Houston and Kansas remained firmly atop The Associated Press men’s college basketball poll Monday after a record weekend of Top 25 losses, while Florida Atlantic took advantage of the chaos to crack the ranking for the first time in school history.
Eleven teams in the Top 25 went down on Saturday, tying a record that has stood for nearly 12 years, while Connecticut and Marquette also lost on Sunday to give the AP poll one of its biggest shakeups in recent history.
The banged-up Cougars, who had to fight off South Florida to avoid their own upset loss, watched their advantage over the Jayhawks shrink ever so slightly, pulling in 34 of 60 first-place votes from a national media panel. Kansas received 23 votes to remain second while Purdue picked up the remaining three to stay third.
Alabama remained at No. 4 while UCLA, riding a 13-game winning streak, climbed two spots to round out the top five.
“We’ve dodged a lot of bullets this year in terms of injuries and stuff. Sometimes you just got to get lucky,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. “I thought we got lucky (against South Florida). We could’ve lost that game.”