With five of the top nine teams in last week's Associated Press Top 25 suffering at least one loss each in the past seven days, winners and losers abound in the latest shuffling of college basketball's deck.
The top three (Kansas, Oklahoma and Maryland, in order) remain unchanged from last Monday, but every other team moved in some direction as the rigors of conference play claimed another bevy of victims.
While it's hardly unusual to see the Top 25 suffer a combined 13 losses in a week in January, this should have been a pretty quiet week. There were only two games that pitted ranked teams against one another, meaning 11 of those 13 losses were to unranked opponents—hence the drastic movement in Week 10's poll.
Connecticut and Dayton dropped out of the rankings this week, replaced by Baylor and Gonzaga.
Read on for the rest of this week's biggest winners and losers from the latest AP Top 25[1].
It seems like we've been playing "We trust you; We trust you not" with the Bears all season long.
They throttled Stephen F. Austin in the season opener before losing to a short-handed Oregon a few nights later. Then—after stomping a few SWAC and MEAC foes—they picked up (what appeared at the time to be) a nice home win over Vanderbilt, only to get blown out by Texas A&M less than two weeks later.
After a 28-point loss at Kansas two Saturdays ago, we were ready to write this team off. Clearly, Baylor plays well at home against weak teams, but it can't hang with quality teams on the road.
Until it upset Iowa State in Ames on Saturday, that is.
Now, we're back in love with Baylor.
Three players (Johnathan Motley, Taurean Prince and Lester Medford) recorded double-doubles against the Cyclones for a huge resume-building win in which its most well-known player (Rico Gathers) was a complete non-factor. (Gathers had 17 points and 17 rebounds earlier in the week against Oklahoma State, though, so he'll be OK.)
So, is this the win where the Bears finally turn the corner and start playing consistently solid hoops, or will they instead turn around and lose to either TCU or Texas Tech this week? We'll have to wait and see, but at least we actually will see those scores on the ticker now that Baylor is back at No. 22 in the latest AP Top 25.
What a difference seven days can make.
Last Monday, Virginia was flying high. In possession of 11 consecutive wins—including victories over Villanova, West Virginia, California and Notre Dame—the Cavaliers were playing efficient offense and looked like the team to beat in the ACC.
Now, after narrow losses to Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech, even ESPN.com's Myron Medcalf couldn't help but write a "What's wrong with Virginia?" article with such verbiage as "the dream is still alive for this elite squad ... But who can blame Virginia fans if they bring paper bags to every game next week, just in case?"[2]
Dropping the Cavaliers from No. 4 to No. 13 in the AP Top 25 is totally justified, but let's pump the brakes on the eulogies for 2015-16 Virginia.
Both Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech caught fire from three-point range—the best but most unreliable formula for combating Cavaliers head coach Tony Bennett's pack-line defense. Moreover, Virginia was uncharacteristically turnover-prove in the loss to the Hokies and couldn't buy a three-point bucket against the Yellow Jackets.
Were the losses separated by a couple of low-key wins, we wouldn't even be sweating over Virginia's poor luck in those road environments. But because the losses came in back-to-back outings, it's almost too easy to write about the falling sky in Charlottesville.
The Cavaliers aren't the favorites to win the ACC any longer, but they've certainly done enough over the past two months (let alone the past two seasons) to earn a pass on a brief cold spell. Let's give it at least another week before we start thinking about burying these guys.
It was a week of pure chaos for what were supposedly the nation's best teams. Last week's No. 4 (Virginia) and No. 7 (Arizona) each suffered a pair of losses, while No. 8 (Providence) and No. 9 (Kentucky) each lost a game as well. Incredibly, all six of those losses came against unranked opponents.
Meanwhile, Villanova took care of business against a Seton Hall team that people were starting to seriously consider for a tournament bid and proceeded to win a road game against No. 18 Butler on Sunday night.
Ranked No. 11 in last week's poll, the Wildcats could have been idle this week, and they still would have moved up as a result of the aforementioned losses. Instead, they (re)established themselves as the favorites to win the Big East for a third straight year and climbed all the way to No. 6 in the process.
The doubters who likely only watched Villanova get trounced by Oklahoma in Hawaii or only remember Villanova for its early exits in the past two tournaments will cry that the Wildcats are ranked too high. However, this is a very good team that plays excellent defense and has quietly gotten away from its overreliance on a poor three-point stroke.
Through 11 games, Villanova was attempting 51.7 percent of its field goals from beyond the arc—which went infamously awry in the 4-of-32 outing against Oklahoma. Over the past five games, though, only 33.8 percent of Villanova's shots are coming from downtown. For a team[3] that ranks second in the nation in two-point percentage and 270th in three-point percentage, this is a good career move.
It was a dandy of a week for Villanova, but other groups of Wildcats weren't quite so lucky.
The biggest Wildcat loser was Arizona. Formerly No. 7 in the AP Top 25, head coach Sean Miller's bunch dropped all the way to No. 18 after losses to UCLA and USC. The team also suffered the loss of leading scorer Allonzo Trier[4] for the next four to six weeks because of a broken bone in his shooting hand.
Fortunately, Arizona entered the preseason with a deep roster, but how many more snakebites can this team possibly withstand? Look for San Francisco transfer Mark Tollefsen and freshman Justin Simon to play much bigger roles in Trier's absence.
Perhaps the most alarming Wildcats loss, though, was Kentucky's 18-point shellacking at the hands of LSU.
Marcus Lee and Alex Poythress both fouled out in short order, and Skal Labissiere and Isaiah Briscoe remained ineffective in a perfect storm for coach John Calipari[5]'s imperfect team. The Wildcats bounced back with a solid road win over Alabama, but this doesn't currently look like a team headed for a fifth Final Four in six years. Kentucky dropped from No. 9 to No. 14.
And not that far outside the Top 25, Kansas State lost back-to-back games to Texas and Oklahoma to drop to 0-3 in Big 12 play, while Northwestern lost at home to Ohio State to fall to 0-3 against teams in the KenPom[6] top 100. Both sets of Wildcats had a chance to make a statement this week, and they may have made the wrong one.
In perhaps the greatest college basketball game that more than half of the country was unable to watch (thanks, Pac-12 Network!), USC upset Arizona in four overtimes to finish off a home sweep of the Arizona schools.
The Trojans had to have been on the AP Top 25 radar eight days ago before blowing a 22-point second-half lead in a loss to Washington. However, the tide in that game turned when Julian Jacobs turned his ankle.
The star guard only lasted 18 minutes and still scored a team-high 15 points in the loss. He was back in a big way this week with a combined 33 points, 14 assists, 10 rebounds and eight steals in the wins over the Sun Devils and Wildcats.
And, for what it's worth, injuries were at least partially to blame for USC's earlier losses to Xavier and Monmouth. Starting combo guard Jordan McLaughlin broke his nose against the Musketeers and was playing with a terribly oversized mask in the subsequent loss to the Hawks.
In other words, the Trojans haven't yet been beaten at full strength, and they now have wins over Arizona, Arizona State, Wichita State, Yale and Monmouth.
They weren't quite able to leapfrog Gonzaga for the final spot in the poll, but the Trojans are just 22 votes behind the Zags in 26th place.
Who could have guessed before the season began that USC would be the team with more votes for Wednesday's showdown with UCLA?
We almost never do back-to-back winners, but we also almost never declare teams outside the Top 25 as winners. Let's kill two birds with one stone, shall we?
Bad news for the "Fire Tom Crean!" portion of the college basketball population: Despite losing James Blackmon Jr.[7] for what is expected to be the rest of the season, Indiana has looked pretty dominant on both ends of the court throughout the course of its current nine-game winning streak.
Outside of the lackluster scoring effort in a 59-58 win over Wisconsin this past week, the Hoosiers have scored at least 79 points in each of their last nine games and have now held nine consecutive opponents to 73 points or fewer.
Granted, some of those games were against the likes of McNeese State and Kennesaw State, and Indiana hasn't exactly hit the rough patch in its Big Ten schedule just yet. However, slowing down Notre Dame's offense and putting up 85 points against Ohio State's defense is no common task.
This is a much better Hoosiers team than the one we all wrote off six weeks ago after watching it get repeatedly smacked in the mouth by Duke in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. Freshman big man Thomas Bryant has stepped up his game over the past month, and Troy Williams has continued developing into more of an asset on defense.
Perhaps the biggest change, though, has been the surging play of 6'8" freshman wing OG Anunoby. He played a grand total of 13 minutes between Indiana's three losses in the first month of the season, but he has been a real weapon off the bench as of late, averaging 9.3 points, 4.0 rebounds and 2.0 steals per game in Big Ten play.
It's a shame the Hoosiers had to lose Blackmon to find out what they had waiting in the wings in Anunoby, but he has been the much-needed spark to get this team back to 27th place in the AP voting.
Get ready to hear this about a thousand times in the next two months: We have to get 68 bids from somewhere.
For a while, it looked like the A-10 might benefit from the struggles of conferences like the Mountain West, Missouri Valley and even the SEC, but it shot itself in the foot this week. Not only did its only ranked team in last week's poll (Dayton) lose to a very bad La Salle team, but George Washington (at Saint Louis) and Rhode Island (at Saint Joseph's) suffered losses as well.
With Davidson pretty much already playing its way out of the at-large discussion, those were losses suffered by three of the A-10's four best bets for a bid—and two of them were pretty darn unforgivable.
Because of the carnage, the A-10 received a grand total of two votes this week—one for Dayton and one for Saint Bonaventure—which wasn't nearly enough to be represented in the Top 25.
There's a pretty good chance this conference will still send at least two teams to the Big Dance, but it would be fantastic if anyone other than VCU would start playing like it actually wants or deserves that honor.
After watching Kansas and Oklahoma wage war in a triple-overtime epic on Monday night, there was only one correct synopsis: Those are the two best teams in the country right now.
You didn't need to see the No. 1 and No. 2 next to their scores for three hours to know you were watching some high-quality college hoops. Their rankings simply reinforced their perceived standing as great teams.
Yet, given the long history of AP voters doing completely unforgivable things with their ballots, there was plenty of reason to fear they would succumb to the caveman logic of "team lose; must drop," leading to a No. 3 or even a No. 4 ranking for the Sooners.
Though there were a few voters who insisted on penalizing Oklahoma for losing in three overtimes at the Phog, consensus common sense prevailed for Buddy Hield and Company to remain No. 2 for a second consecutive week.
It's not often that we praise the AP voters for a job well done, but kudos, guys and gals. Most of you knocked this one out of the park.
Of course, not everyone is thrilled with Oklahoma sticking at No. 2 for another week.
Maryland was No. 3 last week, and though the Terrapins had a 115-vote gap to close to catch the Sooners, they must have thought they'd be closer to that goal than 79 votes after watching No. 2 lose a game.
It's a shame for them, but did they really deserve to move any higher in the polls?
Sure, they stomped Rutgers by a 25-point margin, but who hasn't? Three days after the Terps won that game at home, Nebraska went on the road and beat the Scarlet Knights by a 34-point margin. It's a joke that Rutgers even counts as a Big Ten win.
Maryland followed up that win with a buzzer-beating victory at Wisconsin. This would have been pretty impressive in years past, but it sadly means little this season, as it was already the Badgers' fifth home loss.
As a result, the Terrapins merely kept the status quo. Meanwhile, last week's No. 1 (Kansas) and No. 2 (Oklahoma) looked really good, and teams No. 5 (Michigan State) and No. 6 (North Carolina) got crucial players back from knee injuries in the process of dominant wins.
Maryland could actually be considered a winner for not losing any ground, given the circumstances.
Oklahoma dropped off the list of undefeated teams this week, but there are still two standing who benefited from the carnage around them.
After wins over Cincinnati and UCF, SMU is officially 50 percent of the way through a perfect season—and we don't see it ending any time soon. Over the course of the next month, the Mustangs face Houston twice, travel to East Carolina, Tulane, Temple and South Florida and host Memphis and Tulsa. Any one of those games could result in a loss, but none of them should.
Even more impressive than the undefeated record, SMU's Sterling Brown is shooting 74.5 percent inside the arc and 68.4 percent beyond it. Not only is he averaging 2.0 points per field-goal attempt, but he is SMU's best on-ball defender, a capable secondary point guard (4.2 assists per 40 minutes) and one of the five Mustangs[8] ranked in the top 500 nationally in offensive rebounding percentage, per KenPom.com.
Were it not for his turnover woes (3.6 per 40 minutes), Brown might be in the middle of the most efficient college basketball season ever.
Between SMU's relatively weak schedule and the ineligibility for postseason play, AP voters have been hesitant to buy stock in the Mustangs, but voting logic suggests they'll keep climbing as long as they keep winning. They moved up five spots this week to No. 10.
Also moving up three spots to No. 19 was 15-0 South Carolina.
Like SMU, the Gamecocks have had a less than brutal strength of schedule thus far, but they've picked up two of their best wins of the season (vs. Memphis and vs. Vanderbilt) in the past 10 days.
And also like SMU, their schedule doesn't get any harder in the near future. In the next six games, South Carolina draws Alabama twice, Ole Miss and Tennessee on the road and Missouri and Mississippi State at home. It isn't until road games against Georgia and Texas A&M in early February that things start to get hairy.
But don't let the weak schedule obscure the impressive play. Laimonas Chatkevicius and Chris Silva have made life miserable for opponents hoping to accomplish anything in the paint, while veterans such as Michael Carrera, Sindarius Thornwell and Duane Notice have been drastically more efficient versions of the players we saw over the past two years. This team is a legitimate contender in the SEC.
With Texas Tech and Saint Mary's both suffering losses in the past seven days, the "one-loss club[9]" with a gripe against the AP voters from last week's edition of Winners and Losers has been reduced to just Arkansas-Little Rock.
And as was the case a few weeks ago when they were one of the final eight unbeatens remaining, the Trojans have plenty to be upset about.
In addition to the pair of undefeateds mentioned on the previous slide, there are nine other teams with just one loss. Here is where the AP ranked those 11 teams this week:
1. Kansas (1,621 votes)
2. Oklahoma (1,551 votes)
3. Maryland (1,472 votes)
4. Michigan State (1,446 votes)
7. Xavier (1,200 votes)
8. Miami (1,139 votes)
10. SMU (1,040 votes)
11. West Virginia (867 votes)
19. South Carolina (527 votes)
20. Pittsburgh (334 votes)
NR. Arkansas-Little Rock (zero votes)
That's just plain disrespectful. I could accept the Trojans not being in the consensus Top 25, but to receive no votes at all is ridiculous. Heck, college basketball reporter Seth Davis couldn't even be bothered to put UALR on his list of 13 teams[10] also worth considering.
The Trojans have just one loss, and it came on the road against a Texas Tech team that gave both Iowa State and Kansas fits this past week. Arkansas-Little Rock has been playing outstanding defense all season long and has one of the best turnover margins[11] in the country at plus-5.5 per game. The Trojans are also one of the best free-throw shooting teams[12] in the nation.
Their success is no fluke, and it can't entirely be blamed on a weak schedule either. And with so few teams truly deserving of a Top 25 ranking, it's a shame this one isn't getting the attention it has earned.
Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames[13].
References
- ^ latest AP Top 25 (collegebasketball.ap.org)
- ^ What's wrong with Virginia? (espn.go.com)
- ^ a team (kenpom.com)
- ^ Allonzo Trier (www.azcentral.com)
- ^ John Calipari (bleacherreport.com)
- ^ KenPom (kenpom.com)
- ^ losing Jame s Blackmon Jr. (www.usatoday.com)
- ^ five Mustangs (kenpom.com)
- ^ one-loss club (bleacherreport.com)
- ^ list of 13 teams (twitter.com)
- ^ best turnover margins (www.ncaa.com)
- ^ free-throw shooting teams (www.ncaa.com)
- ^ @kerrancejames (twitter.com)
