Arizona basketball: Wildcats falls to No. 9 in the AP Poll after splitting Oregon trip

Still in top 10

Despite being blown out by 27 points by the Oregon Ducks on Saturday, the Arizona Wildcats still find themselves in top 10.

This week’s AP Poll was released Monday and the Wildcats check in at No. 9, dropping four spots from their rank a week ago.

Meanwhile, Oregon takes Arizona’s spot at No. 5 and the UCLA Bruins check in at No. 10.

Here is the complete AP Poll:

1. Gonzaga
2. Villanova
3. Kansas
4. Louisville
5. Oregon
6. Baylor
7. Wisconsin
8. North Carolina
9. Arizona
10. UCLA
11. Cincinnati
12. Virginia
13. West Virginia
14. Florida State
15. Kentucky
16. Purdue
17. Florida
18. Duke
19. South Carolina
20. Saint Mary’s
21. Maryland
22. Butler
23. Creighton
24. Xavier
25. SMU

It was a rough week for the top 10 in general as seven top-10 teams were beaten, six of which lost on Saturday alone, which was a new record.

For Arizona, it was the first time it had lost by more than 10 points since the 2012-13 season. It did beat Oregon State on Thursday, though.

“To our team’s credit, one of the things we’re most proud of is that it’s been a long, long time since we’ve been blown out,” UA head coach Sean Miller said Monday at his weekly press conference. “A long time. Six years. There aren’t a lot of teams or programs that can say that. It’s a source of pride, but that’s not the case right now.

“We got blown out in our last game and it’s important that we respond. I use college football as an example quite a bit because it’s so different in college basketball. We don’t have a week in between. It’s not a 12-game season, it’s a 35-game season. You play teams twice, not once, sometimes even three times. You have to bounce back quickly. Three days, sometimes one day in between, so we have to be ready for a team that we’ve already played (in Stanford) and a team that I think has improved. Cal...is a very good team as well.”

The Wildcats, sitting at 21-3 overall and 10-1 in Pac-12 play, host the Stanford Cardinal on Wednesday this week, then host the California Golden Bears on Saturday. It’s a pair of schools Arizona swept earlier in the season and Miller is hoping the Wildcats can have the same outcome this time around.

“Everything that happened this week, the old adage of ‘in the Pac-12, if you can split your road trips, fight hard to do that. We’ve had an excellent conference season so that’s what we just did,” Miller said. “We split a road trip and now it’ll be interesting to see if we can sweep the Bay Area schools. It’s going to be a tough task.”

Wednesday’s game is set to tip-off at 9 p.m. MST and it will be televised on FOX Sports 1.

The Cardinal enter with a 12-11 record and a 4-7 mark in Pac-12 play.

Arizona was ranked 10th in the USA Today Coaches Poll.

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