Top 25 - Getting & Staying Ranked (2019-2020)

[MackNova]

Polls are dumb. This is the best the league has been and only 2 teams are in the AP top 25... the lowest amount of all power conferences.

Kentucky hasn’t beaten anyone except Michigan State. Has three losses including against Evansville at home. “But they beat Michigan State”. So they are still ranked. Michigan State is their only notable win.

Michigan State also has 3 losses, and their best win by far is against Seton Hall. Kentucky (at 134) has a worse RPI than Buffalo (103)... the only team DePaul has lost to. DePaul is 5-0 vs the P5. And owns two wins against the current top 25. Yet they aren’t ranked.

Creighton’s only losses are to Michigan and San Diego State... both ranked. But is otherwise 4-1 vs the P5. The Jays resume is basically the exact same as Iowa’s. Iowa beat Texas Tech, and lost to San Diego State and Michigan. Identical. But they lost to DePaul also. So they are 4-1 vs the P5 like the Jays but have that additional loss to a DePaul team that isn’t ranked for some reason. Iowa has 125 pts. Creighton has 12.

Polls are dumb.

If the polls went 30 or 40 deep instead of 25 deep, the Big East would be absolutely loaded. But outside of Butler and Villanova, most of the league can be ranked anywhere between 20-50. Just look at the NET. NET would only rank 3 top-25 teams in the Big East (Creighton is 24th). Nine teams are in the top 52 but only three in the top 25.

[kayako]

12/30 ranking is out:

https://apnews.com/APTop25CollegeBasketballPoll

10 Nova
11 Butler

7 others receiving votes

27 Xavier
28 DePaul
33 Marquette
36t Georgetown
36t Creighton
40t SJU
42t Seton Hall

Butler jumped Michigan

[Jet915]

Goodman and Rothstein calling Big East best conference today.

Jon Rothstein
@JonRothstein
The Big East will enter tonight's conference openers with a combined record of 101-25.

Nine teams received votes in this week's AP Top 25 poll.

Best league in the sport


Jeff Goodman
@GoodmanHoops
·
4h
The Big East is arguably the best league in the country from top to bottom this season. Two matchups today highlight the top games

[ecasadoSBU]

Its really odd that WVU/Arizona are both ranked but SJU isn't. Not saying they are undeserving. Just pointing out that SJU beat them both and its barely getting votes. Bias? Did that loss to Vermont (a consistently good America-East mid-major) really hurt that much?

[adoraz]

Its really odd that WVU/Arizona are both ranked but SJU isn't. Not saying they are undeserving. Just pointing out that SJU beat them both and its barely getting votes. Bias? Did that loss to Vermont (a consistently good America-East mid-major) really hurt that much?

Yeah, it's mostly due to pre-season expectations. If we were named Villanova, Seton Hall or Xavier (the 3 teams ranked pre-season) then we'd be ranked right now. We would've been knocked out of the polls after our 5-2 start, but the WVU game would've put us back on the map and then the Arizona game probably would put us in the #20-25 range. We certainly have a better resume than some of the Top 25 teams.

Honestly though, it doesn't matter. We'll have plenty of opportunities to join the rankings. I'd rather remain under the radar a bit this week anyways.

[MackNova]

Its really odd that WVU/Arizona are both ranked but SJU isn't. Not saying they are undeserving. Just pointing out that SJU beat them both and its barely getting votes. Bias? Did that loss to Vermont (a consistently good America-East mid-major) really hurt that much?

Yeah, it's mostly due to pre-season expectations. If we were named Villanova, Seton Hall or Xavier (the 3 teams ranked pre-season) then we'd be ranked right now. We would've been knocked out of the polls after our 5-2 start, but the WVU game would've put us back on the map and then the Arizona game probably would put us in the #20-25 range. We certainly have a better resume than some of the Top 25 teams.

Honestly though, it doesn't matter. We'll have plenty of opportunities to join the rankings. I'd rather remain under the radar a bit this week anyways.

The Arizona State loss isn't great either. Johnnies are 2-2 against top-175 competition. You are right that if Nova had that resume, it would be ranked, but Nova has earned that benefit of the doubt. Same reason Nova is ranked ahead of Butler right now. Butler clearly has the better resume, and the analytical sites prefer Butler, too. Butler should be ranked higher than Nova, but it isn't, mostly because Butler hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt of being a top-10 team.

[adoraz]

Its really odd that WVU/Arizona are both ranked but SJU isn't. Not saying they are undeserving. Just pointing out that SJU beat them both and its barely getting votes. Bias? Did that loss to Vermont (a consistently good America-East mid-major) really hurt that much?

Yeah, it's mostly due to pre-season expectations. If we were named Villanova, Seton Hall or Xavier (the 3 teams ranked pre-season) then we'd be ranked right now. We would've been knocked out of the polls after our 5-2 start, but the WVU game would've put us back on the map and then the Arizona game probably would put us in the #20-25 range. We certainly have a better resume than some of the Top 25 teams.

Honestly though, it doesn't matter. We'll have plenty of opportunities to join the rankings. I'd rather remain under the radar a bit this week anyways.

The Arizona State loss isn't great either. Johnnies are 2-2 against top-175 competition. You are right that if Nova had that resume, it would be ranked, but Nova has earned that benefit of the doubt. Same reason Nova is ranked ahead of Butler right now. Butler clearly has the better resume, and the analytical sites prefer Butler, too. Butler should be ranked higher than Nova, but it isn't, mostly because Butler hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt of being a top-10 team.

I certainly get it, but generally speaking an 11-2 team with 2 Top 25 wins should have more than a few votes. Nova for instance is ranked #10 and only has 1 ranked win. Butler is ranked #11 and has 0 ranked wins.

Don't get me wrong, Butler and Nova have better resumes than St. John's. There's no disputing that and they deserve to be at least #10/11 (frankly Butler should be even higher). I was just replying that if St. John's were a brand name or had any type of pre-season expectations then we'd almost certainly be ranked with our current resume. Especially given how the AP typically votes by over-emphasizing Top 25 wins. I'd argue that we wouldn't even need to be named Nova, even Xavier or Seton Hall may be enough to get us into the rankings.

Anyways, the last 2 times we were ranked (Lavin's final year for a few weeks and Mullin's final year for 1 week) we were bounced from the rankings very quickly and went into major slumps. If the AP writers don't want to rank us yet I'm completely fine with that.

[REDMEN1415]

Its really odd that WVU/Arizona are both ranked but SJU isn't. Not saying they are undeserving. Just pointing out that SJU beat them both and its barely getting votes. Bias? Did that loss to Vermont (a consistently good America-East mid-major) really hurt that much?

Yeah, it's mostly due to pre-season expectations. If we were named Villanova, Seton Hall or Xavier (the 3 teams ranked pre-season) then we'd be ranked right now. We would've been knocked out of the polls after our 5-2 start, but the WVU game would've put us back on the map and then the Arizona game probably would put us in the #20-25 range. We certainly have a better resume than some of the Top 25 teams.

Honestly though, it doesn't matter. We'll have plenty of opportunities to join the rankings. I'd rather remain under the radar a bit this week anyways.

The Arizona State loss isn't great either. Johnnies are 2-2 against top-175 competition. You are right that if Nova had that resume, it would be ranked, but Nova has earned that benefit of the doubt. Same reason Nova is ranked ahead of Butler right now. Butler clearly has the better resume, and the analytical sites prefer Butler, too. Butler should be ranked higher than Nova, but it isn't, mostly because Butler hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt of being a top-10 team.

"The Arizona State loss isn't great either."
Wasn't that back November, when it was just LJ, Heron, and a bunch of nobody's, who were trying to each find their role. If we played again we'd win, heck we were up 9 at halftime before everything went to hell, but there are no do overs.
In the beginning of this season if you were going to tell me that we'll be 11-2, and beat 2 top 25 teams with LJ and Heron being just average, I'd say you're freaking crazy.

SJU is a year ahead of schedule, thanks to cma and staff.

As to the voters, F EM. Funny how we still get no votes in the coaching poll, coaching with their fingers up their asses?

[MullinMayhem]

There's no doubt these polls cater almost exclusively to F5 schools. If Arizona had our resume, they'd probably be #10 right now. Instead, they lose 3 of their last 4 and somehow by some miracle...are still ranked. A Big East team loses 1 game to a great team and we get knocked out immediately. It's absurd. This is what they do: they wait way too long to rank our teams like DePaul, St. John's, Creighton, etc. and then god forbid one of them loses a game...and then the voters say "well, they lost". As if they really expect a Big East team to have to be nearly undefeated in this gauntlet of a conference. One thing the old Big East had was a soft bottom for the top teams to feed on consistently. Having the best conference top to bottom is fun, but there's zero margin for error and anyone can beat anyone any game. By the way, even if St. John's held on to beat #10 Butler I guarantee you we would not have been ranked still even if it were our 3rd ranked win. Why? We aren't a big state school like Arizona and we haven't had a truly great year nationally in 20+ yrs. If they put so much emphasis on status of the program in recent past, just admit it. But to act like top 25 is a real-time reflection of teams without bias is just a flat out lie.

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

There's no doubt these polls cater almost exclusively to F5 schools.

You might be onto something there ...

Team NET Rankings - NCAA.com

69. Virginia

AP Poll - Yahoo!

19. Virginia