photo by: Nick Krug

Kansas State head coach Frank Martin yells at KSU guard Chris Merrieweather for his defensive play during the second half Thursday, March 18, 2010 at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City.

Six Big 12 teams rank from No. 10 (Texas) through No. 21 (Baylor) in the Associated Press college basketball poll released Monday, an indication of just what an entertaining race awaits. Kansas is second among Big 12 schools at No. 12.

The top 25 teams in the AP college basketball poll, with first-place votes in parentheses, records through Jan. 4, total points based on 25 points for a first-place vote through one point for a 25th-place vote and last week’s ranking:

Record Pts Prv
1 – Kentucky (64) 13-0 1,600 1
2 – Duke 13-0 1,535 2
3 – Virginia 13-0 1,446 3
4 – Wisconsin 14-1 1,397 4
5. Louisville 13-1 1,322 5
6. Gonzaga 14-1 1,275 7
7. Arizona 13-1 1,260 8
8 -Villanova 13-1 1,089 6
9 – Utah 12-2 1,059 10
10 – Texas 12-2 976 11
11 – Maryland 14-1 966 12
12 – Kansas 11-2 884 13
13 – Notre Dame 14-1 775 14
14 – West Virginia 13-1 712 17
15 – Wichita St. 12-2 686 16
16 – Oklahoma 10-3 674 18
17 – Iowa St. 10-2 663 9
18 – North Carolina 11-3 591 19
19 – Seton Hall 12-2 448 _
20 – VCU 11-3 311 _
21 – Baylor 11-2 186 22
22 – Ohio St. 12-3 184 20
23 – Arkansas 11-2 103 _
24 – St. John’s 11-3 92 15
25 – Old Dominion 12-1 80 _

Others receiving votes: N. Iowa 72, Iowa 63, Butler 53, LSU 50, George Washington 39, TCU 33, Temple 33, Colorado St. 31, Stanford 29, South Carolina 16, Washington 13, Wyoming 11, Indiana 9, Oklahoma St. 9, Georgetown 7, Cincinnati 6, Dayton 5, BYU 3, Xavier 2, Davidson 1, Hofstra 1.

My AP top 25 ballot:

1 – Kentucky: It’s conceivable Kentucky could run the table and not have a single double-figures scorer. Aaron Harrison (10.3 points per game) and Willie Cauley-Stein only Wildcats scoring in double figures.

2 – Duke: Holy cow is freshman Justise Winslow fast with the ball for a guy who’s 6-foot-6 and 225 pounds. Lefty has a nice three-point stroke (39 percent) too.

3 – Virginia: When pressure reaches a boiling point at your job, channel Virginia junior Justin Anderson. Helped his team overcome four-point deficit in final 20 seconds of regulation, when he made all three free throws after getting fouled launching a long one and then drilled a three with 15 seconds left for the final points of regulation. That shot equaled his three-point production from a year ago, when he was 30 for 101. This season, he’s 30 for 51.

4 – Wisconsin: Nice line for Badgers senior 7-footer Frank Kaminsky in rout of Northwestern: 16 points, 10 rebounds, six assists.

5 – Louisville: Montrezl Harrell showed again why he’s an All-American, dropping his sixth double-double of season (25 points, 13 rebounds) on Wake Forest. But he could be an even better player if he swore off shooting threes. He made 3 of 4 in the season-opener against Minnesota and 2 of 3 vs. Wake Forest. But in every other game combined he has made 1 of 17 three-pointers.

6 – Arizona: Mobile guys with size tend to make good defenders and Arizona has plenty of those. In Pac-12 opener, a blowout of Arizona State, the Sun Devils had 22 turnovers and just 14 field goals.

7 – Gonzaga: Three starters can get hot from three: Kevin Pangos (.462), Kyle Wiltjer (.411), Gary Bell (.407).

8 – Maryland: Dez Wells isn’t one of those guys who disappears on the court. His stamp is all over the box score with good numbers and bad. In a huge double-overtime victory at Michigan State in the Terps’ Big Ten opener, Wells had 16 points, seven rebounds, five assists and seven turnovers.

9 – Villanova: Coach Jay Wright’s 300th victory for the Philadelphia school was delayed because the Wildcats kept firing up bricks in overtime loss to Seton Hall, shooting .310 overall, 208 from three and .571 from the line.

10 – Utah: Utes humiliated UCLA 71-39 Sunday night in Salt Lake City. Utes defended so well that Bruins starting guards Bryce Alford, the coach’s son, and Isaac Hamilton combined to shoot 1 for 17 from the field, 0 for 7 from three, didn’t attempt a free throw and scored two points in 61 minutes.

11 – Texas: Point guard Isaiah Taylor is back from a wrist injury, but is his wrist all the way back? In Big 12 opener against Texas Tech, Taylor made 2 of 10 shots, scored eight points, had two assists and six turnovers. He had more of an impact defensively, picking up four steals.

12 – North Carolina: Heels will try to push winning streak to six games today at 6 p.m. on ESPN against Notre Dame, winner of 10 in a row.

13 – Kansas: Kelly Oubre averaging 16 points and 8.5 rebounds in past four games with two double-doubles.

14 – Iowa State: Really good defense doesn’t always beat a really good offense, but it did Saturday at the Barclays Center when the Cyclones lost to South Carolina, 64-60. A team that relies on threes as much as Iowa State does is going to have off nights. Cyclones made just 1 of 18 from three.

15 – Oklahoma: Big Monday matchup today at 8 p.m. at Texas shapes up as potential thriller between schools that used to be better at football than basketball.

16 – Notre Dame: Jerian Grant (17.9 points, 6.2 assists) and North Carolina’s Marcus Paige (13.7 points, 3.7 assists), two of the nations better guards, makes for entertaining possibilities in tonight’s game.

17 – West Virginia: Leading Big 12 player of the year candidate Juwan Staten missed the game with an illness and the Mountaineers still went on the road and handed TCU its first loss, 78-67. Guard Gary Browne scored all 16 of his points in the final 11 minutes.

18 – Wichita State: Junior Ron Baker making 40 percent of his threes and averaging 17.1 points.

19 – VCU: Rams riding six-game winning streak and two of the three losses came to highly ranked Villanova and Virginia, so I’m thinking they’re underrated.

20 – Seton Hall: Huge four-day span featured upset victories against St. John’s and Villanova, a pair of top 15 teams. Junior guard Sterling Gibbs averaged 22.5 points, six assists and 1.5 turnovers in the two big victories that established the Pirates as a bona fide contender in the deep, underrated Big East.

21 – Temple: Once upon a time, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, P.R. stood for public relations. Now too often those in the profession take the initials to mean prevention of reporting. And then there is Larry Dougherty, senior associate athletics director/communications at Temple. Dougherty served his employer and AP voters well by distributing the following information under the heading, “Temple Transformation Through Transfers”: Since transfers Jesse Morgan (UMass) and Devin Coleman (Clemson) joined the lineup the Owls are 5-0 with victories against Kansas and at UConn and have averaged 9.6 three-pointers made, compared to 4.5 before the players joined them. Scoring margin has improved from minus-0.6 to plus-13.2 and turnovers are down from 11.0 to 8.6. You never want to lose by 25 points, as Kansas did to the Owls, but it clearly was a top-25-worthy team that did it.

22 – Ohio State: Buckeyes don’t have firepower to overcome big hafltime deficits. In their three losses, they trailed Louisville by 17, North Carolina and Iowa by a dozen. The good news: Hardly anybody noticed because the school plays Oregon for the national title in football.

23 – Baylor: Bears lost to Oklahoma by 10, but Rico Gathers was there doing what he almost always does, which is dominate the boards. He reached double figures in rebounds for the 11th time in 13 games.

24 – Xavier: Muskateers looked so big and explosive in taking down Georgetown by 17 points, only to lose on the road by three points against DePaul.

25 – South Carolina: The Gamecocks have embraced the reality that it’s easier to defend great scorers than it is to defend themselves against the menacing glare of their coach, former Kansas State boss Frank Martin. South Carolina held Iowa State to .259 shooting and limited hot-shot transfer Bryce Dejean-Jones to three points, a dozen below his average to score the school’s first victory over a top 10 team in five years. The Gamecocks have won seven in a row.