{"id":518630,"date":"2026-01-05T18:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T18:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/518630\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T18:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T18:56:10","slug":"cougars-move-up-to-no-9-in-ap-poll-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/518630\/","title":{"rendered":"Cougars move up to No. 9 in AP poll \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">For the first time since Week 1, BYU has moved up in the AP Top 25 poll.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Following a 10-point <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deseret.com\/sports\/2026\/01\/03\/byu-basketball-analysis-game-winner-kansas-state-wildcats-fouls-dybantsa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.deseret.com\/sports\/2026\/01\/03\/byu-basketball-analysis-game-winner-kansas-state-wildcats-fouls-dybantsa\/\">road win over Kansas State<\/a> this past weekend, the Cougars came in at No. 9 in Monday\u2019s updated rankings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">It\u2019s the ninth consecutive top-10 ranking for BYU this season, having began the year at No. 8 in the preseason rankings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The Cougars are joined by six other Big 12 squads in this week\u2019s poll \u2014 No. 1 Arizona, No. 3 Iowa State, No. 7 Houston, No. 14 Texas Tech, No. 22 Kansas and No. 25 UCF.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Additionally, BYU\u2019s two preseason exhibition opponents \u2014 Nebraska and UNC \u2014 each came in at No. 10 and No. 17, respectively, while the Cougars\u2019 November opponent Villanova was the first team outside of the top 25 with 127 points from voters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">In KenPom, BYU ranks No. 10, while also sitting at No. 9 in NET.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The Cougars face Arizona State at home Wednesday night before heading up to Salt Lake City for their first encounter of the season with rival Utah.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Editor\u2019s note: Jackson Payne is a voter for the AP top 25 poll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time since Week 1, BYU has moved up in the AP Top 25 poll. Following&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,1111],"class_list":{"0":"post-518630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-news-feed-local"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}