Virginia stays at No. 1 in AP Top 25
RALEIGH, N.C. — Virginia strengthened its hold on No. 1 in the AP Top 25 as it coasts to an Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season title, while Duke made a big jump after a pair of impressive wins without its top freshman.
The Cavaliers earned 42 of 65 first-place votes in the poll released Monday. That’s 12 more than last week, when they reached No. 1 for the first time since the Ralph Sampson era.
The top four remained unchanged, with No. 2 Michigan State earning 19 first-place votes after rallying from 27 down to beat Northwestern.
Third-ranked Villanova got the other four firstplace votes after winning at No. 4 Xavier. And Duke jumped seven spots to No. 5 after beating Virginia Tech and Clemson despite playing without Marvin Bagley, the ACC’s scoring and rebounding leader who is recovering from a knee sprain.
Virginia (24-2, 13-1 ACC) long ago took the drama out of the ACC race with a 12-0 start and hasn’t played since
winning at Miami last Tuesday. The Cavaliers lead second-place Duke by three games in the loss column and own the head-to-head tiebreaker from their win at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Jan. 27 , so they can clinch at least a share of the regularseason title and the No. 1 seed for the ACC Tournament in Brooklyn by beating Georgia Tech on Wednesday.
‘You always start the year and you’re trying to obviously be about the moment, but you want to have a chance to try to win and be a part of ACC regularseason championships.’ Tony Bennett Virginia coach
Win that one, and they travel to Pittsburgh — now 0-15 in the league — to claim the regularseason race outright.
“You always start the year and you’re trying to obviously be about the moment, but you want to have a chance to try to win and be a part of ACC regular-season championships,” Virginia coach Tony Bennett said Monday. “With this league and the depth and the amount of games, that would be a tremendous thing to do, so to have that opportunity at this stage with some games left is really good.”
LSU enters poll for 1st time in 4 years
NEW YORK — LSU is back in the women’s AP Top 25 for the first time in four years while UConn and Mississippi State continue to lead the poll.
The Tigers came back into The Associated Press women’s basketball poll on Monday for the first time since Feb. 17, 2014, entering at No. 24. LSU has won six of its past seven games to move into third in a very competitive SEC. That includes wins over Tennessee, Georgia and Texas A&M, who are all ranked.
LSU’s next game is at No. 7 South Carolina on Thursday.
While LSU returned to the poll, UConn remains the unanimous No. 1 team. The Huskies (26-0) received all 32 first-place votes from a national media panel.