Winners and Losers of AP College Basketball Top 25 Poll in Week 15
Gonzaga, Villanova, Kansas and Baylor were the No. 1 seeds in the NCAA men's basketball tournament selection committee's top 16 on Saturday afternoon, and those same four teams occupy the top four spots in the latest Associated Press Top 25.
We were so close to finally having a week devoid of massive upsets. Prior to Sunday evening, the top 18 teams in the AP poll had a combined record of 27-5, with each of the five losses coming on the road against teams that were in last week's Top 30. But then Wisconsin lost a home game to Northwestern just a few minutes before Virginia lost to Virginia Tech, serving as a reminder that no one is safe in this sport.
Even with those late surprises, though, movement in this week's AP poll was less drastic than usual. Notre Dame jumped into the Top 25 after its wins over Wake Forest and Florida State. Xavier went the opposite direction after its home loss to Villanova. But there were only a couple of teams that moved up or down more than three spots, making for an interesting week of finding winners and losers.
No need to fear. We found plenty. It's impossible to go seven days in college hoops without a major shift in opinion on close to a dozen teams. However, this wasn't the "wholesale changes" type of a week we've grown accustomed to seeing over the past few weeks of chaos.
Read on for the rest of this week's biggest winners and losers.
Winner: The Top 3 Teams
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For once, it was a good week to be sitting on top of the AP Top 25.
No. 1 Gonzaga smashed Loyola Marymount by a 30-point margin before maintaining its undefeated record with a 74-64 win at Saint Mary's. Even if the Zags were to draw Saint Mary's in the West Coast Conference championship game, at this point there's a better than 50 percent chance they enter the NCAA tournament with a zero in the loss column. Even though that was only good enough for the fourth overall No. 1 seed in Saturday's top-16 reveal from the selection committee, they'll be safely on the top line on Selection Sunday March 12 if they continue winning.
No. 2 Villanova also took care of business with an 11-point win over Georgetown and a 16-point win at Xavier. The leaders for the Wildcats are usually Josh Hart, Jalen Brunson and Kris Jenkins, but how about the run Donte DiVincenzo has been on? After scoring 20 in a win over St. John's two weekends ago, the sophomore shooting guard came off the bench to score 15 against the Hoyas and 17 against the Musketeers. A sixth man like that can go a long way in the NCAA tournament.
And No. 3 Kansas eked out a pair of road wins over Kansas State and Texas Tech. Those victories came by a combined margin of just four points, but road wins in Big 12 play are impressive no matter the score—particularly with both Kansas State and Texas Tech entering those games on the bubble and in desperate need of a quality win. Josh Jackson remains one of the top candidates for National Freshman of the Year and the No. 1 overall pick in the 2017 NBA draft following his 31 points, 11 rebounds and four assists against the Red Raiders.
Nos. 1-3 winning games is par for the course, though, right?
It hasn't been lately. In fact, this breaks a streak of six consecutive weeks in which one of the top three teams in the AP poll suffered a loss. In Week 8, No. 2 UCLA lost to Oregon. The next two weeks, No. 1 Villanova and No. 1 Baylor lost to Butler and West Virginia, respectively. In Week 11, it was UCLA's turn again when the No. 3 Bruins lost to Arizona. In Week 12, No. 1 Villanova and No. 2 Kansas both lost. And last week, No. 2 Baylor lost twice and No. 3 Kansas lost.
The top of the AP poll has been complete carnage, but there was finally a sense of normalcy this week, keeping the top three teams in the same order as last Monday.
Loser: Saint Mary's Gaels
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The unfortunate reality in the West Coast Conference is that if you're not Gonzaga, no one cares until you beat Gonzaga. Though Saint Mary's is 22-3 overall, the Gaels fell to 0-2 this season against the Bulldogs Saturday night—both losses by a double-digit margin.
Just like the first game, foul trouble plagued Jock Landale. The big man did finish with a game-high 24 points and eight rebounds, but he only played 25 minutes due to four fouls acquired in the span of less than seven minutes. Gonzaga's frontcourt won the battle, as Przemek Karnowski and Johnathan Williams combined for 36 points and 18 rebounds.
Saint Mary's wasn't impressive in its first game of the week, either, beating 9-17 Portland by a score of 51-41. Low-scoring affairs aren't uncommon for the slow-paced Gaels—they're averaging just 68.8 points per game in conference play—but this was an atypically inefficient showing against a terrible opponent.
Now, AP voters (and the selection committee, for that matter) are left to wonder how good this team actually is.
The Gaels do have a pair of respectable wins over Nevada and Dayton, but those two RPI top-75 wins—their only such wins of the season—both came back in the first 10 days of the regular season (and Dayton didn't have Josh Cunningham or Kendall Pollard, so how good was that win?). Unless you count the home victory over BYU, it has been almost three months since Saint Mary's beat anyone worth mentioning.
Landale and company aren't in any immediate danger of missing the NCAA tournament. They didn't even fall out of the AP Top 25, slipping two spots to No. 22. But if the Gaels fail to finish the regular season on a four-game winning streak against LMU, BYU, Pepperdine and Santa Clara, they could find themselves in a little bit of bubble trouble.
Winner: SMU Mustangs
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Coming into this weekend, SMU was to Cincinnati as Saint Mary's was to Gonzaga. Both the Mustangs and the Gaels had great records, but the lack of quality wins left them in a position of needing a home win against the best team in the conference in order to convince people to start buying what they're selling.
Saint Mary's failed in that quest, but SMU succeeded with a 60-51 win over the Bearcats to move into a tie for first place in the American Athletic Conference.
While most teams go at least eight guys deep, SMU is primarily a tight-knit group of just six guys. In AAC play, the starting five and Ben Emelogu II have combined to score 98.2 percent of the points, and they were the only six Mustangs to see action this week.
But that half dozen is working wonders, particularly on the defensive end. SMU held Temple to 50 points in a 71-possession game on Thursday before shutting down Cincinnati Sunday. The Mustangs continued their trend of rarely fouling, committing just 11 in each game this week. They also won the rebounding battle in both games and currently rank fifth in the nation on the offensive glass and 17th on the defensive end.
The real key to their success has been former Duke transfer Semi Ojeleye. He led all players in scoring in both games, dropping 30 points and 10 rebounds on Temple and scoring 18 against the Bearcats. After averaging just 2.0 points per game in his two seasons with the Blue Devils, he has been a godsend for SMU at 18.1 PPG.
SMU is now 18-1 since the beginning of December and will enter the home stretch of the regular season as one of the hottest teams in the country. It took a while for the AP voters to finally buy into this team, but the Mustangs were one of the biggest risers this week. They jumped from No. 25 to No. 19.
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Loser: South Carolina Gamecocks
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South Carolina was given a gift two weekends ago when Florida beat Kentucky to put the Gamecocks in sole possession of first place in the SEC standings.
They promptly returned that gift by suffering a home loss to Alabama in four overtimes.
Unlike some multiovertime games where neither team wants to lose, this was a hideous affair that neither team wanted to win. Sindarius Thornwell did all he could for the Gamecocks, finishing with 44 points and 21 rebounds. However, the entire team shot 31.6 percent from inside the arc and 16.1 percent beyond it in the process of scoring 86 points in a 100-possession game.
The following game against Mississippi State wasn't much better, either. The Gamecocks improved on offense, but they had an uncharacteristic struggle on defense. It was a tight game throughout, and they trailed in the final five minutes before edging out the lackluster Bulldogs. Thornwell was the star of this game as well, putting up 28 points on just 15 field-goal attempts.
And that is what makes it difficult to believe in South Carolina moving forward.
This team has been "Thornwell Or Bust" for most of the season, but even his heroics only resulted in a pair of nail-biters against teams that won't be in the NCAA tournament. He has been the KenPom.com MVP in 11 of the 19 games in which he has played, including each of the last two games.
Prior to this week, those star performances either meant close wins against good teams or comfortable wins over mediocre teams. But the Gamecocks were just mortal despite his 36 points per game.
We'll see if they can recommit on the defensive end this week against Arkansas and Vanderbilt, but they'll do so from a worse position in the AP poll, dropping two spots to No. 21.
Winner: Duke Blue Devils
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It has only been three weeks, but it feels like a lifetime ago that we were wondering whether Duke might be on the NCAA tournament bubble.
Since that home loss to North Carolina State, the Blue Devils have won five in a row and now sit just one game behind North Carolina for first place in the ACC. This week, they won home games against those Tar Heels and the Clemson Tigers, with the former coming in more impressive fashion than the latter.
At halftime against North Carolina, freshman phenom Jayson Tatum was scoreless. But he scored 19 of Duke's 46 second-half points, including throwing down a dunk on Kennedy Meeks that is certain to show up in pregame highlight reels in this rivalry for years to come. Grayson Allen was the star of that game, though, draining seven three-pointers en route to a game-high 25 points.
Less than 48 hours later—and four days before a road trip to Virginia—Duke hosted a Clemson team in desperation mode. This one had "trap game" written all over it, particularly with Allen and Tatum combining for just 17 points. But the third member of Duke's three-headed monster took the reins, as Luke Kennard scored 25 in the 64-62 win.
At long last, the role allocation on this roster is making sense. Seniors Matt Jones and Amile Jefferson have excelled in their background roles, contributing 30-plus minutes per game as defenders and rebounders while the trio of alpha dogs leads the way on offense. Frank Jackson and Harry Giles probably deserve better, but the former has been an outstanding sixth man while the latter is tentatively showing signs of finally breaking out.
The Blue Devils still have a long way to go to get back to being the clear title favorite we were expecting before the season began, but at least they're heading in the right direction. They jumped six spots to No. 12 in this week's AP poll.
Losers: Oregon Ducks and North Carolina Tar Heels
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Had this week played out like the previous two, Oregon and North Carolina might have actually moved up in the AP poll.
Last week, Nos. 2, 3 and 7 each lost home games to unranked teams while Nos. 5 and 8 were blown out by margins of more than 20 points. Throw in No. 9 losing at Syracuse and it was a struggle to find teams worthy of a spot in the Top 10 of the Week 14 AP poll. The week before that, teams in the Top 10 suffered a combined nine losses—more than half of those coming against unranked foes.
But this week was more sedated. Top 10 teams went a combined 15-4, leaving Oregon's three-point loss at UCLA and North Carolina's eight-point loss at Duke to rank among the most unforgivable things elite teams did.
In reality, they are two of the "best" losses that any ranked team has suffered this season.
Oregon led UCLA by a 19-point margin in the first half before the Bruins unexpectedly buckled down on defense while the Ducks became too attached to the three-point arc. North Carolina went on a 21-8 run in the second half against Duke to turn an eight-point deficit into a five-point lead, but the Tar Heels were unable to hold off the Blue Devils—in some part because starting power forward Isaiah Hicks missed the game with an injured hamstring.
Compared to some of the losses in the past month, these weren't even noteworthy. Moreover, Oregon bounced back two nights later with an impressive 11-point win at USC to remain in sole possession of second place in the Pac-12.
It didn't matter. As two of the only sacrificial lambs of the week, both the Ducks and the Tar Heels evidently had to be punished in the AP poll for their understandable losses. Both teams slipped two spots—Oregon to No. 7 and North Carolina to No. 10.
Winner: Notre Dame Fighting Irish
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After starting the season 16-2—with a pair of close neutral-court losses to Villanova and Purdue serving as the only sources of imperfection—Notre Dame crashed and burned for a few weeks. The Fighting Irish lost five out of six games, including a 17-point home shellacking courtesy of Virginia and a buzzer-beating loss at Georgia Tech.
That downward spiral temporarily knocked them out of the AP Top 25, ranking third among the "Others Receiving Votes" last Monday.
But they finally snapped out of their funk thanks to a downright ridiculous week from 6'5" power forward Bonzie Colson.
Notre Dame's wrecking ball had 27 points, 16 rebounds, five blocks, two steals and two assists in a seven-point win over Wake Forest. He was just as dominant in a 12-point win over Florida State, finishing with 33 points, 13 rebounds, two steals, one block and one assist. Add it all up and divide by two and the "big" man averaged 30.0 points, 14.5 rebounds, 3.0 blocks, 2.0 steals and 1.5 assists per game for the week.
Equally noteworthy was the return to prominence of senior combo guard Steve Vasturia. In Notre Dame's previous three losses, he had a total of 21 points on 27 field-goal attempts, shooting just 1-of-13 from beyond the arc. Vasturia wasn't anywhere near as hot as Colson, but he did average 16.0 points, 7.0 rebounds and 2.5 assists while making 33.3 percent of his long-range attempts.
With a little bit of help from a bunch of losses at the back end of last week's poll, Colston's 15th and 16th double-doubles of the season pushed the Fighting Irish back into the AP Top 25 at No. 25.
And it should be some time before they're tested again. Prior to the season finale at Louisville in three weeks, Notre Dame plays Boston College twice, hosts Georgia Tech and travels to the dumpster fire that is North Carolina State. Mike Brey's bunch should be headed for at least 24 wins (currently 19-7) for a third consecutive year.
Loser: Big Ten Conference
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Aside from Purdue winning at Indiana and Michigan picking up statement victories against Michigan State and Indiana, did any team in the Big Ten have a great week?
This entire league has been a bubble all season long, and that bubble is beginning to pop...or deflate...or whatever the bubble does when teams are refusing to play like they want to compete in the NCAA tournament.
No. 21 Maryland lost to Penn State thanks in part to yet another subpar game from Melo Trimble. These young Terrapins spent the majority of the past three months trying to prove that they're better than their record, but it only took one trip to State College to make it seem like they have no business reaching the second weekend of the NCAA tournament. They have a brutal upcoming week of games at Northwestern and Wisconsin and will enter that road trip ranked No. 23.
Unranked Northwestern picked up a great road win over Wisconsin but prefaced it with a home loss to Illinois. The Wildcats entered the week with a resume devoid of both big wins and bad losses, only to pick up one of each. The win will carry more weight than the loss on Selection Sunday, but it wasn't quite enough to get them back into the AP Top 25.
But No. 7 Wisconsin had the worst week of all.
First, the Badgers found out Saturday afternoon that their 21-3 record and likely Big Ten regular-season title wasn't enough to be ranked in the top 16 by the selection committee. Rather than using that as motivation for the rest of the season, they went out Sunday night and lost a home game to a Northwestern team playing without its leading scorer (Scottie Lindsey).
The Badgers were in a position to potentially move up to No. 5 in the AP poll. Instead, the loss knocked them down several pegs to No. 11.
Stats are courtesy of WarrenNolan.com, KenPom.com and Sports-Reference.com.
Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.
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