournament began today, they would be the No. 4 seed.

The start of the skid was understandable, losing a close one on the road against a surging and offensively efficient Indiana. But it has been nothing but bad news since then. Iowa darn near lost at home to then 6-18 Minnesota before losing consecutive games to Penn State, Wisconsin and Ohio State.

None of the losses were blowouts, but they should have been easy wins for a team that went 4-0 against the Spartans and Boilermakers by a combined margin of 49 points. Heck, just two weeks before losing to Penn State, Iowa beat the Nittany Lions by 24 points.

It's as if they've had their magic powers sapped from their bodies. Former National Player of the Year candidate Jarrod Uthoff's production has dropped off a cliff, shooting 24.4 percent from three-point range in February. And without him lighting up the scoreboard, this simply isn't the same team.

But there's still a week left in the regular season. And though they dropped from No. 8 all the way to No. 16, the Hawkeyes could still get back on the right track by closing out their schedule with a home win over Indiana and road win over Michigan.

Given what we've seen over the past three weeks, however, that would be a pretty unlikely chain of events.

Loser: Arizona Wildcats

Rick Scuteri/Associated Press

Not all poll plummets are created equally.

Iowa fell eight spots and it felt like a gift from the AP voters, but Arizona dropped nine spots for borderline incomprehensible reasons.

Yes, the Wildcats suffered a pair of losses this week, but those losses came on the road by a combined margin of nine points against projected NCAA tournament teams (Colorado and Utah). As far as two-loss weeks go, it was seemingly a forgivable one.

Last Monday, West Virginia only slipped four spots from No. 10 to No. 14 for losing at Texas and vs. Oklahoma by a combined margin of 21 points. The week before that, Oregon was blown out at Cal before losing at Stanford and merely dropped from No. 11 to No. 16 for a much worse week than the one Arizona just experienced.

Given that precedent and the fact that the teams ranked Nos. 11, 15, 16 and 17 each suffered a loss last week, it was a reasonable expectation that No. 9 Arizona would only slip to No. 12 or No. 13.

Instead, the Wildcats fell to No. 18 because the East Coast bias is real, y'all. Aforementioned AP voter from Louisville Rick Bozich had Arizona at No. 6 in last week's ballot, but he booted the Wildcats completely out of this week's submission. That's just ridiculous.

Winner: Utah Utes

Russ Isabella-USA TODAY Sports

Here's another thing that makes Arizona's fall from grace completely nonsensical.

Utah—one of the two teams that beat the Wildcats—was already ranked No. 22 in last week's poll and was this week's biggest climber, ascending to No. 13. Clearly, that wasn't a bad road loss for Arizona. But I digress, because trying to find logic in the AP Top 25 is a fruitless exercise.

At least the voters got the Utah portion of the equation right, though, because the Utes have quietly emerged as one of the few teams that could legitimately win the national championship.

Jakob Poeltl has been sensational all season long, but the Utes are playing particularly well as of late because of Brandon Taylor. The senior combo guard struggled mightily for the first two months of the season, but he has found his shooting stroke, is defending well and has a drastically improved assist-to-turnover ratio over the past few weeks.

With him playing this well, Utah has one of the best starting fives in the nation—and bringing Brekkott Chapman and Dakarai Tucker in off the bench isn't too shabby, either.

The Utes haven't advanced beyond the Sweet 16 since reaching the 1998 national championship game, but in winning 11 of their last 13 games, they are playing like a team that could make a deep run in March (or April).

Loser: Tournament Ineligible Teams

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College basketball rankings never truly matter, but they seem even less relevant now that we're almost into March and projected tournament seeding becomes drastically more noteworthy than AP rankings.

It seems even the AP voters have fallen into the trap of predominantly paying attention to where teams will fall on Selection Sunday, as the two teams ineligible for postseason play were slightly disrespected this week.

Louisville lost by eight at red-hot Miami, but also won a road game over a Pittsburgh team that absolutely bludgeoned Duke into submission four days later. Despite a pair of lackluster outings from Damion Lee, the Cardinals played well this week, getting solid contributions from underclassmen such as Quentin Snider, Chinanu Onuaku and Deng Adel.

However, they lost a game, they're still a game back in the ACC standings and their season ends on Saturday. Louisville remained No. 11, but lost 80 votes from last week.

Meanwhile, former No. 24 SMU went 2-0 this week while No. 23 Notre Dame was blown out by Florida State, and yet the Mustangs somehow managed to move nowhere, remaining at 24.

Frankly, it was a surprise that the Mustangs were still in last week's poll after suffering four losses in seven games. But if they deserved to be ranked No. 24 seven days ago, they deserved to be ranked No. 23 today.

Unfortunately, March is bracket season, and Louisville and SMU are quickly fading out of sight and out of mind.

Winner: Miami Hurricanes

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One week ago, there was serious cause for concern in Miami.

Not only had the Hurricanes just been shellacked by North Carolina, but they did so after just barely escaping with two-point wins at Florida State and vs. Pittsburgh. Aside from the home win over a shorthanded Duke team playing its second road game in 56 hours, it had been a few months since Miami made a particularly positive statement.

That's no longer the case after a pair of high-quality wins over Virginia and Louisville pushed the Hurricanes back into a tie for first place in the ACC standings.

They couldn't have possibly picked a better time to snap out of their extended shooting funk.

Early in the season, Miami couldn't miss. There was a four-game stretch in November in which the Hurricanes shot 39-of-77 (50.6 percent) from beyond the arc. Through their first 14 ACC games, though, they were just 82-of-266 (30.8 percent).

Against the Cavaliers and Cardinals, they shot a combined 18-of-30 (60.0 percent) while holding the opposition to 31.6 percent.

Those aren't particularly sustainable percentages, but it served as a reminder that this can still be the nearly unstoppable offense that we saw in the first two weeks of the season. For their impressive wins, the Hurricanes jumped from No. 12 to No. 7 in this week's AP poll.

Loser: Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Todd Kirkland/Associated Press

Where in the world did this offense go?

Less than two weeks ago, Notre Dame was unstoppable. At that time, they had averaged 119.6 points per 100 possessions over their previous nine games—and that included facing tough defenses like Louisville, Clemson, Miami and Syracuse.

Since then, though, the Fighting Irish are 1-2 with losses to Georgia Tech and Florida State and an average of 98.4 points per 100 possessions.

Zach Auguste (43 points and 38 rebounds this week) has continued to perform admirably, but the guard play completely vanished during the road trip. Steve Vasturia and Demetrius Jackson both struggled in the losses.

What's strangest of all is that this came right on the heels of their best stretch of the season. That backcourt duo combined for 47 points in a win over Louisville, putting a cap on a three-game winning streak that also included victories over North Carolina and Clemson.

The Fighting Irish entered their three-game road trip with a legitimate shot at the ACC title. But now they likely need to win both of their remaining games just to secure a double bye in the ACC tournament.

They entered the week ranked No. 23, but they only received 14 votes on Monday.

Winner: California Golden Bears

Young Kwak/Associated Press

It has been quite the tale of two months for the Golden Bears. After losing five of their final seven games in January, they responded by going 7-0 in February, jumping into this week's poll at No. 25.

Of course, getting their leader back on the court was a big help.

Tyrone Wallace missed five games with a broken hand, returning to action three weeks ago for California's monumental 20-point win over Oregon. In the six games since his return, Wallace has averaged 14.7 points, 6.2 rebounds and 4.0 assists.

What the Golden Bears missed most of all, though, was his perimeter defense.

As we noted at the beginning of February, Cal's offense was equally efficient in Pac-12 play both with and without Wallace. But opponents were getting better and easier looks from three-point range without Wallace on the court.

That has changed drastically, as opponents shot 28.2 percent from three-point range against the Golden Bears in February. After shutting down and beating UCLA and USC this week, they are now 18-2 when holding the opposition to less than 40 percent from beyond the arc.

Many remain concerned that the Golden Bears have yet to win a game away from home against a projected tournament team, but they'll get one more chance to do so against Arizona on Thursday.

Loser: Other Would-Be Poll Entrants

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In most weeks this season, the bottom 20-30 percent of the AP Top 25 has been a wasteland full of losses and poor performances. In Week 15, the teams ranked Nos. 19-25 suffered a total of three losses. The week before that, Nos. 20-25 lost seven combined games.

This past week, though? No. 23 Notre Dame fell out of the poll after an ugly loss to Florida State, and the only other team in the bottom eight to suffer a loss was Baylor in a close affair against the new No. 1 team.

As a result, it was a tough-luck week for teams hoping to break into the Top 25.

Seton Hall had a phenomenal week, comfortably taking care of business at home against both Providence and Xavier to cement its status as a NCAA tournament team. But the Pirates didn't receive a single vote in last week's poll, so they had quite an uphill climb just to get to 60 votes.

Wisconsin was also impressive, winning at Iowa before a home victory over Michigan that pushed the Badgers to 11-5 in Big Ten play. They have now won 10 of their last 11 games, but it was only enough to get to No. 26 in this week's Top 25. Their vote count did increase from 27 to 93, but they're just a little bit higher in the Others Receiving Votes footnote.

And on the mid-major front, Wichita State and Saint Joseph's went 4-0 by a nice combined margin of 69 points, but the Shockers and Hawks are still on the outside looking in.

Job well done, gang, but better luck next week.

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