Uconn men, South Carolina women remain at No. 1
By The Associated Press
The weekly Associated Press Top 25 college basketball polls released Monday saw both the UCLA and USC women’s teams slip following Sunday upset losses, plenty of chaos after the top five among the men’s rankings, and no change of No. 1s in either poll.
Among the women, South Carolina remained the clear No. 1 team in the country and No. 2 Kansas State matched its best ranking ever after a chaotic week that saw nearly half of the AP Top 25 lose at least one game.
The Gamecocks, the nation’s only unbeaten team, received all 35 first-place votes Monday in the latest poll after their 76-70 road victory over then-no. 9 LSU. The defending champion Tigers were one of five top 10 teams to lose a game last week. Overall, a dozen ranked teams had at least one defeat.
■ UCLA (16-3) dropped five places to seventh after an overtime loss to Utah and Sunday’s home loss to Washington State. The Bruins were without star center Lauren Betts, out with a nondisclosed medial issue, against the Cougars.
■ USC (14-4) slipped to No. 15 following Sunday’s home loss to Washington.
■ Kansas State hasn’t been ranked this high since Nov. 25, 2002. The Wildcats have won 15 straight games, the last few without star center Ayoka Lee, who has an ankle injury.
■ Iowa moved back up to third as Caitlin Clark moved closer to the alltime scoring record in women’s college basketbal. She is in fourth place with 3,389 points and could pass Jackie Stiles (3,393) and Kelsey Mitchell (3,402) in the Hawkeyes’ next game on Wednesday at Northwestern. She is 138 points behind Kelsey Plum’s record mark of 3,527.
■ Stanford and North Carolina State followed Iowa in the poll. Colorado, which split a pair of games in Oregon, fell three spots to sixth.
The top five of the men’s rankings remained unchanged with defending national champ Uconn still ahead of mighty Purdue, streaking North
MEN’S POLL >>
Carolina, defensive-minded Houston and Tennessee.
There was plenty of chaos in the rest of the poll, where 10 teams moved at least five positions one way or another.
The Huskies were still the clear No. 1, picking up four more first-place votes after a 99-56 rout of Xavier for their eighth straight win. They topped the poll on 48 of 63 ballots from the national panel of media, while the Boilermakers received 14 votes for No. 1 and the Cougars picked up the remaining one.
“I think last January helped us a lot,” Uconn coach Danny Hurley said. “We went through an absolutely crushing month of January, so we go into games not necessarily afraid to lose. We walked through the fire and still dominated the NCAA Tournament last year.
“So in a weird way, we’re not afraid to drop a game, and we go out and we’re really attacking these games.”
■ Duke (15-4) jumped to No. 7 from 12th coming off a week capped by a victory over Clemson in which freshman Jared Mccain (Centennial High) had 16 of his 21 points after halftime. Mccain is averaging 15.6 points over the last 10 games for the Blue Devils.
EDEY JOINS 2K-POINT CLUB >>
Reigning national player of the year Zach Edey of Purdue wasn’t overly excited about either scoring his 2,000th career point or becoming sixth player Big Ten Conference history to have 2,000 points and grab 1,000 boards.
The 7-foot-4 senior called it cool and just another accomplishment.
Beating Rutgers on the road on Sunday? That gave the big Canadian center a much better feeling after his 26-point, 12-rebound effort led the No. 2 Boilermakers to a tough 6860 win over the Scarlet Knights.
“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a matchup I was looking forward to,” Edey said after Purdue (19-2, 8-2) ended a three-game losing streak at Jersey Mike’s Arena, making it the last conference road venue where he had not won. “It was definitely a game that I wanted to win a lot.”
Late Sunday result
NEW MEXICO 89, NEVADA 55 >>
Jaelen House scored 21 points and the previously No. 25-ranked (now No. 19) Lobos routed the Wolf Pack late Sunday night in Albuquerque. Former Centennial High star Donovan Dent scored 11 points for New Mexico (18-3, 6-2 Mountain West). Nevada (16-5, 3-4) was coming off an upset of then-no. 24 Colorado State on Wednesday.