Top 5 remain same

Duke, Texas and Connecticut, winners of the biggest early tournaments, held on to the top three spots in the Associated Press’ basketball poll Monday.

Villanova and Oklahoma, who play Saturday, stayed fourth and fifth, respectively, then came a slew of changes in the Top 25.

Duke (5-0), which beat Drexel and Memphis in winning the NIT Season Tip-Off, received 61 first-place votes and 1,785 points from the national media panel to keep the No. 1 spot it has held since the preseason poll.

Texas (5-0) beat West Virginia and Iowa in taking the Guardians Classic, and the Longhorns were No. 1 on six ballots and had 1,696 points.

Connecticut (4-0) won the EA Sports Maui Invitational by beating Arkansas, Arizona and Gonzaga, and the Huskies received four first-place votes.

Villanova (2-0), which had the other first-place vote, and Oklahoma (3-0) meet this weekend in Philadelphia.

Ten ranked teams lost a total of 14 games last week, but 11 of the losses came at the hands of other members of the Top 25. So, only two teams dropped out – West Virginia from 13th and Syracuse from No. 17.

The teams that replaced them were North Carolina State at No. 24 and LSU at 25th.

Gonzaga, which beat Michigan State, 109-106, in the semifinals at Maui then lost, 65-63, at the buzzer to Connecticut in the title game, moved up two spots to sixth. Louisville, which didn’t play last week, dropped one place to seventh.

Both Boston College and Memphis moved up two spots to eighth and ninth. Kentucky, which lost to Iowa in the semifinals of the Guardians Classic, dropped three places to No. 10.

Florida was 11th followed by Illinois, Michigan State, Iowa, Arizona, UCLA, Indiana, Washington, George Washington and Nevada.

The last five ranked teams were Alabama, Wake Forest, Maryland, North Carolina State and LSU.