Kansas men stay atop AP basketball rankings; South Carolina women still No. 1

Kansas remained atop the first Associated Press Top 25 men’s college basketball poll of the regular season after winning a matchup of basketball blue bloods, while Gonzaga and Auburn cracked the top five after impressive opening-week wins and St. John’s led by Rick Pitino joined the rankings.

In the AP women’s poll, South Carolina was the unanimous No. 1 on Monday after a pair of victories to begin its national championship repeat bid, while Kansas State joined the top 10 and both Stanford and Oregon cracked the first regular-season rankings of the season.

The Jayhawks men received 44 of 62 first-place votes after a home victory against North Carolina, a game that saw Kansas blow a 20-point lead but hold on for a 92-89 win. That kept them ahead of Alabama and two-time reigning national champion UConn in an unchanged 1-2-3 lineup in the poll, with the Crimson Tide getting six first-place votes and the Huskies getting seven.

Mark Few's Zags moved up two spots to No. 4 after blowing out then-No. 8 Baylor to open the season, then pushing past Arizona State. Next came Bruce Pearl's Tigers, who jumped six spots to No. 5 for the week's biggest leap after beating then-No. 4 Houston. The Zags and Tigers earned the remaining five first-place votes.

Auburn was the only new arrival in a largely reshuffled top 10, with Duke rising one spot to No. 6 to lead the next group. Iowa State was seventh, followed by Houston, Arizona and North Carolina, which fell one spot after the loss at KU's Allen Fieldhouse.

St. John's jumping in at No. 22 marked a notable return for two reasons. It marks the Red Storm's first appearance since spending a week at No. 24 in January 2019, but it also marks a return for Hall of Fame coach Rick Pitino.

This is the first time a Pitino-coached team has appeared in the Top 25 since the final poll of the 2016-17 season when he was at Louisville. Pitino was fired shortly before the next season amid a federal corruption investigation into college basketball, which had entangled the Cardinals and multiple other programs.

Pitino spent three seasons at Iona (2020-23) before taking over at St. John's before last season.

The Gamecocks earned a hard-fought six-point win over Michigan in Las Vegas to open the season and beat then-No. 9 North Carolina State on Sunday by 14. The two victories made the defending champions a unanimous choice from the 31-member national media panel. In the preseason poll, No. 2 UConn got two first-place votes and No. 3 USC one.

The top eight teams in the rankings remained unchanged with Texas and UCLA rounding out the top five. Notre Dame, LSU and Iowa State were next with Oklahoma ninth and Kansas State 10th. N.C. State dropped to 13th.

Former Pac-12 schools Stanford and Oregon entered the rankings after impressive starts to their season. The No. 24 Cardinal, under new coach Kate Paye, went 3-0 last week, winning by an average of 41 points. They had been ranked in the preseason poll every year since 2000 until this season.

The No. 25 Ducks come into the poll on the strength of a two-point home win over then-No. 12 Baylor. The victory snapped a 13-game losing streak to ranked opponents for Oregon. The Bears dropped to 17th.

Maryland climbed seven spots to No. 11 after an impressive 85-80 victory over then-No. 11 Duke. This was the Terrapins’ first matchup against the Blue Devils since they defeated their former ACC rival, 65-55, in the Sweet 16 in 2015. The victory came nearly a year after the Terrapins saw their 13-year run in the poll end last season. Duke fell to 16th.