Coaches Poll

Top 25 Coaches Poll Released: UNC #1

Matthew Ryter — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:34:13 -0400

The Story: North Carolina was the unanimous selection for No. 1 in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll released today. Connecticut in 2003-04 and Florida in 2006-07 are the only two teams to win the championship after being ranked number one in the preseason. Connecticut, Louisville, UCLA, and Duke round out the top 5. Duke and Michigan State (7^th) have now tied Kansas with the most appearances in the top 10 preseason polls with nine. The Big East has four teams in the top 10 (Pitt sixth, Notre Dame ninth) and a record seven teams ranked in the preseason top 25. Defending champion Kansas will debut at 23 after losing many key players to the NBA. Kentucky, for the first time, was not ranked but was among 19 other teams receiving votes.

Ryter’s Block: It’s hard to argue that the Tarheels should be anywhere else on the preseason poll. Even with Marcus Ginyard hurt to start the year they have one of the deepest teams in the nation. They also return some guy named Tyler Hansbrough.

The Big East received a ton of love in the preseason top 25. Since the conference has expanded to 16 teams it has been the deepest and toughest conference to play in. I believe the Big East will get at least 8-10 teams into the NCAA’s this year.

However, people shouldn’t worry about preseason polls. With no games being played thus far it is hard to judge which teams should be ranked where. Preseason polls are based on expectations and potential. There are teams in this poll that may not make the tournament and there are teams not ranked that will end the season ranked. The only thing teams should worry about is getting a chance to dance in March.

Matthew Ryter keeps you up to date on the world of college basketball with his "Ryter's Block" column. What do you think about this story? Post your comments below:

Preseason Coaches Poll: Big East Dominates

Press Release — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:24:43 -0400

ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll

1. North Carolina (31) 0-0 775
2. Connecticut 0-0 707
3. Louisville 0-0 694
4. UCLA 0-0 650
5. Duke 0-0 578
6. Pittsburgh 0-0 576
7. Michigan State 0-0 572
8. Texas 0-0 538
9. Notre Dame 0-0 525
10. Purdue 0-0 465
11. Gonzaga 0-0 437
12. Memphis 0-0 425
13. Tennessee 0-0 408
14. Oklahoma 0-0 387
15. Arizona State 0-0 304
16. Miami (FL) 0-0 233
17. Marquette 0-0 219
18. Georgetown 0-0 175
19. Florida 0-0 161
20. Davidson 0-0 158
21. USC 0-0 153
21. Wisconsin 0-0 153
23. Kansas 0-0 130
24. Wake Forest 0-0 129
25. Villanova 0-0 122

Others Receiving Votes

UNLV 60, Saint Mary's 59, Ohio State 54, Baylor 47, Xavier 27, Syracuse 23, Texas A&M 19, LSU 19, Arizona 18, Virginia Tech 15, Brigham Young 13, West Virginia 10, Washington 8, Siena 8, Kentucky 7, Vanderbilt 7, Oklahoma State 4, Clemson 2, Washington State 1.

Preseason ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll

Press Release — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:34:20 -0400

1. North Carolina (10) 0-0 739
2. UCLA (12) 0-0 734
3. Memphis (8) 0-0 731
4. Kansas (1) 0-0 669
5. Georgetown 0-0 625
6. Louisville 0-0 620
7. Tennessee 0-0 598
8. Michigan State 0-0 503
9. Indiana 0-0 479
10. Washington State 0-0 464
11. Duke 0-0 390
12. Marquette 0-0 381
13. Oregon 0-0 360
14. Gonzaga 0-0 252
14. Texas A&M 0-0 252
16. Texas 0-0 216
17. Arizona 0-0 205
18. USC 0-0 189
19. Arkansas 0-0 173
20. Pittsburgh 0-0 160
21. Stanford 0-0 158
22. Kentucky 0-0 155
23. Southern Illinois 0-0 137
24. North Carolina State 0-0 119
25. Villanova 0-0 111

Others Recieving Votes
Kansas State 94, Syracuse 69, Ohio State 65, Clemson 56, Connecticut 55, Butler 42, Davidson 39, Xavier 38, Alabama 31, Mississippi State 30, Florida 26, Wisconsin 21, Illinois 16, Washington 12, Brigham Young 12, Nevada 8, Bradley 7, Virginia 7, Virginia Commonwealth 5, Utah 4, Baylor 3, Old Dominion 3, Saint Joseph's 3, Fresno State 2, George Mason 2, Utah State 2, Notre Dame 1, California 1, Maryland 1.

Daily Dribble: Pac-10 Overrated?

Shawn Siegel — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 11:25:02 -0500

Thanks to those who emailed comments about Wednesday's historical Conference RPI Daily Dribble. Particularly to a guy by the name of Tom Stephenson, who sent over some expanded stats going back to 1994 that I hope to put in an upcoming Dribble. But for now, back to the regularly scheduled show.. which apparently is about a) how surprising Washington State is, and b) how the Pac-10's greatness is overrated: Coming off a surprising loss at Stanford, and having lost to Oregon earlier in the year, you knew UCLA was going to come out and own the Ducks last night. They did, getting up 22 to 9 start and never looking back. UCLA is now alone atop the Pac-10 at 8-2, while Oregon drops into a 2nd place to with USC and.. Washington State. The Cougars went into Arizona and knocked off the.. yes, they're still ranked.. #22 Wildcats. Now Oregon is somewhat of a surprise in the standings, and Butler's success has been surprising, etc, etc.. but the fact that Washington State is 18-4 and 7-3 in the Pac-10 is crazy. Its beyond shocking. We had Washington State 173rd to start the season. Now you can say we were just dumb.. but that was a pretty fair assessment at the time taking into account the Cougars recent history and the prior production of their roster. 173rd.. and on Sunday they were 16th in the CHN Top 50. Such a rise is unheard of. For comparison, we had Butler ranked 106th.. which is also very low. And they rose 93 spots in the ranking. Washington State is up 157 spots since opening day. The 3rd biggest mover in our Top 25 is Notre Dame, up from 87th to 18. Oregon is up from 56th to 7th for comparison. 56th is low, but at least 56th is a projected postseason bid and on the verge of the NCAA Tournament. 173rd is like 5th place in the Southern Conference type ranking.. Anyways, all this Pac-10 talk makes me wonder just how good this league is? To me, the best judge of a league is simply non-conference wins. What teams have the Pac-10 beaten in non-conference play? Well, I took a look at the results and this is what I found: As a whole, the Pac-10 hasn't really beaten many ranked teams. A lot of the teams that Pac-10 squads beat early on ended up fading and dont look quite so good anymore. Pac-10 wins over currently ranked teams UCLA: #24 Kentucky (neutral), #8 Texas A&M (home) Oregon: none Washington State: none USC: none Arizona: #25 UNLV (home), #18 Memphis (home) Cal: none Washington: none Oregon State: none Arizona State: none That's it.. 4 wins over currently ranked teams out of a 10-team league. Not one road win over a Top 25 team.. and UNLV only makes it because I happened to be using the Coaches Poll. Using the AP Poll (which is really the better poll in my opinion).. UNLV is only the 32nd ranked team. Similarly, Kentucky is 27th in the AP.. So basically you have 3 or 3.5 wins over ranked teams. There were also a couple wins over teams that might end up in the Top 25.. Oregon over Georgetown, Stanford over Virginia, maybe Washington State over Gonzaga if the Bulldogs get hot again. But still.. the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place Pac-10 teams have not beaten a single currently ranked team. Now, Top 25 wins are hard to come by.. so its a bit misleading to say the Pac-10 has only beaten 4 ranked teams without comparing that to other leagues.. so I will compare it to another league. Here's what the ACC has done: UNC: #4 Ohio State (home), #24 Kentucky (home), #22 Arizona (road) VT: none BC: none Virginia: #22 Arizona (home) Duke: #13 Air Force (neutral), #25 Indiana (home) Clemson: none Florida State: #4 Florida (home) Georgia Tech: #11 Memphis (neutral) Miami: none Wake Forest: none So that ends up being 8 for the ACC.. which isn't a huge amount.. but twice as many. Plus noting wins against close Top 25 teams, there's.. Duke over Georgetown and Gonzaga, Virginia over Gonzaga, and UNC beat Tennessee. Now the ACC is the #1 ranked RPI conference so perhaps its an unfair comparison to the Pac-10. But my point is not to say that the Pac-10 is bad. Its simply to point out that all the talk about the Pac-10 being "back" and being the deepest league and blah blah, is a bit overdone. Plus, it could be worse. It could be as bad as the Big East.. where the league's #1 team hasn't beaten a single Top 25 all year.. including conference play. In fact, Pitt doesn't play a ranked team again until the season's final game (Marquette).

ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll: December 11

Press Release — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:07:33 -0500

ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll

December 11

1. UCLA (26) 8-0 770
2. Pittsburgh (4) 10-0 737
3. North Carolina 7-1 708
4. Ohio State (1) 8-1 689
5. Florida 8-2 586
6. Duke 9-1 584
7. Wisconsin 9-1 538
8. Connecticut 8-0 486
9. Alabama 8-1 480
10. Wichita State 7-0 476
11. Arizona 7-1 473
12. Kansas 8-2 443
13. Texas A&M 7-2 341
14. Washington 7-1 332
15. LSU 5-2 327
16. Gonzaga 9-2 309
17. Oklahoma State 11-0 294
18. Butler 10-1 267
19. Memphis 7-2 205
20. Air Force 10-1 204
21. Nevada 7-1 144
22. Marquette 9-2 137
23. Michigan State 9-2 74
24. Oregon 7-0 70
25. Clemson 10-0 67

OTHERS RECEIVING VOTES

Syracuse 64, Notre Dame 51, Maryland 50, Texas 46, Missouri State 39, Southern Illinois 20, Purdue 15, Xavier 8, Louisville 6, UNLV 5, Boston College 5, Dayton 5, Washington State 5, Florida State 3, Tennessee 3, Georgetown 2, Missouri 2, West Virginia 2, Northern Iowa 1, Illinois 1, Virginia 1.

DROPPED FROM RANKINGS

Syracuse 21, Maryland 22.

Duke: Overrated or Really Overrated?

Ricky Dimon — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:00:49 -0500

Polls Giving Blue Devils Typical Duke Treatment

The college basketball polls have officially followed the lead of ACC officials. That’s right, they’re giving preferential treatment to Coach K and the Duke Blue Devils.

I mean how is Duke ranked 6th in both the ESPN/USA Today poll and its AP counterpart? Granted I don’t care that much about anything other than the final rankings in the first week of April, and nobody else should either, but this is just ridiculous. Nobody in their right mind can argue that Duke is the seventh best team in college basketball. Not even the craziest of the Cameron Crazies can look me in the eye and tell me the Blue Devils are a top 10 team without losing every ounce of his or her credibility.

Duke was ranked 11th in the preseason ESPN/USA Today poll and 12th in the first AP poll, and I understand that the Devils have moved up a few spots as higher-ranked teams dropped a few games. But if you ranked teams based on their performance so far in 2006 without taking any preseason expectations into account, Coach K would not even be sniffing the top 10.

Just take a brief look at the Duke’s schedule through the first nine games of the season. Folks, you will notice that the Blue Devils have not played one real road game yet. Seven of their nine contests were played in Cameron Indoor Stadium and Duke dared to venture all the way out to Kansas City for the other two games as part of the CBE Classic. Let me pause briefly to applaud Coach K for not insisting on hosting the tournament at Cameron Indoor and actually agreeing two play two solid opponents on a neutral court.

He’s probably regretting that decision. After defeating a mediocre Air Force squad by 12, Duke faced the only legitimate top 25 team its faced all season—Marquette. The Blue Devils hung around for about the first 30 minutes of the game, but we found out who the better team was in a hurry when crunch time rolled around. The Golden Eagles were more athletic and simply outplayed and outclassed the young Devils en route to an emphatic 73-62 victory.

Upon returning to Cameron, Duke defeated Bob McKillop and the 2006 SoCon Champion Davidson Wildcats before hosting Indiana in the ACC-Big 10 Challenge. Indiana basketball is a far cry from what it once was, so don’t even begin to tell me that a 54-51 win over the Hoosiers is anything special. In fact, the only thing it tells me is that these Blue Devils are mired in mediocrity even within their own friendly confines of Cameron Indoor.

Then the Blue Devils had to come from behind once again to beat Georgetown, a team that is arguably even more overrated than Duke. The Hoyas were 8th in the nation in both preseason polls, but needless to say they are no longer a part of either poll after losses to Old Dominion, Oregon, and Duke. Both the Old Dominion and Oregon losses came at home and neither contest was close. So don’t even try to tell me that coming back from seven-point halftime deficit to beat Georgetown by 9 at home is a quality win. It just isn’t.

On Wednesday the Blue Devils played host to the perennial college basketball powerhouse that is Holy Cross. And by college basketball powerhouse I mean the Crusaders contend every now and then in the Patriot League. Well, after sleepwalking through the first half, Duke found itself down 28-22 to Holy Cross at the intermission. The Blue Devils ultimately prevailed with an uninspiring 57-45 victory, and what struck me while watching the last 10 minutes of the game was that the Cameron Crazies were genuinely excited as their boys put the Crusaders away. I understand it’s their job to go crazy, but I could tell the general feeling among the multitude was one of satisfaction and even happiness. Yes, the current state of the 2006 Duke Blue Devils is one that forces the Blue Devil following to be content with a narrow victory over the Holy Cross Crusaders.

Then again, why shouldn’t such a victory be worthy of euphoria? When you consider Duke’s 2006 roster, maybe it should. Josh McRoberts is the real deal, but I’d rather hit the snooze button than talk about the rest of the Blue Devils’ roster. But for the purpose of this article, I will persevere and do so.

DeMarcus Nelson is enjoying a rather solid season, but the fact that he is consistently Duke’s second most prolific scoring threat—behind McRoberts—is simply laughable. The junior guard is much better suited for a complimentary role like the one he played last season in support of J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams.

Greg Paulus is one of the worst Duke point guards in recent memory, and that’s scary considering he might be the third best player on this roster.

The freshmen are pretty good, but grossly overrated. None more than Gerald Henderson, who eventually could become a really good college basketball player, but for the time being is just a nasty athlete. There’s nothing wrong with ridiculous athleticism, but what Duke needs after losing Redick and Williams are guys who can consistently put the ball in the basket.

Freshman Jon Scheyer can do that…when he’s playing puffcake competition. Right now Scheyer is a poor man’s freshman version of Redick. He is almost lethal from downtown when he’s left open, but Scheyer would have had to play back in the era of no shot clock in order to have enough time to create his own shot. Just look at his stats in the three games Duke played against major-conference teams; games in which Scheyer was guarded by the kinds of guys he’ll be hounded by the rest of the season in ACC play. Scheyer was 0 for 5 from the field and scored just three points in the loss to Marquette. He scored 10 points on a woeful 2-for-10 performance against Indiana, and followed that up with a pedestrian 5-point showing on 2-for-5 shooting in the win over Georgetown.

In the middle, 7-1 freshman Brian Zoubek isn’t going to make anyone forget Shelden Williams anytime soon. Sure he is a valuable addition to the squad and could turn out to be a terror for the opposition, but Zoubek has a long way to go, especially on the defensive side of the floor. Let’s just say he is not ‘The Landlord’ and leave it at that.

While this is one of the few years of the Krzyzewski era in which the Blue Devils will be done in by having inferior talent, the nail in Duke’s coffin is going to be a lack of depth. After the starting five of Paulus, Nelson, Scheyer, freshman Lance Thomas, and McRoberts, Coach K doesn’t have much at his disposal right now.

Zoubek has been consistently getting less than 10 minutes per contest off the bench. Sophomore David McClure is Duke’s seventh man at the moment, but when McClure gets put in the game he does not evoke thoughts of wow, Duke is pretty deep. He evokes thoughts of wow, Duke must not be deep at all if David McClure is on the floor.

And such a thought would be right on the money, especially when you compare Duke’s bench to some other ACC squads. At Georgia Tech, coach Paul Hewitt substitutes more guys at one time than Krzyzewski does over an entire 40 minutes. So does Roy Williams at UNC. The Tar Heels are ten strong right now. Roy brought in so many diaper dandies I almost forgot that Danny Green and Marcus Ginyard were still on the team. If those two guys were Dukies, both of them would be logging minutes that would have ACC commissioner John Swafford imposing labor laws in Cameron Indoor Stadium. Duke basically has a seven-man rotation at the moment, eight if you count Zoubek, and then you only reach nine with Martynas Pocius, who would be a far-end-of-the-bench kind of guy on any previous Duke team.

I guess you can partly forgive voters for putting Duke at No. 6 in the nation, simply because the top teams in the nation have actually been playing stellar early-season competition and have understandably beat each other up. For example, No. 9 Alabama lost at Notre Dame on Thursday and dropped below Duke in this week’s ranking. But please, don’t kid yourself by thinking that means Duke is anywhere close to as good as the Crimson Tide.

The Duke Blue Devils are No. 6 right now for three reasons. First, they haven’t played one game on an opponent’s home floor. Second, they’ve played just one legitimate top 25 team, and therefore have only one loss. Third and foremost, they’re Duke. The name “earned” them an inflated preseason ranking and will continue to enhance their standing throughout the season.

So once Duke is finally forced to play out their ACC schedule, all the “experts” are going to be hailing their losses as “upsets” when the Devils drop games to teams like Georgia Tech, Maryland, Virginia, and Florida State. Don’t buy into that for a second. You’ll know it’s just the natural result of a 2006 Duke team that just isn’t very good.