Comparing Our Ballot With The Week 14 BlogPoll

I’m a bit late with this but I wanted to post the Week 14 BlogPoll. First, I need to post our ballot. We posted it earlier in the week but between the time we posted and the time it had to be submitted Kansas fell to Texas so there is a small change. Here was our ballot.

1. Duke
2. Memphis
3. North Carolina
4. Kansas
5. Tennessee
6. UCLA
7. Texas
8. Stanford
9. Xavier
10. Georgetown
11. Connecticut
12. Kansas State
13. Michigan State
14. Louisville
15. St. Mary’s
16. Notre Dame
17. Indiana
18. Butler
19. Purdue
20. Drake
21. Washington State
22. Wisconsin
23. Baylor
24. Texas A&M
25. Pittsburgh

And here is the BlogPoll (with first place votes in parentheses).

1. Memphis (13)
2. Duke (2)
3. Tennessee
4. Kansas
5. North Carolina
6. UCLA
7. Stanford
8. Texas
9. Georgetown
10. Xavier
11. Drake
12. Michigan State
13. Butler
14. Wisconsin
15. Connecticut
16. Indiana
17. Kansas State
18. Washington State
19. Texas A&M
20. Louisville
21. Notre Dame
22. Purdue
23. St. Mary’s
24. Vanderbilt
25. Marquette

For the rest of the votes (as well as links to each blog) click here.

Now I’ll do a quick rundown of major differences. Teams we favored in our ballot more than the final poll results were Connecticut, Kansas State, Louisville, and St. Mary’s. Since UConn’s loss against Providence (UConn’s worst loss of the year) they have won 9 straight, all against top 76 teams. I honestly have not loved UConn the times I’ve seen them this year but their resume is real solid at this point. Kansas State followed up their high rating from us by losing at Texas Tech and that’s a shame. I still love their talent (even if I am not completely sold on their consistency) but it could be that we voted them on the high end of a reasonable range. Louisville is a team I like a bit more than their resume because some of their losses may have been related to personnel being out for games earlier in the year. That said, they don’t even have a bad resume. St. Mary’s is a tough team to place because of their schedule. More simple subjectivity was used with them than most teams in the poll.

Teams the final poll favored more than us include Butler, Drake, and Wisconsin. Honestly, I have a hard time explaining why we placed Butler where we did. They’re likely better than that. Probably the main problem is that they do not have a top 100 win since 2007 and it’s easy to slip them behind other teams that pick up bigger wins. I don’t like that we have Drake as low as we do either but I feel more confident with our placement of them. I’ve probably seen them play more than most poll voters and I really do like Drake but there is only so much they can do to overcome their lack of talent (relatively speaking of course). I do love their consistency and their solid play helps them in close games. Wisconsin isn’t bad either, but where would they be without a late Flowers three in Austin and a banked in three by Butch in Bloomington? My guess is they’d be sitting with one quality win (at home against Indiana) and a ranking in the low 20s. I admit it’s dumb to play that game because you can play it with all teams but more than anything it’s meant to point out that they don’t have a lot of quality wins. At that point my subjectivity tells me Wisconsin is not a top 15 team.