Ohio State No. 7, Michiganat No. 11 in final AP poll

3/19/2013

Ohio State moved up the rankings, but Michigan dropped out of the Top 10 of the final Associated Press college basketball poll after the results of the Big Ten tournament.

The Buckeyes, who won the tournament by beating Wisconsin on Sunday, finished at No. 7. They are a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament and play Iona on Friday. The Wolverines were knocked out of the conference tournament by the Badgers in the quarterfinals and are No. 10. They are a No. 4 seed in the national tournament and will play South Dakota State on Thursday.

Gonzaga (31-2), the fourth of the four top seeds in the NCAA tournament, was a runaway No. 1 in the AP poll for a third straight week on Monday, receiving 45 first-place votes from the 65-member national media panel. They become the first school from a non-BCS conference to finish No. 1 in the final poll since Massachusetts of the Atlantic 10 in 1996.

Louisville, the overall No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, is second and got the other first-place votes. Kansas and Indiana — the other No. 1 seeds — are third and fourth followed by Miami, Duke, Ohio State, Georgetown, Michigan State, and New Mexico.

Forty-four schools were ranked during the 2012-13 season, five off the record set in 2008-09. Five of them held the No. 1 ranking at some point — Indiana (10 weeks), Duke (5), Gonzaga (3), Louisville (1), and Michigan (1) — and there was a stretch of five straight polls when there was a different No. 1 each week. Indiana and Duke are the only teams to be ranked in the Top 10 all season.