Sports

Badgers fall to 9th in latest AP Poll

The Wisconsin football team came away from Saturday’s game against The Citadel with a 45-31 victory, but it wasn’t enough to avoid dropping in the Associated Press poll for the second consecutive week.

The latest poll, unveiled Sunday, has the Badgers ranked ninth, the lowest the team has been ranked all season. The Badgers remained seventh in the USA Today Coaches Poll.

After climbing as high as tied for fifth after its opening-week defeat of Pac-10 foe Washington State, Wisconsin dropped to seventh last week following a much closer than expected 20-13 win over UNLV. Although the final tally was closer than the game actually was, defeating a Division I-AA team by only 14 points at home didn’t impress poll voters.

For the first time this season, Wisconsin will be looking up in the rankings at Ohio State. On the strength of a 33-14 road victory over Washington, Ohio State jumped two spots to take over eighth in the latest poll. Rounding out a trio of Big Ten teams in the top 10, Penn State moved up from 12th to 10th. Wisconsin will face the top 10 cohorts on the road this season, traveling to University Park, Pa., to face Penn State Oct. 13 and Columbus, Ohio, to take on Ohio State Nov. 3.

USC remained in control of the top spot after walloping home-standing Nebraska 49-31. The Trojans improved to 2-0 on the season and strengthened their grip on No. 1 by picking up six additional first-place votes. Louisiana State, Florida, Oklahoma and West Virginia round out the AP’s top five.

Aside from the three top 10 teams, only two other Big Ten teams received votes for inclusion in the poll. Purdue (3-0) received six votes and Michigan State (3-0) received one vote.

Reigning Division I-AA champion and early-season Cinderella Appalachian State garnered five votes in the AP poll.