Were the Wolverines a unanimous No. 1 in the AP poll?
After this past week, we should have seen a turnaround at the top of the college basketball poll. The Michigan basketball program will jump to the top of the AP poll after Arizona lost two straight to Kansas and Texas Tech. It’s the first time Michigan has been ranked No. 1 since January 2013. However, it wasn’t a unanimous choice for the Wolverines, with one voter choosing Houston.
The new weekly AP poll came out Monday and marked the end of Arizona’s nine-week reign at the top of the poll. It was a big turning point for the Michigan basketball team. however, The Wolverines received 60 of 61 first-place voteswith one voter picking Houston, keeping them from being the unanimous top team in college basketball.
“Not much,” coach Dusty May said when asked by the AP after Saturday’s loss to UCLA about the importance of the potential top of the survey. “It means we haven’t drunk our own Kool-Aid. We’ve put ourselves in a position to play the kinds of games we want to be in mid-February, but we’ve got to keep improving.”
Michigan has been ranked second behind Arizona for six of Arizona’s nine weeks at the top. Still, he was ranked No. 1 in analytics by KenPom, Evan Miyakawa and Bart Torvik last week.
Houston and Duke moved up one spot to sit behind Michigan. The Wolverines and Blue Devils will meet this weekend in a non-conference matchup in Washington, D.C., in a huge game with NCAA Tournament implications.
Arizona dropped three spots to No. 4. UConn was next at No. 5, with Iowa State, Purdue, Kansas, Nebraska and Illinois rounding out the top 10.
Other teams that had big weeks in the polls were Purdue, which moved up six spots, and Texas Tech, which moved up three spots. The polls will also see a lot more movement as the home stretch of the season approaches. However, Michigan deserves the No. 1 seed, and its case will only get better if it beats Duke on Saturday.
2026-02-16 21:08:00
