A new week is here and with it a new set of rankings to analyze and mock. Today we take a deeper look at the clown who still isn't ranking Georgetown at all and the idiocy of Syracuse being ranked #1 among other fun rankings topics!
Cynical Voter of the Week: Gary Laney of The Advocate, a Baton Rouge based paper. Gary is the lone AP voter who is not ranking the Hoyas. My only explanation is that after being called out last week by many in the media including this blog, he decided to actually watch the Georgetown Hoyas game against Howard. If so, I guess we can't blame him too much for not being impressed. Far more likely is that Gary just doesn't watch basketball and/or an SEC homer, since he still has Alabama ranked 21st despite loses to Georgetown and Dayton.
More after The Jump:
- Delusional Voter of the Week: Jason Franchuk of the Provo Daily Herald. Jason wins this week for his rapid turnaround on the Hoyas. Last week he had the Hoyas unranked, but this week he has them 16th - the highest move by voters who had us unranked last week. Jason earned bonus points for being 1 of 14 Voters not to give Syracuse a 1st place vote, as he has the Orange third.
- Speaking of Syracuse: Come on people this is part of your job, take some pride in it. For those of you who don't know, this is how polls work. Win, and you move up or stay put. Lose, and you drop. It's as simple as that. There's no thought process involved. The main problem is voters are working off of two different instincts that they have trouble balancing: 1) who they think the best teams are, and 2) who has the best resume to date. I think most people still believe that Ohio St, Kentucky, and UNC are the three best teams in the nation and do not believe Syracuse in the long run will be the best team in the nation. I also believe that throwing out all preconceived notions and looking at accomplishments to date, Syracuse's resume is not the strongest out there. It's only by using the fuzzy logic of poll voters that Syracuse has ascended to the top spot in the polls by default. #1 and #2 lost so #3 must become #1. And most annoyingly, due to Syracuse's weak schedule they will remain #1 well into the new year.
- Voters did a better job clearing out the junk from the bottom of the also receiving votes section of the two polls. The most glaring inclusion this week is Northwestern. Northwestern's best win is over Seton Hall and are coming off a 30 pt loss to Baylor at home. I know everyone wants them to finally make that elusive NCAA tournament. But I'll spare you the drama - it's not happening. Oh, and Virginia Tech, you're not getting in either.
- Five Voters have Alabama ranked ahead of Georgetown. Myron Patton of KOKH-TV in Oklahoma, Dick Weiss of Daily News of NY, Joe Juliano of The Philadelphia Inquierer, Norm Wood Daily Press, Newport News, and Joey Johnston of the Tampa Tribune. But besides those 5 knuckleheads, I do not really have a big problem with where the Hoyas are ranked this week. I think the voters did a pretty good job in terms of positioning the Hoyas. You could argue that the Hoyas should be ahead of Pitt (their one loss to Long Beach State is worse than our loss to Kansas and our wins over Alabama and Memphis are better than their wins over Tennessee and Oklahoma St), Wisconsin (1 more loss even though they're both to good teams, but our wins are better than their best UNLV and BYU), Florida (1 more loss and our wins are better than their best Arizona and Rider), and Miss St (same number of losses and equal wins, but their loss to Akron is worse than our loss to Kansas).
- Poor Harvard. Finally ranked for the first time in their history and bounced right out the next week. All because of the screwy Poll logic. #24 Harvard lost @ #9 UConn. Of course that's what should have happened. They were not supposed to win the game, yet they still get punished for it.
- Gary Parrish already went over the person who chose not to rank Xavier. I'm sure it was out of protest for them after the fight as he had Xavier ranked 10th last week. However, I don't have a problem with it. It's a way to make a statement and hits a team where it hurts in as much as where a sports writer can hurt a team.
- With this weeks ranking the Hoyas move into sole possession of 11th place all time of total weeks ranked in the AP poll, breaking our tie with Cincinnati. We have a while to go to crack the top 10 as Arizona is 58 weeks ahead of us.