Weekly college basketball rankings: AP Top 25, USA TODAY polls released, four Big East teams inhabit

The latest AP Top 25 poll is out. Let’s take a gander shall we?

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the Villanova Wildcats saw themselves inch closer to the No. 1 spot again. In a week filled with upset losses in the Top 10, ‘Nova stayed clean throughout, going 2-0 in matchups vs. the Providence Friars and St. John’s Red Storm. It is growing increasingly likely that the Gonzaga Bulldogs get through the WCC unbeaten barring something crazy, so the Wildcats will just have to keep their heads down and truck along as they’ve been doing almost all season.

For the first time in a while, you’d have to trek down pretty far to find the next Big East team. And to that point, the remaining three in this week’s AP Top 25 are all sequentially next to each other. The Butler Bulldogs, Creighton Bluejays and Xavier Musketeers occupy spots 22-24 in the poll as Xavier rejoins the fray after being outside last week. The Musketeers defeated Creighton and, like Villanova, went 2-0 in the week with an added win over the Seton Hall Pirates. The aforementioned Bluejays went 1-1 meanwhile and the Bulldogs dropped their only game last week to aforementioned Creighton.

The latest USA TODAY poll is now out as well.

Not too many drastic differences between the AP poll and the Coaches poll this week. The top teams largely remain the same with ‘Nova holding the No. 2 spot in both polls. There’s some variance for the Big East teams down in the 20s, but nothing too head-turning at this point.