Fourteen ranked teams took at least one loss over the last seven days and nine of them fell to unranked opponents, setting up what should be plenty of movement Monday when the AP Top 25 men’s college basketball poll is updated.
Houston will likely be among the many big movers after its double-overtime win at Kansas on Saturday that moved it to 8-0 in Big 12 play and extended its winning streak to 12 in the process. The Cougars opened the season with a 4-3 record that included a loss to Auburn and two overtime defeats on a neutral floor to Alabama and to San Diego State, but they have not lost since. Coming off its biggest win of the season, Houston is primed to potentially move into the top five this week.
Michigan State is similarly positioned for a bump in the rankings after it, too, won Saturday and extended its winning streak to 12 games. MSU improved to 8-0 in Big Ten play with an 81-74 win over Rutgers, and after moving into the top 10 last week for the first time all season, is positioned to move up once again for a fourth consecutive week.
AP voters will have their work cut out as they fill out the remainder of their ballots, though. And with every team ranked between No. 11 and No. 19 suffering at least one loss, some tough decisions related to ranking positions on teams like UConn, Kansas, Purdue, Texas A&M and others are coming.
How I project the AP poll to shake out Monday is below. As alway,s this is not a ballot of how I would rank teams personally, but instead a projection of how I think it will look when AP votes are tabulated.
Projected to drop out: UConn, West Virginia
