Houston, South Carolina stay No. 1 in Associated Press polls
The top five spots in The Associated Press men’s college basketball poll remained the same. The rest of the AP Top 25 was a big jumble.
Houston was No. 1 for the second consecutive week in the poll released Monday, receiving 49 first-place votes from a 62-person media panel. No. 2 Alabama had five firstplace votes and No. 3 Kansas received eight.
UCLA and Purdue rounded out the top five. The Boilermakers held at No. 5 despite losing to No. 15 Indiana.
In the rest of the poll, only No. 20 Providence kept the same position from last week as teams get ready for conference tournaments next week and the start of March Madness.
Alabama held its spot after winning two games despite a challenging week off the court. Brandon Miller had a pair of huge games since police alleged that he brought a gun to former teammate Darius Miles, who is charged with capital murder in a fatal shooting.
Miller had 24 points in the 86-83 win over the Razorbacks after scoring 41 in a two-point win over South Carolina.
Marquette has made a quick rise under Coach Shaka Smart.
The Golden Eagles wrapped up a share of their first Big East regular-season title in a decade with a 90-84 win over DePaul on Saturday and climbed four spots in this week’s poll to No. 6. It is Marquette’s highest ranking hitting No. 1 in 1977-78.
Houston moved into the top spot last week and held onto it after a pair of routs last week. The Cougars’ 76-57 win at East Carolina on Saturday clinched the American Athletic Association regular-season championship, the fourth time in five seasons they’ve at least shared the conference title.
TOP 25 WOMEN
After a week of upsets that saw 15 ranked teams lose, South Carolina remained the lone unbeaten school.
The Gamecocks ran their streak to 36 consecutive weeks atop The Associated Press Top 25 women’s basketball poll to match Louisiana Tech for the second-longest run in the history of the poll that dates to 1976.
South Carolina (29-0) finished the regular season unbeaten and was back to being a unanimous choice at No. 1 in national media poll released Monday. The Gamecocks only trail UConn (51 weeks) for the longest consecutive streak atop the Top 25.
While the Gamecocks won both of their games last week and enter the SEC Tournament as the No. 1 seed, the rankings got a big reshuffling. The 15 ranked teams losing at least one game was by far the most Top 25 schools to lose in the same week this season; 11 had lost in the same week a few times earlier this season.
Indiana, which lost at the buzzer to then-No. 6 Iowa on Caitlin Clark’s three-pointer on Sunday, remained No. 2. Utah jumped up five places to No. 3 after beating then-No. 3 Stanford to clinch a share of the Pac-12 title. It’s Utah’s best ranking ever. The Cardinal dropped to sixth.