Week 13 of the college basketball AP rankings have been released on Monday afternoon and here are the biggest winners and losers.
It was one of those weeks that resembled the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Week 12 was basically March Madness is January. Seven of college basketball’s top-10 teams and 10 of the top-15 lost, making for some major shakeups in the AP and Coaches Polls.
The No. 1 team in the country lost yet again — it was the third time in four weeks that the top team in the country fell. Villanova has been playing like the country’s top team, but the Wildcats’ two recent losses have people questioning the possibility of a repeat national champion.
Three of the top four teams in the country went down in surprising fashion, but two of them made up for those losses with rebound victories over ranked teams. Villanova followed up a Marquette loss with a win over Virginia and Kansas took down Kentucky right after losing to West Virginia.
Here are the biggest winners and losers from the newest edition of the AP Poll.
Loser: Florida State Seminoles (No. 6 down to No. 15)
One week after being named a winner in the AP Poll with wins over No.15 Notre Dame and No. 12 Louisville, Florida State came back down to earth with a couple of defeats. The Seminoles dropped, via blowout, to Georgia Tech to start the week and then followed that up with a 10-point loss on the road against Syracuse.
The ACC is just that deep this season and teams like the Seminoles are going to have huge targets on their backs. While the Seminoles have a favorable remaining schedule, upsets like the two this week are bound to happen especially since winning on the road in the ACC is not easy.
Florida State struggled on both sides of the ball last week and that led to the double-digit losses and they went away from what made them successful all year — a complete team effort. However, they will have a chance to rebound at Miami this week.
For now, the Seminoles took one of the biggest stumbles in the rankings of any team this week.