College basketball rankings: UConn remains in AP Top 25 poll; Kentucky, Tennessee move into top five

Back-to-back NCAA Tournament champion UConn narrowly avoided falling out of the AP Top 25 college basketball poll entirely on Monday after an 0-3 week at the Maui Invitational in which it lost to three unranked teams in as many days. The Huskies dropped 23 spots from No. 2 to No. 25 to keep its ranked streak alive. The AP poll has included UConn in its top 25 in every poll since the preseason rankings ahead of the 2022-23 season.

Auburn moved up two spots to the No. 2 spot UConn previously held, while Tennessee, Kentucky and Marquette all benefited in part from UConn’s precipitous fall in the rankings to move into the top five.

No. 1 Kansas retained its spot atop the poll for a fifth consecutive week, though its grasp loosened a smidge after Auburn’s run last week in Hawaii culminated with a Maui Invitational title. The Jayhawks went from earning 51 first-place votes last week to 35 this week. Auburn was the only team to siphon first-place votes from them, earning 26. It had a total of 1,490 points in the poll to KU’s 1,499.

The full AP poll and three takeaways from the latest set of rankings are below.

AP Top 25

The top 25 teams in The Associated Press’ college basketball poll, with first-place votes in parentheses, records through Sunday, total points based on 25 points for a first-place vote through one point for a 25th-place vote and last week’s ranking:

Also receiving votes: Michigan State, 108, Arkansas 104, Texas 97, Michigan 95, Arizona State 89, Indiana 72, Drake 58, Xavier 33, Utah State 28, Louisville 27, West Virginia 26, Clemson 25, BYU 24, Dayton 24, Texas Tech 22, Nebraska 22, Mississippi State 20, Ohio State 19, Maryland 13, UCLA 13, Creighton 12, Saint Mary’s 11, Georgia 10, St. John’s 7, Loyola Chicago 4, Florida State 3, DePaul 3, UC Irvine 2, Columbia 2.

Six newcomers join rankings

With 15 ranked teams suffering at least one loss over the past seven days, there were a lot of teams both exiting and entering this week’s rankings. No. 12 Oregon, No. 16 Memphis, No. 18 Pitt, No. 19 Illinois, No. 21 Oklahoma and No. 24 San Diego State as a result all went from unranked to ranked this week as part of a major shakeup. Of the six newly-ranked teams, only one — Illinois — had previously been ranked this season.

SEC dominates at the top

For all the (admittedly deserved) hubbub made of the Big 12’s strength and depth the last few years, we’ve seen over the last few weeks the SEC crowd on the corner and hover on the Big 12’s space as the top league in the sport. No more is that more evident than the latest rankings, where the Big 12 holds the top spot with Kansas but the next three teams — Auburn, Tennessee and Kentucky — all hail from the SEC.

In total, the SEC has four of the top 10 (Alabama stayed in at No. 10) and eight of the top 25. (Florida pushed up to No. 13. OU, Texas A&M and Ole Miss comprised the No. 21, No. 22 and No. 23 spots.) Meanwhile, the Big 12 has two in the top 10 (with Iowa State at No. 6) and only five teams in the top 25 in No. 14 Cincinnati, No. 15 Baylor and No. 17 Houston. 

Arkansas and Texas — two more SEC teams — narrowly missed this week’s poll after receiving the second and third-most votes among teams not in the top 25 this week. 

UConn hangs on, for now

Despite an 0-3 week at the Maui Invitational and a 99-45 win over Maryland Eastern Shore on Saturday that didn’t move the needle, UConn got plenty of benefit of the doubt from voters in hanging tight in this poll despite some pretty lackluster results. Still noteworthy: the 23-spot drop to No. 25 is the Huskies’ lowest poll position since the poll released on Nov. 14, 2022 — 749 days ago — when they were No. 25 in the first poll of the 2022-23 season after opening the season unranked.

UConn has plenty of chances upcoming to solidify its standing or to eject from the poll entirely with Baylor coming to Connecticut on Wednesday and a trip to Austin, Texas, to face Texas on Sunday.