Duke to No. 1 in males’s poll for first time
Mar 10, 2025, 01:15 PM ET
Duke ended Auburn’s eight-week remain at No. 1 in the AP Top 25 males’s college basketball survey on Monday, while the Tigers dropped to 3rd behind Houston as all three programs began getting ready for their conference tournaments.The Blue Devils took advantage of back-to-back losses by Auburn to rise to the top spot for the first time given that November 2021, when Duke spent a week there in Hall of Popularity coach Mike Krzyzewski’s goodbye season. Heaven Devils received 52 of 61 votes from the national media panel, while the Cougars picked up 5 and the Tigers kept the other four.Editor’s Picks 2 Associated “Just my luck to be No. 1 going into the postseason when it really doesn’t matter, “Duke coach Jon Scheyer stated with a laugh.” We have not spoken about it one time. We have actually spoken about being No. 1 when this thing is all stated and done. “Heaven Devils, who will be the No. 1 seed in the ACC
Competition when they begin play in Thursday’s quarterfinals, beat Wake Forest in a thrashing recently before topping rival North Carolina on Saturday in Chapel Hill.The Cougars, the front runner in the Huge 12 Competition, reached their highest ranking
of the season. Auburn fell 3 spots but will still be the No. 1 seed in the SEC Tournament, despite its close losses to then-No. 23 Texas A&M and then-No. 7 Alabama.Team Tape-record 1. Duke( 52) 28-3 2. Houston( 5)27-4 3. Auburn(4 )27-4 4. Florida 27-4 5. Alabama 24-7 6. St. John’s 27-4 7
currently crowning champions and granting NCAA tournament berths, the ACC and Huge 12 are among the power leagues that start play Tuesday. The Big Ten and SEC tournaments open Wednesday. “My standards are most likely a little bit different.
I think there’s areas we need to continue to get better in, “stated Houston coach Kelvin Sampson, whose group rolls into the Big 12 quarterfinals on Thursday riding a 10-game winning streak.”I’m never going to say we’re playing our finest ball since I choose to think our best ball’s ahead of us,”Sampson stated, “so we’ve just got to continue to work. That’s the bottom line.
Stay simple and simply keep working.”RELOCATING; MOVING OUT Oregon, the 8th seed in the Big 10 Tournament, went back to the survey at No. 23 while Illinois– the seventh seed– is back in at No. 24.
Their spots came at the expense of Arizona, which lost at Kansas, and Mississippi State, which did not get a single vote after losing close games to Texas and Arkansas last week.WHO’S RISING; WHO’S FALLING Texas A&M made the biggest move in the survey, climbing 8 areas
to No. 14 after wins over then-No. 1 Auburn and LSU. BYU leapt 6 spots to No. 17 after a double-overtime win over then-No. 10 Iowa State and a success over Utah.Wisconsin and Missouri toppled six spots each this week. The Badgers fell to No. 18 after losing
to Penn State on Saturday while the Tigers fell to No. 21 after losing to Oklahoma and then-No. 19 Kentucky.CONFERENCE SEE The SEC and Big 10 led the way with seven groups each in the Top 25, though the SEC had three of the leading 5 and six in the leading 15, while the Big Ten had one in the leading 10. The Huge 12 had 4 ranked teams, the ACC 3, the Big East two and the American Athletic
and West Coast conferences one each.