Michigan is No. 1 in The Associated Press men’s college basketball poll for the first time in 13 years, ending Arizona’s nine-week reign.
The Wolverines (24-1) claimed 60 of 61 first-place votes in Monday’s poll to climb one spot and supplant the Wildcats, who were unbeaten entering last week before falling at Kansas and at home to Texas Tech.
“Not much,” coach Dusty May said when asked by the AP after Saturday’s rout of UCLA about the significance of potentially topping the poll. “It means we haven’t drank our own Kool-Aid. We’ve put ourselves in a position to be playing the types of games in mid-February that we want to be in, but we’ve got to continue to improve.”
Michigan had been ranked No. 2 behind Arizona for six of Arizona’s nine weeks at the top but was No. 1 in analytics rankings by KenPom, Evan Miyakawa and Bart Torvik last week.
Now the Wolverines have their first AP No. 1 ranking since January 2013.
Houston and Duke each moved up one spot to sit behind Michigan, with the second-ranked Cougars claiming the remaining first-place vote. The Wolverines and Blue Devils are set to meet this weekend in a marquee nonconference matchup in the nation’s capital.
Arizona dropped three spots to No. 4. UConn was next at No. 5, followed by Iowa State, Purdue, Kansas, Nebraska and Illinois to round out the top 10.
Wisconsin went from receiving no votes in last week’s poll to No. 24 after back-to-back wins against top-10 opponents Illinois and Michigan State last week. Alabama was the other new addition at No. 25.
Clemson (No. 20) and Kentucky (No. 25) fell out of last week’s poll.
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