For the first time since the end of the 1989-90 season, Oklahoma is the No. 1 team in the latest AP Top 25[1], and thus one of the week's biggest winners.
If you waited to get into college hoops until the college football season officially ended, you were certainly welcomed with open arms into the chaos we've been witnessing all season long. A total of 13 ranked teams suffered losses in the span of six days—including three formerly Top 10 teams who suffered multiple losses.
In most weeks, a team needs to look really impressive in order to soar in the polls.
This week, though, simply not losing was more than enough to make a great impression, as teams such as Baylor, Butler and Purdue skyrocketed for beating the worst teams in their respective conferences.
Despite the carnage in the Top 20, it wasn't a great week for teams hoping to sneak onto some ballots. The teams who were Nos. 21-27 last week went a combined 8-1, so USC (formerly No. 26) and Indiana (formerly No. 27) were the only new additions this week, replacing Gonzaga and Pittsburgh.
Read on for the rest of this week's biggest winners and losers.
Move over, Denzel Valentine, Kris Dunn and Ben Simmons. If anyone other than Buddy Hield is winning this year's Wooden Award, it might be Iowa's Jarrod Uthoff.
In Big Ten play, Uthoff has averaged 19.6 points, 6.2 rebounds and 3.6 blocks per game. And what's downright terrifying about Iowa is that his two worst games of the season (at least as far as O-rating is concerned[2]) came in the Hawkeyes' two wins over Michigan State.
Rather, it was the one non-senior in the starting lineup who brought the pain this week. Junior wing Peter Jok scored 23 points in the second leg of Iowa's season sweep of the Spartans and had another 16 in Sunday's win over Michigan.
And yet, Mike Gesell might be the most important piece of the Hawkeyes' puzzle. The senior point guard didn't do much scoring this past week, but he now has 47 assists against just eight turnovers in Iowa's last seven games—including a 13-1 ratio in the past seven days.
Before the season began, hardly anyone had Iowa projected to finish in the top five of the Big Ten, but good luck finding five more complete teams in the entire country right now. The Hawkeyes are sitting pretty atop the Big Ten standings, and they've earned it with road wins over Michigan State and Purdue and home wins over Michigan State and Michigan.
If Iowa can finish off the season sweep of Purdue on Sunday, it just might be battling Xavier for a No. 1 seed in subsequent projected brackets.
Who saw that sentence coming two months ago?
Iowa jumped from No. 16 to No. 9 in this week's poll.
As far as mid-January college basketball goes, it was a pretty normal week. In Week 9 of last season, 15 ranked teams suffered a combined 16 losses. The following week, 12 ranked teams racked up 14 losses. And of those 30 losses, 15 were to unranked opponents.
What made this week's batch of 16 losses by 13 teams feel especially chaotic, though, is that college basketball's iconic programs fell the hardest, as the four teams from the Champions Classic (Michigan State, Duke, Kentucky and Kansas) went a combined 2-6.
Michigan State's was the neck Iowa stepped upon to climb in the poll, and the Spartans didn't respond well in losing to 9-9 Wisconsin just three days later. Denzel Valentine looked pretty close to back to normal, but the shooting guard tandem of Bryn Forbes and Matt McQuaid had a disastrous week, scoring a combined 16 points on 21 field-goal attempts.
The defense is the bigger issue, though, as Michigan State fell from No. 4 to No. 11 by allowing Iowa and Wisconsin to score 153 points on 130 possessions[3]. When everyone is clicking, the Spartans have one of the best offenses in the country, but their defense isn't good enough to survive on nights when only a couple of guys come to score.
Same goes for Duke, which gave up 95 points to Notre Dame in a 70-possession game[4]—reminiscent of the defensive "effort" that led to everyone selling his stock in Indiana six weeks ago. When you make 12 three-pointers and 21 free throws and lose in regulation, you've got a pretty big leak on defense.
Were it just that one loss against the nation's most efficient offense[5], Duke's AP rank probably would have been fine. However, the Blue Devils also fell victim to Clemson to drop from No. 9 to No. 20.
(By the way, has anyone else noticed the eerie parallels between 2015-16 Duke and 2013-14 Duke? Both versions had four losses by mid-January: an 11-point loss in the Champions Classic, a neutral-court loss to a Pac-12 contender and a pair of conference losses to Clemson and Notre Dame. Moreover, both teams were pretty much incapable of stopping the opposition from scoring because of a painfully thin frontcourt. If the Blue Devils draw Mercer in the NCAA tournament, you know what to do.)
The worst loss of the week, though—and perhaps of the entire season—belongs to Kentucky, as the Wildcats somehow lost to an Auburn team that had lost five of its past six games by a double-digit margin.
We'd change the record on Kentucky if we could, but Isaiah Briscoe was painfully inefficient (3-of-12 from the field and 2-of-4 from the line with four turnovers) and Skal Labissiere was a ghost (four points and three fouls in eight minutes). Those issues have been there all season long, and we're long overdue for questioning whether this team will ever figure it out. How the Wildcats are ranked at all at this point is a miracle, but they fell from No. 14 to No. 23.
Kansas also suffered a loss this week, but we'll address that on the next slide. In total, though, the four teams from the Champions Classic dropped a combined 29 spots in this week's poll.
One of the biggest differences from last season is that the No. 1 team loses seemingly every other week this year. We were lulled into a sense of security with Kentucky at the top spot over and over again in 2014-15, but Oklahoma is now the fifth team to serve time at No. 1 this season.
Though they looked far from invincible in their pair of wins by a two-point margin over Oklahoma State and West Virginia, the Sooners did survive the week. That's more than any other team in last week's top four can boast, so they became the obvious choice for No. 1. They better not celebrate the achievement too much, though, as they travel to Iowa State and Baylor this week. The chances of another team in the top spot next Monday seem pretty high.
Oklahoma was able to avoid the Mountaineers' upset bid, but Kansas wasn't nearly as lucky, committing 22 turnovers in the 11-point loss to West Virginia. However, the Jayhawks bounced back nicely with a pretty comfortable win over TCU. (The final margin was seven, but Kansas led by 17 with just over two minutes remaining.) As a result, the Jayhawks only fell from No. 1 to No. 3.
As West Virginia was so heavily involved in the goings on of those two teams last week, it only makes sense to address Bob Huggins' club next. The Mountaineers fell just short of becoming the first team in more than 25 years to win back-to-back regular-season games against the AP No. 1 and No. 2, but they didn't fail to impress the masses.
Just seven days ago, the knock on West Virginia was that its shtick didn't work against above-average guards and it didn't do very well outside of Morgantown. After this past week, though, that couldn't be further from the truth, as we're left to wonder what teams out there actually have what it takes to knock off WVU in the NCAA tournament. Despite a loss, the Mountaineers climbed from No. 11 to No. 6.
But they weren't the Big 12's biggest movers. That honor belongs to Baylor—even though the Bears merely won a home game against TCU and needed a Lester Medford buzzer-beater to survive on the road against Texas Tech. Because there was no hangover from last week's big road win over Iowa State, though, Baylor stock sold in bunches this week for the Bears to climb nine spots to No. 13.
All four are now tied for the Big 12 lead at 4-1. If you're not excited about finding out who ultimately wins this conference, you might not have a pulse.
Maryland had one of the more impressive wins of the entire season this weekend, beating the life out of Ohio State in a 100-65 game that wasn't even close. Melo Trimble barely even bothered trying to score (five field-goal attempts), but Rasheed Sulaimon and Robert Carter were on fire for a Terrapins team that—for the first time in a while—looked like one that could win the national championship.
ESPN's Myron Medcalf wrote after the game, "On Saturday, Maryland reminded us—reminded itself—that it can be a giant in this game for the next three months."[6]
However, the Terrapins dropped four spots to No. 7 because of a three-point loss to Michigan earlier in the week.
It was an ugly loss, no doubt. Michigan's frontcourt had no answer for Carter, Diamond Stone and Jake Layman, as the trio combined for 55 points and 24 rebounds. But Michigan's guards (sans Caris LeVert, no less) made a mockery of Maryland's backcourt in a game the Terps should have been able to win on rebounding margin alone.
Based on what happened four days later, though, it seems to have been exactly the medicine they needed to snap out of their funk. Outside of the blowout win over Rutgers, Maryland had looked downright sluggish for the past several weeks, harking back to its early-season performances against Rider and North Carolina.
In scoring 91 points in the first 33 minutes against the Buckeyes, there was nothing wrong with the early effort on Saturday.
Unfortunately for Maryland, the teams ranked Nos. 5-7 in last week's poll were among the few that didn't lose in the last seven days, resulting in North Carolina, Villanova, Xavier and even West Virginia leapfrogging the Terrapins.
After three straight nail-biters against Mississippi State, Tennessee and Florida, Texas A&M finally scored a statement win over Georgia this weekend.
To be fair, Georgia never beats quality opponents. The last time the Bulldogs won a game against a team that earned a single-digit seed in the NCAA tournament was in February 2012. But that doesn't take away from the fact that this was a complete beatdown.
A&M went into Athens and won by a 34-point margin. No Aggie scored more than 12 points, so they pretty much took turns beating a dead horse.
And it's not like Georgia is a bad team. The Bulldogs beat both Clemson and Georgia Tech in December and had just beaten Tennessee three days before Texas A&M came to town. Prior to Saturday, they had only lost one game by a margin of more than seven points.
Texas A&M just made them look bad and made itself look very good. And the Aggies got bonus points for doing so on a day when Kentucky lost to Auburn. They were already looking like the team to beat in the SEC, but Saturday put a few layers of cement on that status.
The Aggies are now No. 10 in the AP Top 25—their highest ranking under Billy Kennedy.
The order has drastically changed, but the teams in the AP Top 25 are predominantly who we expected them to be back before the season began. Of the 25 teams in last week's rankings, 18 were in the top 30 of the preseason AP poll, leaving seven pleasant surprises: Iowa, Xavier, Louisville, Miami, Providence, South Carolina and Pittsburgh.
The first three on that list had a pretty great week. We already devoted an entire slide to Iowa as the biggest winner of the week, but Xavier and Louisville also climbed a bit in the polls as members of the ranked minority who did not suffer a loss in the last seven days.
The other four weren't so lucky.
Miami suffered a pair of road losses against Virginia (understandable) and Clemson (not so much). Against two of the most painfully slow-paced teams in the country, the Hurricanes looked out of sorts in both games. They couldn't buy a three-pointer against Virginia and couldn't score in the paint against Clemson, and they had no answer on defense for either foe. Miami dropped from No. 8 to No. 15 in this week's poll.
Of all the ranked teams that suffered losses this week, though, Providence is the most concerning.
All of a sudden, the Friars have no clue how to score. In their last three games against Marquette, Creighton and Seton Hall—hardly a Murderers' Row of defense—they shot a combined 32.4 percent from the field and 19.4 percent from three-point range. Ben Bentil still looks pretty great, but Kris Dunn has caught the turnover bug, and Rodney Bullock has fallen apart at the seams. The Friars dropped from No. 12 to No. 16 in advance of a brutal three-game stretch against Butler, Villanova and Xavier.
Elsewhere, the South Carolina and Pittsburgh bandwagons were finally beginning to gain steam only to see those offensive units get derailed on the road.
The Gamecocks were a disaster in a 73-50 loss to Alabama, and Pittsburgh was even worse in its 59-41 loss to Louisville. They shot a combined 4-of-29 from three-point range and committed 37 turnovers in defeat. South Carolina fell five spots to No. 24, but Pittsburgh was one of just two teams to drop out of the poll, falling from its previous No. 20 ranking.
It took one week longer than it arguably should have, but after embarrassing UCLA in Pauley Pavilion, USC jumped into the poll at No. 21 this week—its first appearance in the AP Top 25 since November 2008.
According to Sam Vecenie[7] of CBS Sports, USC guard Julian Jacobs had some postgame thoughts on the rivalry win:
"It's sort of been one-sided just because naturally, they've been better. They've produced something like four or five pros in the past couple of years since I've been here. They've pretty much been a better ball club. But as you guys can see, we're a force to be reckoned with and we just wanted to go out and prove that."
Lest you think the Trojans are just going to be the next team to rise to prominence only to disappoint, take a look at everything they're doing right this year.
They don't rely too heavily on any individual player. Six guys are averaging between 10.6 and 13.6 points per game, and they have eight different players averaging at least 3.2 rebounds per game. All three starters in the backcourt rank in the top 500 in the nation in steal percentage[8], and they have three frontcourt players averaging at least one block per game.
They also have four players attempting at least four triples per game, each of which is shooting at least 38.9 percent from three-point range. The odds of this entire team—or even most of it—struggling on offense on the same night are slim to none.
Moreover, the Trojans defend well without fouling. USC has averaged just 17.3 fouls per game and ranks 18th in the nation in defensive effective field-goal percentage[9]. It'd be great if the Trojans could force more turnovers and/or close out more defensive possessions with a rebound, but nothing comes easily against this defense.
And they're still improving.
There's not a senior on the roster who has played more than 31 minutes this season, and the freshman duo of Chimezie Metu and Bennie Boatwright seems to get better in every game. Jordan McLaughlin was playing with a broken nose in the losses to Xavier and Monmouth. Jacobs left early with an ankle injury in the loss to Washington.
USC still hasn't been beaten at full strength and just might be the best team in the Pac-12 one year ahead of schedule.
It was right around this time last year that we discovered the curse of No. 25[10]. For some strange reason, the team at the bottom of the AP Top 25 was suffering losses more often than not.
Well, that beast is rearing its ugly head again this year.
In Week 8, UCLA took its No. 25 ranking and threw it straight in the trash by getting swept on its road trip through Washington and Washington State. The following week, Dayton finally cracked into the poll only to suffer a possibly tournament-berth-altering loss to La Salle.
And Week 10 was Gonzaga's turn to be toppled, despite Kyle Wiltjer's best efforts.
The Wooden Award candidate has averaged 28.0 points per game over the last six, but his 35 points and 10 rebounds weren't enough to keep the Zags from blowing a 13-point second-half lead in a home loss to BYU.
These things happen when foul trouble and a solid frontcourt hold Domantas Sabonis to just five points and six rebounds, but that doesn't excuse the loss by any means. In fact, it's getting pretty tough to even envision a scenario in which Gonzaga receives an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament at this point.
Best of luck to this week's No. 25 team, though; we'll know for sure that there's a curse if Indiana loses at home to either Illinois or Northwestern.
It was a pretty great week for the Hoosier State, which actually didn't do all that much.
Indiana is the headliner of the bunch, as the Hoosiers finally got back into the rankings at No. 25 after a win at Minnesota extended their winning streak to 10 games. In Big Ten play, the Hoosiers have held their opponents to 322 points on 347 possessions[11]. All five of those teams failed to reach 1.0 point per possession against what is suddenly and extremely unexpectedly one of the toughest defenses in the country.
Elsewhere in the state, Butler and Purdue comfortably took care of business in home games against St. John's and Penn State, respectively. Like Indiana, they only played one game each, but it was a good week to stay away from the court as much as possible. Less chance for carnage that way. Both teams moved up a bit, as the Bulldogs now sit at No. 18 and the Boilermakers at No. 22.
Slightly below the AP's radar, though, is a fourth Indiana-based team that had a better week than all three of those combined.
Notre Dame won a home game against a probably-better-than-you-realize Georgia Tech squad before picking up a massive road win over Duke—joining a neutral-court win over Iowa on Notre Dame's list of tournament resume scalps. The Fighting Irish didn't exactly surge in the polls, but they did pick up 14 votes this week in advance of what should be a pair of blowout home wins over Virginia Tech and Boston College.
This should have been the week.
The top nine teams in last week's AP Top 25 went a combined 9-8. Three of those teams suffered two losses each, opening the door for the No. 10 team to make a big jump in the poll if it didn't suffer any losses.
Not only did the Mustangs remain undefeated—the last such team now that South Carolina has fallen—but they were also responsible for two of the only four games this week in which a ranked team went on the road and won by a margin of at least 15 points. Sure, those games were against two of the three worst teams in the AAC (East Carolina and Tulane), but we're talking about a week in which Kentucky lost to 7-8 Auburn and Michigan State lost to 9-9 Wisconsin.
While most of the country endured a week of chaos, SMU took care of business, per usual.
Surely, the Mustangs jumped to at least No. 7 in the new poll, right? Nos. 4, 8 and 9 went a combined 0-6, so how could No. 10 go 2-0 and not move up three spots?
Nope. They only moved up to No. 8 and finished just 12 votes ahead of No. 9.
In last week's B/R Top 25[12], I asked what the glass ceiling is for a team that is ineligible for postseason play.
Well, SMU appears to have hit it—and though I hate it, I get it. Even if bracketology isn't a hobby of yours, we all watch the regular season with March Madness in mind. Perhaps you don't try to evaluate who will be No. 1 seeds or bubble teams, but you're keeping an eye out for teams you're either going to buy or sell when bracket season arrives.
So, what's the point in trying to convince yourself (or others) that the Mustangs are one of the eight best teams in the country when you'll never have the chance to pick them to the Elite Eight anyway?
Maybe I'm wrong and that's not the consensus mentality of the AP voters. Maybe they're just reserving judgment until SMU plays Gonzaga and Connecticut in mid-February. But I have a hard time believing the last undefeated team in the country wouldn't rank a couple of spots higher if postseason play were in its future.
Stats courtesy of KenPom.com[13] unless otherwise noted.
Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames[14].
References
- ^ latest AP Top 25 (collegebasketball.ap.org)
- ^ O-rating is concerned (kenpom.com)
- ^ 130 possessions (kenpom.com)
- ^ 70-possession game (kenpom.com)
- ^ most efficient offense (kenpom.com)
- ^ ESPN's Myron Medcalf (espn.go.com)
- ^ According to S am Vecenie (www.cbssports.com)
- ^ steal percentage (kenpom.com)
- ^ defensive effective field-goal percentage (kenpom.com)
- ^ curse of No. 25 (bleacherreport.com)
- ^ 347 possessions (kenpom.com)
- ^ last week's B/R Top 25 (bleacherreport.com)
- ^ KenPom.com (kenpom.com)
- ^ @kerrancejames (twitter.com)
