By Always Miller Time’s contributor, Chad Smith
The new NCAA Basketball ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll came out today, and there were some big shakeups. After examining the rankings from last week to this week, I asked myself, “What’s the point of these things?”
Kansas and Kentucky both remained first and second respectively, and Villanova moved up from number five to number three with a big win at West Virginia and a win over Providence.
Purdue beat Michigan State on the road, then defeated Iowa to jump from six to four. Syracuse won the rematch with UConn, but then lost a tight game to Louisville, and they fall from three to round out the top five.
West Virginia fell to number eight, but many would say that they are a better team than Kansas State, which ranks ahead of them. The same could be said for Michigan State, who ranks behind Gonzaga. While Wisconsin lost a heart breaker to Illinois last week, they kept going, and blew out the Hoosiers a few days later by 28 points.
The Badgers are now ranked in 16th, but almost everyone considers them a top 10 team, at the very least.
The problem that I have with this system is that the rankings really don’t provide us with anything but a number, a number that shouldn’t define a team, as it changes from week to week. While football teams hold their breathe when the new polls are announced each week, the basketball programs really don’t pay that much attention to them.
Towards the end of the season, the football bowl matchups are being set, and the polls do factor into the equation, which nobody really knows exactly how it’s done still to this day. In basketball, the field of 65 is set by a committee that looks at the overall season, strength of schedule, RPI, and all of that. The polls aren’t really taken into consideration when placing teams with their seeding.
With basketball, there are many more games, and nobody is going to go undefeated, which makes the polls almost irrelevant. Everyone is going to lose, and when you do, you are going to fall.
What is the difference between the USA Today Coaches Poll, and your friend’s cousin’s brother’s “Power Rankings?”
The people that really know college basketball and follow it through the season are able to separate the great from the good and the average from the bad. Someone that doesn’t really follow college basketball might think Butler and BYU are better teams than Wisconsin and Tennessee, which just isn’t the case.
The fact is, if the season ended today, the rankings would be different from what they are right now. If you look at the overall season each team has had, nearly every team would have a different ranking.
With the NCAA Final Four here in Indianapolis this year, I decided I had better start doing some college basketball articles, and I think this is one thing that I might not be alone on. I could be wrong though, let me know what you think about the need for the weekly polls in college basketball.