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Oregon, Indiana Big Movers in the New AP Poll

Lucas M. NCAAB News

In case if you missed it, here is the new AP Top 25 Poll. The Duke Blue Devils are back on top, their fifth week this year in the top spot. They fell to third last week, but were able to vault some of their competition like Louisville and Indiana after they lost.

  1. Duke (39): 16-1
  2. Michigan (11): 17-1
  3. Kansas (7): 16-1
  4. Syracuse (8): 17-1
  5. Louisville: 16-2
  6. Arizona: 16-1
  7. Indiana: 16-2
  8. Florida: 14-2
  9. Butler: 16-2
  10. Gonzaga: 17-2
  11. Kansas State: 15-2
  12. Minnesota: 15-3
  13. Michigan State: 16-3
  14. Ohio State: 13-4
  15. New Mexico: 16-2
  16. Oregon: 16-2
  17. Creighton: 17-2
  18. North Carolina State: 15-3
  19. Virginia Commonwealth:  16-3
  20. Wichita State: 17-2
  21. Cincinnati: 16-3
  22. Missouri: 13-4
  23. Ole Miss: 15-2
  24. Notre Dame: 15-3
  25. Miami (FL): 13-3

Let’s take a look at a few of the big movers this week.

Oregon Ducks – 16-2, Up Five Spots From Last Week

The Oregon Ducks are starting to look for real. After their 76-67 win over then-No. 24-ranked UCLA, they’re proving that they can get it done on both ends of the floor. “They got to run on us way too much in the first half,” Oregon coach Dana Altman said. “We talked about doing a better job on defense. We depend heavily on young players and we got off to a slow start this year, but we are a totally different team than we were earlier in the year when we had two seniors out with injuries.”

The Oregon Ducks were once known for being a run and gun three point shooting squad, but they’ve turned that image on its ear this season, playing rock solid defense and rebounding the ball (they’re 24th in the country in rebounding). Indeed, the sky is the limit for this Ducks squad, who even handed then-no. 4-ranked Arizona their first loss of the season on January 10. “If Jan. 10 is our high, then this team has really underachieved,” Altman said. “This team has a lot more. I’ll be disappointed if we don’t have bigger wins this season.”

Indiana Hoosiers – 16-2, Down Five Spots From Last Week

Indiana and their all-star freshman Cody Zeller are starting to look like the victims of too much hype, too soon. They have still only lost two games, but a 64-59 loss to Wisconsin at home has them plummeting down the polls this week. “We just weren’t moving the ball like we should have, like we do, and I think when we see the film, we’ll see that it’s not as much them as it was us,” Indiana head coach Tom Crean said after the loss to the Badgers. “I’m not taking anything away from them. They played well.”

Once again, like with the Ducks’ recent impressive wins, Indiana’s big jump up the poll most likely has more to do with recency bias than anything else. They’re still only a two-loss team, and are second in the nation in scoring with 84.4 points per game and sixth in field goal percentage. They’ll be just fine when March rolls around, so maybe it’s a good thing they get their sloppy conference losses out of the way now, in January, when they don’t matter quite as much.

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