Here is our entry for the CBS Blog Poll for this week...thoughts? comments? changes? All appreciated.
(Read FSUncensored excellent post below before you get to this)
Rank | Team | Delta |
---|---|---|
1 | Connecticut | 1 |
2 | North Carolina | 3 |
3 | Pittsburgh | |
4 | Duke | 3 |
5 | Memphis | 1 |
6 | Oklahoma | 1 |
7 | UCLA | 1 |
8 | Michigan St. | 10 |
9 | Clemson | 8 |
10 | Arizona St. | 5 |
11 | Louisville | 7 |
12 | Wake Forest | 2 |
13 | Missouri | 3 |
14 | Kansas | 2 |
15 | Villanova | 6 |
16 | West Virginia | 3 |
17 | Marquette | 8 |
18 | Gonzaga | 7 |
19 | Xavier | 3 |
20 | Purdue | 8 |
21 | Illinois | |
22 | Washington | 3 |
23 | Brigham Young | 3 |
24 | Butler | |
25 | California | |
Last week's ballot |
Dropped Out: Utah (#21), Texas (#23), Florida St. (#24).
Initial Post: Here is this week's ballot. Once again, I heavily rely on Ken Pomeroy. However, his poll changes so drastically from day to day, the jumps would be larger and I would seem to be easily swayed. I had the opportunities to see some of these teams play this week and was impressed by Memphis, West Virginia and Missouri: balanced teams. I like to reward balance and defense, as I feel that can take you further in the tournament. You never know what is going to happen with a streaky shooting team. Gonzaga looked not so great against Memphis, so they drop. Despite beating the pants off us, Wake had a poor week. UNC doesn't move into the top spot yet. Connecticut is an outstanding team and lets hope the recent injury bug doesn't hurt them too much. With Thabeet in the middle, they will be hard to stop.
What are your thoughts?
So after a bit of thinking and the discussion with Zach_Nole below...I made some changes. It looks like I did whatever with the polls and have some huge jumps. But I decided to try an incorporate Pomeroy, the AP/ESPN polls and my own poll. I too the average of each team's position in the respective polls...and here you go. These reflect last weeks AP/ESPN polls. My work won't allow me to adjust them when the new rankings come out or to make any changes from last night. So, don't be surprised if next week's poll looks even crazier. UCLA and MSU are probably ranked too high right now. I didn't have them that high in my poll. With two straight losses, UCLA probably shouldn't have moved up a spot, but I'm sticking to my system now and we'll see how it pans out over the rest of the year.
So there you have it...feel free to comment...make suggestions. This is a group effort, as you can see...Zach's comments resulted in some significant revisions. I look forward to the Blog Poll this week as I will likely get the award for biggest jumps in the polls. I realised that going into this weeks changes and the new system.