The following teams lost over the last week in college basketball, setting up what is likely to be the biggest shakeup of the season for the AP Top 25 poll on Monday: No. 2 UConn (x3), No. 3 Gonzaga, No. 5 Iowa State, No. 6 Houston (x2), No. 9 Alabama, No. 11 Duke, No. 12 North Carolina (x2), No. 14 Indiana (x2), No. 19 Arkansas, No. 20 Texas A&M, No. 21 Creighton (x2), No. 22 Xavier, No. 23 Ole Miss, No. 24 Arizona (x2) and No. 25 Mississippi State.
Grand total there: 15 teams took at least one loss and ranked teams took a total of 2 losses between them, led by two-time defending champion UConn’s three-loss stinker at the Maui Invitational.
So let’s try and untangle the mess that was in the space below.
This will be a weekly safe area for us to guess how we think AP voters will react to the results of the week, making it of course different from Gary Parrish’s daily Top 25 And 1 rankings and different than my weekly Power Rankings. This is all about taking into account the entire season’s body of work, factoring in the last week since the most recent AP Top 25 poll, and then trying to break into the brain of voters to guess how we think the upcoming poll Monday will look.
Our best guess is below — with a familiar name remaining at No. 1.
1. Kansas (Last week — 1): All Kansas has done is win this season. The preseason No. 1 Jayhawks are now 7-0 with a big win over Duke last week to pad one of the best resumes in basketball.
2. Auburn (Last week — 4): Auburn’s playing like the best team in the sport right now after a 3-0 week in Maui in which it took down one top-five team (Iowa State), one top-12 team (North Carolina) and one really good team that will likely be ranked Monday (Memphis).
3. Tennessee (Last week — 7): Losses by teams ranked ahead of Tennessee combined with Tennessee’s dominant 7-0 run to start this season should get the Vols into the top five for a fourth consecutive…
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