West Virginia remains in top 10 in latest AP Poll

Even after a home loss to Kansas, the West Virginia men’s basketball team was able to soundly defeat Texas and convince AP voters that it is still a top-10 team. WVU is ranked seventh is this week’s AP Top 25 Poll.

Unfortunately for the Big 12 Conference, Oklahoma (No. 12) and Texas Tech (no. 14) fell out of the top 10 and TCU dropped out of the top 25 entirely after losses this week. Kansas moved up to No. 5 and past WVU as the highest-ranked Big 12 team. The conference still has four teams in the poll, the second-best representation of any conference.

Now, a week that looked daunting earlier this month looks more like a chance for WVU to pad its record. On Monday, the Mountaineers (16-3, 5-2) travel to Fort Worth to take on the Horned Frogs (14-5, 2-5), who lost on the road against Kansas State on Saturday to knock themselves out of the Top 25. The Kentucky Wildcats, a blue-blood program, will come into Morgantown on Saturday, Jan. 27, without a ranking attached to their name for the first time since 2015. After losing at South Carolina and then to Florida in Rupp Arena, the Wildcats broke their 68 week streak in the AP Top 25 Poll.

The Mountaineers have now been ranked for 47 consecutive weeks, dating back to the 2016 season. This is the fourth-longest active streak in NCAA Division I men’s basketball and the second-longest streak in program history (56 weeks, 1956-1960).