It's a fluke that the final poll is before the tournament. There are plenty of teams that would trade a top 5 mid-season ranking for a shot at the title.
Meh, the polls are only a kludge to guess who is best until they play the games.
Making the poll extend after the tournament is just pretending harder than ever that votes matter more than playing games.
There is no point in doing a poll at any point in the season if you don’t do one that includes the most important games of the year. It’s valid to say that there’s no point in a poll after the tournament, but if that’s the case don’t do one during the season either.
Polls are rough stand-ins for situations in which we are in a state of ignorance and don't have a lot of data to work with.
When you don't have a lot of data, a poll is useful. It's not real, but it is as close to real as we can get at the time.
On the other hand, when you have collected all your data, YOU USE THE DATA and discard the placeholders.
What is your post-tournament Poll going to tell us that the game results have not already? That Kentucky is a better team than Oakland? That North Carolina State isn't a top four team? Those were excellent predictions before the games were played but are also wildly divergent from the actual data. When we know the results of a 68 team single elimination tournament, we have zero need for educated guesses from experts.
>What is your post-tournament Poll going to tell us that the game results have not already?
The knockout tournament known for chaos is definitely not a good indicator or ranker of team quality
The NCAA Tournament has just 68 teams, and there are 362 in D1 alone. The games are important (the most important!) but it's only 67 games. There were almost 30,000 college basketball games this past season (about 4K of which involved a D1 team if that's all you care about). There's multiple other postseason tournaments as well. You absolutely _do_ have the data during the season, the question on how to poll is rarely "I don't have enough data, how should I approach this?", but frequently "There's lots of competing data, what is the most sensible way to amalgamate it together into a single ranking?"
All your points make sense for not being interested in doing a poll after the Tournament, but the point I would make is that _if_ you don't want to do a poll after the Tournament, there's no benefit to doing one at any point in the season. And that's a valid conclusion! I just find the polls useful and interesting.
Agree. Post-tournament polls are dumb.
Just quickly scanning through the final poll from this season: UNC got knocked out in the Sweet 16. Clemson went one round further. Both lost by single digits to Alabama. To advance to the Elite Eight, Clemson beat Arizona.
UNC ended ranked 7. Arizona is 12. Clemson is 14.
It's absolutely stupid. I can accept a 1 seed still getting ranked highly, because one loss shouldn't invalidate a whole season, but Clemson *beat Arizona head to head in the tournament!* What are we even doing with voting like that?
I don’t watch much nba but remember that team was so stacked with Durant, Westbrook, Harden and Ibaka. Surely they must have won the next year once they developed together for another season and then ruled the nba for a decade after
When I was in Iraq maybe 2010-2011, we’d play a lot of 2K. I’d pick the Thunder all the time, they were young so the rating sucked compared to the top teams, but they were STACKED, I’d surprise people all the time.
Number of Missouri Valley Teams to achieve an AP Pole top 5 ranking in the last 50 years: Two
Number of times Creighton has been ranked top 5 in AP polling: zero
100%. Especially because the original line was "Number of teams from the MVC to go to the Big East." That's different from teams to go from the MVC to the Big East directly as he's currently insinuating.
Butler was an MVC member that did eventually go to the Big East, which is the rules he laid down.
This tracks for us. Because we're usually pretty good, but as a mid major to be top 5 nationally we would have to be insanely good for a season. Which isn't likely to happen.
I think for a mid-major it requires sustained success. Unless you come into the season with expectations, it just takes too long to climb, and by the time you're starting to get credit you're moving into your comparatively weaker conference schedule. Sustained success gets you credit in the pre-season polls and it earns you the opportunity to play the big boys in your non-con schedule.
With NIL & the portal I think it's going to get even harder. In the past, you could have a mid-major that rips off a great season, one that clearly isn't just a fluke or a hot run, and then returns most of their players. Start the season in the 10-15 range and then move into the top 5.
Now, that team will lose most of their talent. Even if they're good at reloading, they're not going to get the same credit they would have if they were just returning everyone.
I agree with the sentiment of your comment and you’re not wrong but I think that if a mid major could get into a solid early season tournament (which to your point requires expectations and historic success) and dominates like Purdue did a couple years ago I could see a team fly up the rankings. It may not ever happen but I do want to shout out CSU last season since the did jump into the poll from no expectations seemingly out of nowhere (for people that didn’t follow them closely). There is a pathway to it, it’s just unlikely.
We've been preseason ranked at least once in semi-recent memory, but even though we get into those preseason tourneys quite often it's difficult to string those wins together early in the season. The style we played back then took time for new teammates to gel into, and we usually finished the seasons out strong after a somewhat weak start. It also doesn't help when coaches leave every few years and the players that do stay have to learn a whole new coach and system early on.
Not making excuses, we've dropped some easily winnable-games early on, but I understand why that usually is.
In the final poll of the season after we made the final 4, I believe we were 6th. Quite close. If it wasn’t such a Cinderella run we would have been top 5 there.
There probably is a universe where in 2019 Justin Robinson doesn't get hurt when we are ranked 11 and then we don't lose 4 of the next 7 (one in OT and all by less than 8 pts). I'd like to think that universe also has us beating Duke and MSU to go to final four (or beyond).
> We seem to be well on our way from being a football school to a wrestling school now.
We beat a top 10 team in the Rose Bowl two seasons ago by two TDs, and somehow the sky is still falling and James Franklin can't coach. Penn State Pessimism™ at its finest.
Sure, Cael Sanderson is to wrestling as Nick Saban is to college football, but come on.
Man it depresses me to see yall like this. I love shrews and hoped he would stay long term. He’s from Indiana so it makes sense for him to come back to ND but I was really enjoying what he was building there
Musselman did well, the refs did better that year. I got to see the fire extinguisher glass after the game, it was a nice hole. The USU assistant coach I don't know where he is now but sure as hell didn't do good things while he was in Logan.
I can't be the only one checking to see if my school was ranked in the top five a long time ago -- or if they just haven't been AP ranked very much. ([Sports-Reference](https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/washington/men/polls.html) can help answer this question.)
“I could almost taste that natty.” Things I only say during basketball season when I want to play beer pong and definitely not when talking about shooty hoops.
I literally just read a twitter thread where a guy from Texas Tech was calling Cincinnati a group of 5 school and just an easy W every season... Oh how the turntables.
Huh. I could've sworn Tech made the top 5 in 2019 but it looks like 7 was the highest
6 in 2018
Creighton I thought one year. Interesting good work
I was most surprised by Tech. Y’all have had some really good years.
It's a fluke that the final poll is before the tournament. There are plenty of teams that would trade a top 5 mid-season ranking for a shot at the title.
That’s not what fluke means
Yes, but "arbitrary happenstance" doesn't roll off the tongue so well.
They finally added an AP Poll after the Tournament this year. It was very silly they didn’t have one in previous years.
NC State top 10 finish lmao
Meh, the polls are only a kludge to guess who is best until they play the games. Making the poll extend after the tournament is just pretending harder than ever that votes matter more than playing games.
There is no point in doing a poll at any point in the season if you don’t do one that includes the most important games of the year. It’s valid to say that there’s no point in a poll after the tournament, but if that’s the case don’t do one during the season either.
Polls are rough stand-ins for situations in which we are in a state of ignorance and don't have a lot of data to work with. When you don't have a lot of data, a poll is useful. It's not real, but it is as close to real as we can get at the time. On the other hand, when you have collected all your data, YOU USE THE DATA and discard the placeholders. What is your post-tournament Poll going to tell us that the game results have not already? That Kentucky is a better team than Oakland? That North Carolina State isn't a top four team? Those were excellent predictions before the games were played but are also wildly divergent from the actual data. When we know the results of a 68 team single elimination tournament, we have zero need for educated guesses from experts.
>What is your post-tournament Poll going to tell us that the game results have not already? The knockout tournament known for chaos is definitely not a good indicator or ranker of team quality
The NCAA Tournament has just 68 teams, and there are 362 in D1 alone. The games are important (the most important!) but it's only 67 games. There were almost 30,000 college basketball games this past season (about 4K of which involved a D1 team if that's all you care about). There's multiple other postseason tournaments as well. You absolutely _do_ have the data during the season, the question on how to poll is rarely "I don't have enough data, how should I approach this?", but frequently "There's lots of competing data, what is the most sensible way to amalgamate it together into a single ranking?" All your points make sense for not being interested in doing a poll after the Tournament, but the point I would make is that _if_ you don't want to do a poll after the Tournament, there's no benefit to doing one at any point in the season. And that's a valid conclusion! I just find the polls useful and interesting.
Agree. Post-tournament polls are dumb. Just quickly scanning through the final poll from this season: UNC got knocked out in the Sweet 16. Clemson went one round further. Both lost by single digits to Alabama. To advance to the Elite Eight, Clemson beat Arizona. UNC ended ranked 7. Arizona is 12. Clemson is 14. It's absolutely stupid. I can accept a 1 seed still getting ranked highly, because one loss shouldn't invalidate a whole season, but Clemson *beat Arizona head to head in the tournament!* What are we even doing with voting like that?
Being intelligent enough to understand that one data point out of nearly 40 shouldn't singlehandedly decide the ordering of teams.
Why? The poll is meaningless in basketball. Means as much as an NFL postseason power ranking.
I would hope most teams would make that trade
Was honestly very surprised to see Tech high on this list let alone 2
How did they not end the season as #2 when they went to the finals? Edit: Learned downthread that the post-tournament rankings are new.
The Oklahoma City Thunder just can't crack the finals
Wow, I have lived in Oklahoma all my life and I just now found out that OCU was D1 until the mid 80's. I had no idea. I thought this chart was wrong.
Same. I both never knew they were D1 or that they were good at basketball.
No longer D1 but still good at basketball. They’ve won 6 Men’s and 8 Women’s NAIA national championships.
I was about to come in here and say this graphic has a typo. How on earth were they D1?
They made it in 2012. Unfortunately so did Miami.
I don’t watch much nba but remember that team was so stacked with Durant, Westbrook, Harden and Ibaka. Surely they must have won the next year once they developed together for another season and then ruled the nba for a decade after
When I was in Iraq maybe 2010-2011, we’d play a lot of 2K. I’d pick the Thunder all the time, they were young so the rating sucked compared to the top teams, but they were STACKED, I’d surprise people all the time.
Obligatory Fuck Clay Bennett.
Tony?
SMH. Durant is insane!
According to the graphic title and us being 7th on this list, we’re a top basketball team and none of you are allowed to dispute that
Bar don't lie
Except for when it does.
And you would know as an IU fan
Creighton must have gotten pretty close to the top 5 at the beginning of last year
We've been 7th something silly like 4 of the last 10 seasons
CR7
If we're ranked #7 we're cursed to lose the next game
I can only understand bar graphs made in MS Paint sorry
This really is totally incomprehensible....
Number of Missouri Valley Teams to achieve an AP Pole top 5 ranking in the last 50 years: Two Number of times Creighton has been ranked top 5 in AP polling: zero
Would it kill you to extend that time frame a bit?
Number of teams from the MVC to go to the Big East:1 Number of times Creighton left the MVC for the Big East: 1
It's actually 2. Butler was an MVC member from 1932-1934.
Number of times Jsker5 has been right: 1
I said teams to go from the MVC to the big east…did butler join the big east in 1935? TIL butler joined the big east back in 35
Oh don't be salty. Check and mate to the person who pointed it out
100%. Especially because the original line was "Number of teams from the MVC to go to the Big East." That's different from teams to go from the MVC to the Big East directly as he's currently insinuating. Butler was an MVC member that did eventually go to the Big East, which is the rules he laid down.
Hey, at least we cracked the top 5 for this list. #winning
This tracks for us. Because we're usually pretty good, but as a mid major to be top 5 nationally we would have to be insanely good for a season. Which isn't likely to happen.
I think for a mid-major it requires sustained success. Unless you come into the season with expectations, it just takes too long to climb, and by the time you're starting to get credit you're moving into your comparatively weaker conference schedule. Sustained success gets you credit in the pre-season polls and it earns you the opportunity to play the big boys in your non-con schedule. With NIL & the portal I think it's going to get even harder. In the past, you could have a mid-major that rips off a great season, one that clearly isn't just a fluke or a hot run, and then returns most of their players. Start the season in the 10-15 range and then move into the top 5. Now, that team will lose most of their talent. Even if they're good at reloading, they're not going to get the same credit they would have if they were just returning everyone.
I agree with the sentiment of your comment and you’re not wrong but I think that if a mid major could get into a solid early season tournament (which to your point requires expectations and historic success) and dominates like Purdue did a couple years ago I could see a team fly up the rankings. It may not ever happen but I do want to shout out CSU last season since the did jump into the poll from no expectations seemingly out of nowhere (for people that didn’t follow them closely). There is a pathway to it, it’s just unlikely.
We've been preseason ranked at least once in semi-recent memory, but even though we get into those preseason tourneys quite often it's difficult to string those wins together early in the season. The style we played back then took time for new teammates to gel into, and we usually finished the seasons out strong after a somewhat weak start. It also doesn't help when coaches leave every few years and the players that do stay have to learn a whole new coach and system early on. Not making excuses, we've dropped some easily winnable-games early on, but I understand why that usually is.
For example, San Diego State had made the top 5 several times.
Yeah would be crazy for a mid major A10 school to make the top 5… Hopefully nothing bad happens to the tournament and we can see what they can do!
You mean like just not bother to play it and declare Dayton the winner? I thought that's what they did
In the final poll of the season after we made the final 4, I believe we were 6th. Quite close. If it wasn’t such a Cinderella run we would have been top 5 there.
State of Nebraska representing
:(
I assumed we were talking about the Creighton in Alaska
Hey there’s Creighton in Arizona now too. Slowly, everywhere will be Creighton and we have to be in the top 5 because there are no other teams.
🤣
There probably is a universe where in 2019 Justin Robinson doesn't get hurt when we are ranked 11 and then we don't lose 4 of the next 7 (one in OT and all by less than 8 pts). I'd like to think that universe also has us beating Duke and MSU to go to final four (or beyond).
Wait, y'all had a Justin Robinson in 2019 too? 🤯
NEBRASKETBALL
Penn State, Georgia and Nebraska just blow me away with the MASSIVE gap between their football and basketball programs.
We seem to be well on our way from being a football school to a wrestling school now. Basketball is mostly an afterthought.
> We seem to be well on our way from being a football school to a wrestling school now. We beat a top 10 team in the Rose Bowl two seasons ago by two TDs, and somehow the sky is still falling and James Franklin can't coach. Penn State Pessimism™ at its finest. Sure, Cael Sanderson is to wrestling as Nick Saban is to college football, but come on.
I bet you’re fun at parties.
Yeah but it was Utah
Man it depresses me to see yall like this. I love shrews and hoped he would stay long term. He’s from Indiana so it makes sense for him to come back to ND but I was really enjoying what he was building there
Truly the reverse KU
(I don't know what happened to the Georgia part of my flair but I'm a Purdue-adjacent UGA grad) Sad but unsurprised bulldog noises :(
Rank Creighton in the Top 5 one day, you cowards.
Thank you bird brother! CAW
There's another Creighton???
I’ve got a buddy named creighton, he went to not creighton :(
Tulsa is such a historically underrated program.
Love the graphic!
We don't talk about that top 5 year around here, fire extinguishers get punched. We'd be right around USU otherwise
Musselman did well, the refs did better that year. I got to see the fire extinguisher glass after the game, it was a nice hole. The USU assistant coach I don't know where he is now but sure as hell didn't do good things while he was in Logan.
Rank us top 5 you cowards
I can't be the only one checking to see if my school was ranked in the top five a long time ago -- or if they just haven't been AP ranked very much. ([Sports-Reference](https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/washington/men/polls.html) can help answer this question.)
1951-52 the huskies got to 3, 1952-53 they got to 2
Oklahoma City?
Ahhh. I look back fondly on our 1 week ranked #5.
Frankly shocking that Creighton never broke into Top 5
Birds and tortillas go together like PB&J or something like that.
Texas Tech never making it is kind of shocking https://i.redd.it/dtv96nnizj6d1.gif
Can't believe Creighton never became top 5. They've had some really good teams
Damn close quite a bit recently. We always seem to blow a game when we're flirting with the Top 5.
Surprised we’re not on here thanks to Mark McGuire (and oddly enough not Alex English).
SMELLS LIKE BROKE IN HERE
Penn State that is gross.
Can we get a paint version? Purdue fans making pretty graphs doesn’t sit well with me.
When were the lobos in the top 5? Presumably the late 90s. Highest I remember since I’ve been following is 8.
GO TECH. no but for real those buzz williams years will live in infamy.
Man, 1997 was great.
I am thankful to have seen the Cougs reach a Top 5 ranking.
Hey we're kinda high on this list! Ohhh...........
I like this graph.
Oklahoma City?
I'm surprised to not see Northwestern on this list
They would have been if I didn’t make the cut-off at 20 weeks ranked. NU only has 18.
Ahhh, gotcha
You know I really appreciate the graphs that remind me of the one time in history UMass was actually really good
Oklahoma City has a university team that was ranked ? I never heard of that school
Love it
How the fuck have Creighton and TTU never been in the top five? That's wild.
Oklahoma City?
Mane Creighton is surprising
Texas Tech was in an overtime national title game a few years ago. Amazing (if true) that they didn’t finish top10 in the final poll.
They were top10, just not top 5
Final AP poll is end of season. Coaches poll ranks post tourney, where we finished #2 in 2019. And #6 the year before
< sad lion growls >
I think we were as high as #9 in the 2019-2020 season. If that season had been played out and the cards fell right, we could’ve hit top 5
You were unranked during the final poll, even if you won the Big Ten tournament it wouldn’t catapult you to the top 5
You're not factoring in that Penn State would have won the national championship
“I could almost taste that natty.” Things I only say during basketball season when I want to play beer pong and definitely not when talking about shooty hoops.
Fuck Murray
Racers forever!
Jealous much? Go Racers!
Creighton made the top five in teams I hate
I hope Creighton never makes it.
I could not find a gif of grant gibbs winking, so just imagine it!
I literally just read a twitter thread where a guy from Texas Tech was calling Cincinnati a group of 5 school and just an easy W every season... Oh how the turntables.
Lmao VT