College Basketball: Kentucky Slips out of AP Top 25 Poll

Two losses to unranked teams–one breaking the nation’s longest standing home winning streak–has placed Kentucky on unfamiliar footing: clumped in the “others receiving votes” category of the latest AP Top 25.

The Wildcats tumbled from No. 8 to unranked in week 5 of the writers’ poll, the largest single-week drop-off by any team in the poll this season. This was the first time since the AP poll’s inception that a top-ten Kentucky team slid out of the rankings altogether in one week.

Notre Dame (No. 22) moves back into the poll for the first time in three weeks after pasting Kentucky at home as part of the SEC/Big East Challenge. Baylor, which upended UK’s 55-game home winning streak and handed John Calipari is first loss at Rupp Arena as Wildcats head coach, remains unranked.

Colorado (previously No. 19) was the only other team to slip out of the poll. The Buffaloes fell to Wyoming on Saturday in Laramie, then lost their spot in the writers’ poll to first-time placeholder Wichita State (No. 24).

Indiana tops the rankings for the fifth consecutive week. Duke, fresh off beating its third top-five opponent (Ohio State) of the season already, gained two more first-place votes, but is still comfortably off the pace at No. 2. Michigan (No. 3), Syracuse (No. 4) and Louisville (No. 5), despite owning a loss and struggling to hold off Illinois State on Saturday, round out the Top 5.