College basketball rankings: UConn jumps to No. 1 in AP Top 25 poll; Gonzaga out for first time 2016

The Huskies are back at No. 1 for first time since the AP poll released on March 2, 2009

By Kyle Boone

Jan 15, 2024 at 1:15 pm ET • 2 min read

NCAA Basketball: Georgetown at Connecticut

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With five of the top six teams in last week's AP Top 25 suffering one loss each in the last seven days, the reigning national champion UConn Huskies won over AP voters by default to claim the No. 1 spot in the poll for the first time all season.

The Huskies, ranked No. 4 last week, were the only team in the top six to not take a loss amid a chaotic week atop the sport, jumping Kansas, Houston and Purdue to earn the top spot in the poll for the first time since 2009. Thirty-nine of a possible 63 first-place votes went to the Huskies, while Purdue, Kansas and North Carolina shared the rest.

Purdue had been No. 1 in the poll for four consecutive weeks before a road loss to Nebraska inside Pinnacle Bank on Tuesday knocked the Boilermakers down a rung. AP voters still gave them 20 first-place votes on the week in total and 1,506 points in all, dropping them just one spot behind UConn in the Top 25. Kansas held steady at No. 3 despite a 1-1 week with a loss at UCF and a win vs. Oklahoma, while North Carolina moved up three spots to No. 4 and Houston fell three spots to No. 5.

Such a wild week in the sport left us with nine teams in last week's top 10 either moving up, down or out entirely of this week's top 10, but the top teams were not the only ones immune to change. Twenty four of 25 teams in this week's AP poll are in a different position than in last week's poll in total, and the back end of the poll saw a total overhaul with five previously unranked teams appearing in the poll led by TCU at No. 19, Dayton at No. 21, Ole Miss at No. 22, Iowa State at No. 25 and Texas Tech at No. 25.

Gonzaga also fell out of the rankings entirely after dropping a road game to Santa Clara to move to 11-5 on the season, marking the first time since the 2015-16 season that the Bulldogs are not in the AP poll and snapping a streak of 143 polls of being ranked.