Gonzaga reclaims No. 1 spot in AP poll after Auburn falls

The Zags are the only WCC team ranked in the week 15 poll after taking down Saint Mary's Saturday

GU won by an average of 27 points in its two home conference wins last week. 

Gonzaga men’s basketball is back to No. 1 in the national AP poll. The Zags (21-2, 10-0) have reclaimed the top position in the country for the first time in three weeks after initially climbing back to No. 1 in the eyes of the voters in week 11.

In those three weeks, GU dropped slightly to No. 2 while the Auburn Tigers were viewed as the nation’s top team. However, the Tigers (23-2, 11-1) took a tumble in their 76-80 overtime loss against No. 23 Arkansas on Tuesday, so it was up to the Zags to run a clean slate on their schedule last week to bring back the No. 1 position.

GU rolled the Pacific Tigers at home on Thursday by 38 points off 20 points from guard Rasir Bolton and 51.5% shooting from the entire team. The Saint Mary’s Gaels, who were ranked No. 22 last week in the AP poll last week, came to Spokane on Saturday to challenge the Zags’ undefeated conference record. However, GU kept up its scoring while the Gaels could not and GU won its second game of the week 74-58, an effort good enough to solidify the Zags reattaining the country’s No. 1 position.

Auburn was able to split its run of games last week and claim a strong victory over Texas A&M on Saturday, but it wasn’t enough as the Tigers fell to No. 2 in this week’s poll. In total, the Zags received 56 of the first place votes this week while Bruce Pearl’s squad got the remaining four.

The Tigers weren’t the only prominent name to fall last week as Purdue got upset by Michigan on Thursday and fell from No. 3 to 5. That left room for Tommy Lloyd’s Arizona squad to jump up one spot to No. 3 after the Wildcats secured three more PAC-12 wins last week.

Villanova had the biggest jump in this week’s poll from 15 to No. 10 since beating two conference opponents last week and No. 17 USC also leaped four spots in the rankings after beating rival UCLA in a 67-64 contest Saturday.

No. 23 Arkansas and No. 25 Alabama find themselves officially back in the top 25 which ties the SEC with the BIG-10 for each conference having five teams ranked. The other new addition to this week’s poll is No. 22 Wyoming (21-3, 10-1), as the Cowboys have worked their way into the rankings for the first time since 2015.

Since Saint Mary’s fell off, no other West Coast Conference team is ranked in this week’s poll, while the Gaels received 22 votes and San Francisco received two votes to get in.