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Basketball: What the top-25 polls are worth
By Jeff Faraudo
Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 1:57 pm in Basketball, Mid-week.
Here’s all you need to know about the top-25 polls: Cal won twice last week by a combined margin of 53 points and dropped in both the AP and ESPN/USA Today coaches polls.
After losing twice in New York, the Bears had fallen from No. 13 out of the AP top-25, finishing 29th. This week they are 37th.
Cal maintained a No. 23 ranking in the coaches poll, even after its Madison Square Garden defeats, then dropped two spots to 25th this week.
Certainly a 32-point win over Jacksonville and a 21-point conquest of Princeton aren’t cause to shoot Cal far up the ladder. But should they be reason to drop a team?
My guess is coach Mike Montgomery’s only interest in this week’s rankings involves his former player/assistant coach Eric Reveno, whose Portland team reached No. 25 in the AP poll, its first appearace in the rankings in 50 years.
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December 1st, 2009 at 9:32 am
Jeff, you can’t analyze Cal’s poll position simply by considering how it does in games. Everything is relative; you would have to analyze how other teams performed as well (relative to Cal). Polling is a rank ordering. Winning games shouldn’t have to vault a team up the rankings, and vice versa. Performance has to be evaluated relative to how other teams performed too.