Good Morning, Illini Nation: Weekly exercise of rankings teams never harder
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Welcome to "Good Morning, Illini Nation," your daily dose of college basketball news from Illini beat writer and AP Top 25 voter Scott Richey. He'll offer up insights every morning on Brad Underwood's team and college basketball at large:
The sheer number of losses taken by ranked teams this season has created an Associated Press Top 25 that has looked markedly different week to week.
At least my ballot has. I took the preseason voting guidelines to heart and have not been hesitant to make broad, sweeping changes week to week.
Last week was no different. Ranked teams combined for 18 losses, with Baylor dropping two top 25 matchups in Big 12 play. Neither was a "bad" loss, but the Bears still took a tumble. Four spots when the final poll dropped. Seven on my ballot.
Two teams fell completely off my ballot, replaced by Wake Forest and BYU, and just three were in the same spot as the previous week. Illinois was one of the 22 in a new spot, with last week's collapse at Penn State not countered enough to hold steady by a home win against Iowa.
The Illini ultimately dropped just a single spot in the latest AP Top 25 to No. 13. No one dumped them entirely, as they appeared on all 62 ballots, but the range of votes remained the same. Illinois got three votes at No. 10, with CBS Sports' Seth Davis and the Harrisonburg (Va.) Daily News-Record's Shane Mettlen dropping them a couple spots. The third at 10th came from Mia O'Brien, of First Coast News in Jacksonville, Fla., who actually moved Illinois up two spots.
At the other end of the spectrum was JB Ricks. Again. The Raleigh (N.C.) Spectrum News' anchor dropped Illinois four spots to No. 25. The rest of the voting panel had the Illini ranked somewhere between 11th and 20th.
Utah State, Gonzaga and South Florida were new to the final poll this week. The Aggies were back in after a two-week absence, while the Bulldogs rejoined the top 25 for the first time since mid-January when their streak of 143 consecutive weeks ranked was broken.
South Florida was ranked for the first time. Ever. The Bulls have an interesting case with 13 straight wins and 19 in their last 20 games. A note that one USF fan made sure I was aware of Sunday before I voted.
Unfortunately, I was also aware of the fact the Bulls have zero Quad I wins and a pair of Quad IV losses from a nonconference schedule that ranked as the 326th most difficult among 362 Division I teams. Their 5-3 record in Quad II games is it as far as a season-long résumé goes. The top of the American Athletic Conference — namely Florida Atlantic, Memphis and North Texas — let them down.
USF wasn't going to be on my ballot. That didn't stop 30 voters from including the surprise AAC leaders, though. The 13 straight wins and 19 of 20 is impressive, but that's not the only way to evaluate a team. Who you beat matters as opposed to just taking down mediocre to bad teams in droves.
Why USF instead of Indiana State, Drake, James Madison, Grand Canyon or Appalachian State? All six have at least one Quad I win. Drake and Appalachian State have two. The Mountaineers don't get as much of a bump from the Sun Belt as USF does from the AAC, but beating Auburn is better than any win the Bulls can boast.
But a pair of Quad III and Quad IV games and a pair of losses in the latter means Appalachian State isn't near my top 25 radar.
It's a weekly exercise for voters in ranking the best 25 teams. The path to get there differs for everyone. I try for an all-encompassing approach mixing advanced metrics, a look at "good" and "bad" wins and losses and a touch of the eye test to maintain the human element.
So maybe next year, USF.
Unless you get the AAC's automatic bid and make an FAU-esque run in the NCAA tournament. There's a year-end poll for the first time ever this April.
