AP Top 25 Week 15: 3 teams ranked too high, 3 teams ranked too low

Don't look now, but we're already in the second full week of February. The Super Bowl has officially come and gone, which can only mean one thing: March Madness is right around the corner. Conference tournaments will be here before you know it, and the battle of NCAA Tournament seeding, is heating up.

One thing that plays a role in that battle — probably too big a role, even in the age of quads and NET rankings — is the AP Top 25, which released a new poll on Monday after a wild weekend that saw several top-five teams go down. While we appreciate the good work that AP voters around the country do, and acknowledge that it's virtually impossible to rank 25 out of 352 Division I teams in a way that will satisfy everybody, we've got a few bones to pick with this week's version.

Creighton deserves more love after another big win

It feels like everybody just wrote the Blue Jays off after they stumbled out of the gate, including five losses in an eight-game stretch from late November to late December. But some of those losses look a bit more forgivable in hindsight — Nebraska and Texas A&M, in particular, are better than we expected them to be — and Greg McDermott's team is playing its best basketball as we hit the home stretch of conference play.

Saturday's 10-point win over Marquette made it nine in a row for Creighton, the sixth-longest active winning streak in the country. They're now right on the heels of St. John's in the Big East standings at 11-2, and they beat the Johnnies by a point in their first meeting back in January. And yet, despite all that, they remain mired at No. 24 in the latest AP poll, which feels like it's drastically underselling how good this team can be now that it's finally healthy and rolling. Ryan Kalkbrenner remains an absolute menace inside, and if Steven Ashworth keeps shooting like this, look out.

Kentucky hasn't done enough to prove that it's a top-15 team

Granted, health has been an issue here, with Kerr Kriisa still out and Lamont Butler and Jaxson Robinson battling nagging injuries. And on the right night (wins over Florida, Texas A&M and Tennessee), the Wildcats look like they can beat just about anybody.

The problem is that the right nights have been fewer and farther between of late. Despite a win over SEC bottom-feeder South Carolina on Saturday, Kentucky has won just two of its last six games, and they're 6-6 overall since Dec. 21. If you're as prone to defensive lapses as this team is, you leave yourself awfully vulnerable, and the Wildcats are simply too hard to trust to justify their current No. 15 ranking.

Maryland might be the most underrated team in the country

The following is a complete list of every team that ranks within the top 20 in KenPom in both offensive and defensive efficiency: Auburn, Duke, Houston, Florida, Iowa State, Arizona and Maryland. The Terps are the only member of that group that finds itself outside of the top 13 in the country, falling all the way to No. 25 after a midweek upset at Ohio State.

Of course, Kevin Willard's team hasn't helped its cause at times this year; losing to Washington and Northwestern is, as the kids say, not a good look. But they've won seven of nine overall, including wins over Wisconsin, UCLA, Illinois and Nebraska, and they've got one of the best frontcourt duos in the nation in Derik Queen and Julian Reese. Sure, the Big Ten is a step behind the SEC this season, but it's hard to understand why Maryland isn't ranked ahead of some of the teams directly in front of it.

Kansas is coasting on early-season success

With early wins over UNC (don't laugh), Duke and Michigan State, Bill Self's Jayhawks looked like early national title favorites going into Thanksgiving. Since then, though, it's been a very bumpy ride: a road loss at Kansas State on Saturday dropped KU to 7-5 in Big 12 play, and they're just 9-7 since the start of December.

Yet despite all that, Kansas remains ranked No. 17, dropping just one spot in the latest AP poll. A home win over Iowa State in the middle of last week certainly helped them from sinking too far, but overall this feels like a team that wouldn't be where it currently is if you simply ranked blind resumes without taking prior rankings into consideration. KenPom still loves them (No. 11), but that also has a lot to do with where they started the season, and the fact is that right now this team doesn't have enough juice offensively around Hunter Dickinson.

UCLA has quietly righted the ship under Mick Cronin

The vibes could hardly have been worse in Westwood just a month ago, as the Bruins dropped their fourth game in a row to fall to 11-6 overall and put their bubble hopes on life support. Mick Cronin was putting his team on blast in the media to no avail, and an outright collapse seemed about as likely as a Big Ten title run.

Turns out the head coach may have known what he was doing after all? UCLA knocked off then-No. 9 Michigan State and blasted Penn State last week to run their winning streak to seven in a row, and suddenly this is starting to look like the Cronin teams of old: i.e., forcing turnovers with reckless abandon and generally making life miserable for 40 minutes. But they still can't find a way to crack the latest AP poll, winding up as the first team out with 123 votes received. A road trip to Illinois and Indiana this week will provide quite the test, but this sure looks like a top-25 team right now.

Marquette isn't playing like a top-20 team right now

It's been a rough 10 days or so for Shaka Smart's team, which has dropped three in a row against the three teams it was competing with atop the Big East standings (UConn, St. John's and Creighton). All three games were competitive, and two of them came on the road, so we don't want to make too much of this. But it's a little alarming how few answers this team has offensively outside of "let Kam Jones cook," and landing at No. 18 feels a bit generous this week given their recent run of form.