Purdue is back atop The Associated Press Top 25 men’s college basketball poll, right where it spent so much of last season.
The Boilermakers ascended to No. 1 on Monday after an impressive run through a loaded field at the Maui Invitational. They beat Gonzaga, Tennessee and Marquette — three of the top 11 teams in the nation — in consecutive days, and that was enough to earn 60 of 63 first-place votes from the national panel of Top 25 voters.
It took the Boilermakers until Dec. 12 to reach No. 1 last year, where they spent seven weeks over two different stints.
“Our guys were resilient. I thought they hung in there, and I thought at times we didn’t play our best basketball in the three days, but I thought we played really hard,” Purdue coach Matt Painter said after the Maui Invitational. “We competed, and that is what you got to do. You got to just sometimes hang in there and just keep competing and make one more play.”
Purdue replaced preseason No. 1 Kansas, which fell to fifth after losing to Marquette in the Maui semifinals and then rebounding to beat Tennessee in the third-place game. Arizona moved up one spot to No. 2 with one first-place vote, Marquette climbed a spot to third and UConn was fourth with two first-place votes.
The defending national champion Huskies play the Jayhawks on Friday night at Allen Fieldhouse (9 p.m. ET, ESPN2).
Houston remained sixth while Duke climbed to seventh, Miami to eighth and Baylor to ninth. Tennessee only fell three places to 10th after its losses to Purdue and Kansas in Maui, a reflection of the stiff competition.
“I’ve said all along, I like being in big games. If you want to win a big game, you got to get in a big game,” Volunteers coach Rick Barnes said. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I enjoy these games because I want to see us play at the highest level. I want to see us execute at the highest level. I want to see our guys learn from this.”
Gonzaga remained at No. 11 after its trip to Maui, and Kentucky was 12th. Florida Atlantic used its win over then-No. 12 Texas…
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