Former No. 2 Arizona falls out of AP top-25 poll, ASU ranked 20th
Nov 27, 2017, 10:30 AM | Updated: 11:44 am
The Arizona Wildcats became the first team since 1986 — and second team in history — to fall from No. 2 in the Associated Press college basketball poll to out of the top-25 rankings within a single week.
It’s the first time Arizona hasn’t been ranked since the start of the 2012-13 season.
Meanwhile, Arizona’s rivals, the Arizona State Sun Devils, made their first appearance in the poll at No. 20 after putting up three victories in the Las Vegas Invitational over the past week.
Three losses in a row during the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in the Bahamas led to the Wildcats tumbling out of the poll. It comes just a week after the 3-0 Arizona team moved to second behind top-ranked Duke and garnered 11 first-place votes, the only other team after the Blue Devils to earn consideration as the top team in the country.
The Wildcats lost to North Carolina State and Southern Methodist by six points in each game before floundering in a 89-64 defeat against No. 18 Purdue, which itself fell out of the rankings due to prior losses in the Bahamas to Tennessee and Western Kentucky.
Arizona still garnered 34 votes and is ranked 30th.
Bobby Hurley’s Sun Devils beat UC-Irvine by 21 points before holding off Kansas State, 92-90, and then scoring a 102-86 win over No. 15 Xavier, which dropped to No. 21 in this week’s rankings.
It’s the first time ASU (6-0) has been ranked since the last AP Poll of 2008-09, when the Sun Devils finished 19th.
Duke earned a unanimous No. 1 ranking by grabbing 65 first-place votes thanks to wins over Portland State, Texas and then-No. 7 Florida. Kansas, Michigan State, Villanova and Notre Dame round out the top five, in that order.
