Baylor is No. 1 in AP men’s basketball poll for first time

Published 1:30 am Monday, January 9, 2017

Baylor is No. 1 in The Associated Press men’s basketball poll for the first time.

The Bears (15-0) have made a meteoric rise in the poll, going from a team that didn’t receive a vote in the preseason poll to one that received 55 first-place votes from the 65-member national media panel Monday.

Baylor is the 59th school to be ranked No. 1 since the poll started in the 1948-49 season. The No. 1 Bears will be tested right away. They play at No. 10 West Virginia on Tuesday and at No. 25 Kansas State on Saturday.

Villanova, which received one first-place vote, had been No. 1 for the past five weeks, but the Wildcats (15-1) dropped to third after losing at Butler last week.

Kansas (14-1), which was No. 1 on eight ballots, moved up from third to second, giving the Big 12 the top two teams in the poll.

UCLA (16-1), which got the other first-place vote, stayed fourth.

Gonzaga (15-0), the only other unbeaten NCAA Division I school, and Kentucky remained fifth and sixth, while Duke, Creighton, Florida State and West Virginia rounded out the top 10.

North Carolina was 11th followed by Butler, Oregon, Louisville, Xavier, Arizona, Purdue, Wisconsin, Virginia and Notre Dame.

The last ranked teams are Saint Mary’s, Cincinnati, Florida and Minnesota, with Kanas State and Southern California tied for 25th.

Minnesota moved into the rankings for the first time since 2012-13, when the Gophers were in the poll for 11 weeks, reaching as high as No. 9. Minnesota’s arrival means there’s a father-son duo in the Top 25, with Kentucky coach Rick Pitino and Minnesota coach Richard Pitino.

Kansas State was last ranked for two weeks in 2013-14.