Blogpollin'

Behold:

Rank	Team
1	Florida
2	Texas
3	Southern Cal
4	Alabama
5	Oklahoma State
6	Illinois
7	Penn State
8	Oklahoma
9	Brigham Young
10	Mississippi
11	Boise State
12	California
13	Virginia Tech
14	Ohio State
15	TCU
16	LSU
17	Iowa
18	Nebraska
19	Georgia Tech
20	Georgia
21	North Carolina State
22	Arkansas
23	Rutgers
24	Notre Dame
25	Southern Miss

Unlike last year, when I ignored strength-of-schedule in my preseason Blogpoll ballot in favor of a pure "power poll" ballot, this year I went the more traditional route and filled out a "hey, so, how do you think they're going to finish the year?" ballot. So: schedule is a major factor. I also tried to put a special emphasis on the offensive and defensive lines. Runnin' it down:

Florida over Texas. Even if there's a possibility the Horns have the better offense, there's no way the gap between the two O's will be nearly as wide as the gap between the two D's, not with the talent Charlie Strong has at his disposal. Besides, shouldn't we keep betting on the SEC team in the national title game until they lose one?

There's a huge gap between Nos 2 and 3. Everybody behind the top two will lose at least two games. I'm not really all that fired up about USC, not with the general "eh" factor of their offense ever since Bush and Leinart left, a schedule that has all four of their hardest games on the road, and a ton of defenders to replace. Wish I liked someone better.

Alabama No. 4? I know, I know. I don't like it any more than you do. But with that defense, no way they lose more than two games ... and though I'll get into my SEC picks another time, I think they emerge from the scrum atop the West.

Okie St. No. 5? Illinois No. 6? That makes even less sense than 'Bama No. 4. I figured Texas Tech was overrated at this time last year; I'm not making that mistake again and figure the Pokes will swipe one from the 'Horns or Sooners.

The Illini are the biggest outlier on the ballot, but look at their schedule: they've got the roadie at Ohio St., but Penn St.'s the only other game in which the Illini won't be favored ... and the guess here is that between Juice, Benn, and their smart new OC from TCU, there's too much firepower for Penn St. to keep up with on the road. And so Illinois finishes the Big 10 slate with one loss, the tiebreaker, and a ticket to the Rose Bowl.

(Wait, they're still coached by Ron Zook. I must be insane.)

Hatin'. I don't like Oklahoma's overhauled offensive line or rugged schedule; don't like Ole Miss's hype; don't like how toothless Ohio St. has looked without Beanie Wells the last couple of years. So they're all a little lower than elsewhere. (Like everyone else I'd like to rank the Rebels even lower, but there's only so far they can drop with that schedule.)

Boise. I think they run the regular season table, rise a bit too high on the back of their win over an overrated Oregon team, and then look a bit inferior in their bowl game. Just like last year. This year's mid-major hotness is BYU: the Cougars have everyone back on D, the best schedule of the MWC contenders, and their usual array of offensive skill talent. Here's to guessing they beat FSU and wrap up the year with one loss.

This year's Tulsa is Southern Miss, who return all nine starters along their two lines and a ton of talent at the skill positions. Larry Fedora should have the most explosive offense in all mid-majordom.

Pac-10. With their entire defensive front returning I like Cal to make a clear-cut case for the second-best team in the league, but who's No. 3? Oregon has to revamp both lines and gets a brutal schedule. Oregon St. lost a ton. Arizona's not there yet. Steele loves UCLA but ... no. One of those teams will probably end up forcing their way into the bottom of the poll, but it's also possible they all end up canceling each other out.

SEC. 2009 LSU seems so volatile I'm sure they'll either end up in the top 6 or 7 or at the very fringes of the poll; I ended up just sort of splitting the difference. Georgia's easily the second-best team in the East, but at Oklahoma St. is a hell of a way to kick off a season. And Arkansas is probably better than 22nd ... but they also share a division with 'Bama, LSU, and Ole Miss.

Big 10. Iowa was secretly the most underrated team in D-I last year and should have the best offensive line in the league (again). But if the top four in the Big 10 are all quality teams, I don't see much of anything behind them. (Trust me: Michigan St.'s not that good.)

Big 12. Pelini's too good not have Nebraska relevant again this year, but the bottom's fallen out at Missouri and I just don't think Kansas has the defensive horses. Leach will probably have Tech back in the top 25, but the schedule's still a little too tough for me to pull the trigger.

ACC. In a league with as much parity as this one, I think you finally have to settle on whichever teams have the best coaching--and Va. Tech and Ga. Tech looks like a pretty solid 1-2 in that regard. N.C. State was on fire down the stretch last year and have a seriously friendly schedule; I don't see why you'd rank them behind a North Carolina team they destroyed at the end of last year. (And though Tech didn't "destroy" Georgia, that result does explain why the Jackets are one notch ahead here.)

Notre Dame. Eh, they'll go 8-4 and hover around the edges of the poll. No big deal.

Big East. Cincy and Brian Kelly will be back to make this league its playtoy next season, but losing 10 starters on defense is a little too much for even Kelly to overcome at a program of this size. West Virginia and Pitt don't have the coaching and USF is the flakiest program in America, leaving Rutgers and their outstanding lines as the de facto winner. It's only enough for 23rd, but it's something.

Real Life duties are calling; afternoon posting will be minimal, if at all. Sorry./ More on this later.

JCCW Bracket Challenge + BlogPoll up

First, the thing my readers might actually care about: If you go over the the Yahoo! Tournament Pick 'Em, you can now enter the first annual JCCW Bracket Challenge. Huzzah!, right? You will need the following to enter:

1. The group ID number, which is: 131573
2. The group password, which is: jccw

Winner gets something blog-related I haven't decided on. (Leave your suggestions in the comments--anything that costs me money is not happening, sorry.) So join! It only takes a few minutes, but the benefits could last a lifetime. Depending on, you know, what your life is actually like.

Plus, you'll be able to track exactly how spectacularly my oh-so-confident picks crash and burn. I finally broke my three-season losing streak to the Mrs. JCCW last year--stupid, stupid irony--so I'm probably due for another "You are in the: 12th percentile" kind of year. Anyways: join. It'll be fun. And a lot cooler than Doug's group, which will no doubt be full of lamers.

Secondly, this week's BlogPoll breakdown is up and away. I say not nice things about the SEC, because I just don't think the SEC deserved to have nice things said about it this year.

OK, Auburn content on the way, pinky swear.

Bracket reax + Blogpollin'

Mid-majors, again.

Screwed. Taken as individual cases, the Creighton and St. Mary's snub jobs by the Selection Committee yesterday aren't all that criminal. The Bluejays and Gaels had good reasons for inclusion--Creighton in particular, with --but their exclusion doesn't quite rise to the level of injustice as classic snubs like Missouri St. 2006, Butler 2002, etc. Neither Creighton nor St. Mary's won an outright league title, neither had a top 25 RPI win, and most critically neither played a particularly challenging nonconference schedule, with the Jays checking in at 140 and St. Mary's at 104. I totally agree that some leeway should be granted for the difficulty for good mids in finding good games, but Siena managed it. Butler managed it. Miami (OH) managed it. It's not impossible. And clearly this Committee placed a premium on nonconference scheduling: Siena was handed a No. 9 seed and clearly would have been given an at-large, while a Utah St. team with a very similar profile in terms of overall record and conference performance landed an 11-seed and probably would have missed if they'd lost the WAC final to Nevada. Even in high-major land, this was the case: Wisconsin finished a game ahead of Michigan in the Big 10 standings and swept the Wolverines, but only just squeezed into the field as a 12-seed while the Wolverines were safe at No. 10. Why? Probably because Michigan beat Duke and UCLA while the Badgers' best noncon win was Virginia Tech. (Not to mention, of course, that Penn St. didn't get in at all.)

Here's the problem with that: two years ago, this wasn't the case. That year, Drexel played a murderous nonconference slate and came out the other side with a bevy of huge wins: at Villanova, at Syracuse, at St. Joe's, at Temple, at Creighton. But the Dragons were left out anyway, because--we were told--they weren't dominant enough in Colonial play.

This is why I was once again shouting obscenities at Greg Gumbel as soon as Arizona appeared on the screen and grinding my teeth throughout the night and into this morning: for mid-majors, what counts as "qualified" is a moving target. Great nonconference performance? Sorry, this year we're worried about how well you took care of business in your league. Share of a title in a good league and a great record vs. the top 100? Sorry, now we're concerned with how you scheduled and played outside of your league.

Meanwhile, those same standards get shifted around to accommodate power-conference teams. Hey, Arizona, I see you didn't win a single road game against the top 100 in eight tries and lost five of your last six, but you know what? This year, we're not going to care about those sorts of things. Every ... freaking ... year the last team in, the one that makes you say "What?" is a power-conference team*. Arizona this year, Illinois and Stanford in 2007, and on and on. Yes, occasionally worthy high-major teams get snubbed (Cincinnati '06 and Syracuse '07 come to mind), but if you're a fan of one of the big boys, you can rest assured that there's always a chance you'll get the benefit of the doubt.

Once again, however, the Committee's made it clear to mid-majors that no such benefit exists. Remove all doubt, or get the back of the bracket's hand.

That said, it could be worse. After the outrages of 2006 and 2007, the last two Committees have restored some form of sanity to the selection process. There's still a lot of questionable seeding decisions and there's the mid-major-based gripe above, but particularly amongst the high seeds, there seemed to be a lot fewer head-
scratchers than usual. There's only three or four teams whose seeding or placemen I look at and think "that's just wrong"; usually there's a dozen. This is tow years running I've been almost pleased with the bracket--I give the credit for this to the Committee chairs, a mid-major guy last year and SEC commish Mike Slive this year. See, mids and Southerners are where it's at.

Speaking of the SEC, though ... Boy, if there was any thought that having a friendly face at the head of the Committee would do the affiliated league some favors, this year put that soundly to rest. LSU's 8 seed has to be a record for the lowest seed ever given a BCS-conference champion; Tennessee had the best nonconference record of anyone in the league and the nonconference-obsessed Committee still somehow dropped them to a 9 seed; and while I think giving Miss. St. a 13 is completely fair, it's lower than I and a lot of other bracket guys expected. (Not to mention that Auburn and Florida didn't make the bracket, though I don't know of anyone not affiliated with the teams themselves who expected them to.)

Eye test? I found the seedings of the mid-majors at the bottom of the bracket really interesting, since it seemed to suggest the Committee might have actually been watching the Championship Week games involved. Cal St. Northridge and Portland St. both looked much better in their finals, I thought, than their records or RPI would suggest; both landed higher seeds than I expected (Portland St. all the way up at 13 was a big surprise.) Meanwhile, Binghamton and Robert Morris both had RPIs and records that suggested a possible 14 seed, but both looked sloppy in their respective finals; both got 15's. That said, there's absolutely no explaining the 16 seed handed to East Tennessee St., who looked tremendous in disposing of Jacksonville and will now face Pitt for their troubles. The Bucs finished one spot in the RPI behind Cornell and only two behind Portland St., but got bracketed two seeds worse than the Big Red and three worse than the Vikings. I strongly suspect that Northridge and ETSU were swapped so Northridge wouldn't have to travel all the way from California to Dayton (the Matadors are in Kansas City now).

On the plus side: I actually like the Bucs' chances better against Pitt than I would against the Memphis team Northridge is facing, and now we have at least one totally legit opportunity for the first-ever 16-over-1 miracle.

Aaaarrrgggghhh. I'll talk more about this when I release this year's edition of the Million Dollar Bracket, but it's hard to find a Cinderella--a double-digit seed mid-major that makes the Sweet 16, as per my personal definition--in this bracket. Most often, those teams come from the 10, 11, or 12 line--and this year a) there are no mids on the 10 line b) the two 11's you might consider, VCU and Utah St., would have to go through Pomeory-approved heavyweights in UCLA and Missouri c) the two eligible 12's, Northern Iowa and Western Kentucky, both have to travel to Portland and frankly I'm not particularly high on either one. Even if you include Dayton and Temple, they're facing two seriously underrated teams in West Virginia and Arizona St. (According to Pomeroy, the 6-seed line is much, much stronger than either the 3, 4, or 5 lines.) I'm expecting plenty of first-round shockers, but getting Cinderella into the Sweet 16 this year may be a chore.

If I'm allowed to toot my own horn a tiny bit: Yesterday's JCCW Bracketology would have scored a 309 on the (somewhat ridiculous) Bracket Matrix scoring system, with 33/34 at-larges correct, 31 teams seeded correctly, and 55 teams within a line of their correct seed. (I think I should get a bonus for having Michigan-Clemson and Arizona St.-Temple matched up correctly, too ... nevermind that I had all of their seeds wrong.) Which makes me better at this than Joe Lunardi! Of course, half the brackets tracked on the Matrix site can say that, so I should probably keep my mouth shut until I catch up with Jerry Palm.

OK, the last BlogPoll ballot until after the tournament:

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Pittsburgh
2	Louisville	3
3	Memphis
4	North Carolina	2
5	Connecticut	1
6	Duke	1
7	Missouri	2
8	Gonzaga	3
9	Kansas	1
10	Michigan St.	4
11	Purdue	10
12	Syracuse	7
13	Oklahoma	3
14	Washington	2
15	Villanova	1
16	Butler	1
17	Utah	3
18	UCLA	2
19	Brigham Young	2
20	Arizona St.	3
21	Xavier	3
22	Florida St.
23	Wake Forest	10
24	North Dakota St.
25	Utah St.
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: New Mexico (#22), California (#24), Dayton (#25).

Just a few quick thoughts:

1. Pitt beat UConn twice. Louisville lost to UConn by double digits at home. Simple enough.

2. Suddenly, I'm crazy high on Gonzaga. They looked as good as I've ever seen them in the WCC tournament, which is why they'll probably lose to Akron Thursday.

3. Sorry, Florida St., but squeezing past Georgia Tech and then a totally unmotivated North Carolina playing without Ty Lawson doesn't earn you much in my book. You're lucky you're even ranked.

4. Yes, North Dakota St. and Utah St. The latter for handily winning a road game against a good opponent with everything on the line; the latter for just generally being awesome.

*OK, so in 2006, Utah St. snuck in unexpectedly, but Air Force was the even bigger surprise and that Committee was the worst one of all-time. Doesn't count.

BlogPoll up

Your weekly breakdown by your humble Auburn blogger is here. Despite my wussing out, a handful of other bloggers gave Auburn some end-of-the-ballot votes. Which is cool.

As usual, I feel bad putting up a post in which I do nothing but point you towards some other post of mine, so here's a recent highlight from Cake Wrecks, which ... you know how boxers can be the best boxer "pound-for-pound"? I've decided Cake Wrecks is the best blog "post-for-post." No one else brings the goods as consistently, goods like so:



I cannot look at this or think about it without laughing out loud. Impossible.

Anyways, Auburn bubble update on deck.

Hoops Blogpollery, Week "5"

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Pittsburgh	2
2	North Carolina	2
3	Memphis	1
4	Connecticut	3
5	Louisville	1
6	Michigan St.	3
7	Duke	1
8	Kansas	3
9	Missouri	2
10	Oklahoma	3
11	Gonzaga	1
12	Washington	1
13	Wake Forest	5
14	Villanova	2
15	Butler	1
16	UCLA	1
17	Brigham Young	5
18	Xavier	3
19	Syracuse
20	Utah	1
21	Purdue	2
22	New Mexico	3
23	Arizona St.	3
24	California
25	Dayton
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Louisiana St. (#10), Marquette (#19), Creighton (#24).

1-5 Fairly straightforward in the wake of Pitt's sweep of UConn and UNC's clinching of the ACC title, I think. Memphis just doesn't have the schedule oomph to handle resume chits like "best team in the Big East" or "27-3 with sweep of Duke."

6-10: In case you tried to watch them win it and fell asleep--totally understandable--Michigan St. snagged the Big 10 title and gets a boost. The Big 12 teams are ranked in order of who I think would beat who on a neutral court today.

11-15: Villanova and Wake Forest put some quality wins up on the board this past week. The other teams in this group just avoided screwing up as teams like LSU imploded.

16-24 This is the part of the ballot where I'm tossing darts and flipping coins. I guess Kenpom means UCLA and BYU ought to be here. I guess Utah and New Mexico deserve some respect for tying for the MWC title. I guess Arizona St. can stay even though they lost to Stanford at home this week, since I don't know who to replace Cal with and the Sun Devils just got finished plowing Cal.

25: Man oh man, did I come close to slotting Auburn in here as a token SEc representative and giving myself a shot at the weekly Homer McHomerson award. But Dayton has a more impressive overall resume and, you know, beat Auburn when they played.

Week 4 BlogPoll up and at 'em

Functional tables--hooray!--mean you'll have to go here to see the whole thing and read my wonderful, wonderful ramblings.

And now, because putting this up for no other reason than that feels like a cheat, have an ... I don't know, how about this song-and-animal masks video from the completely kick-ass Mates of State album that came out last year:

Hoops BlogPollery, Week "4"

This week's JCCW ballot:

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Connecticut	1
2	Memphis	2
3	Pittsburgh	2
4	North Carolina	1
5	Kansas	3
6	Louisville	1
7	Oklahoma	1
8	Duke	5
9	Michigan St.	5
10	Louisiana St.	7
11	Missouri	6
12	Gonzaga	1
13	Washington	8
14	Butler	1
15	Xavier	1
16	Villanova	7
17	UCLA	5
18	Wake Forest	1
19	Marquette	1
20	Arizona St.	10
21	Utah	1
22	Brigham Young
23	Purdue
24	Creighton
25	New Mexico
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Clemson (#12), Siena (#23), West Virginia (#25).

1-2: I was thisclose to plugging Memphis into the top spot after their impressive 11-point win at C-USA's alleged best team. After all, it wasn't so long ago UConn was losing on their home floor to Pitt. Bit I finally decided that the gap between the two teams' overall profiles was too wide to justify bumping the Tigers all the way to No. 1. Besides, John Calipari deserves nothing. Nothing!

2-7: Uh, do you realize Kansas is two points at Missouri away from being undefeated in the Big 12 and just crushed the Tigers by 25 at home? Up they go, along with Louisville, whose wire-to-wire thumping of a desperate Georgetown team a week ago was about as impressive as any win this week.

8-11: Duke has unfortunately appeared to have righted the ship. Check out their celebratory jigs! Michigan St. rises after a solid road win at Illinois ... and after I decided maybe I was being a bit too harsh on the Big 10 last week in repayment for that "38-33" thing. LSU flies up the ballot after a sweep of Florida and Kentucky, a mighty fine week no matter what you think of the SEC East.

12-20: Arizona St.'s lost weekend in Washington opens up a spot for the designated Pac-10 representative in the top 15, and I thought the Huskies looked frisky enough this week to over that spot. 'Nova slips not for the two-point loss at home to G'town, but for the two-point win over miserable DePaul. That's a bad week all the way around.

21-25: Between Utah's relative dominance of the MWC, that ever-more-impressive obliteration of LSU back on Jan. 6, and BYU's Pomeroy juice, it's safe to start plugging some MWC teams into the nether regions of the ballot--including UNM, who John Gasaway has repeatedly told us is playing the best ball in the league. Purdue sneaks in by virtue of having absolutely dismantled the last two good teams to venture to West Lafayette.

Waitlist: Dropping Clemson from the poll entirely must seem harsh, but since that famous annihilation of Duke they've gone 3-4 with home losses to bubblers FSU and Va. Tech and a road defeat at Virginia for one of the Cavs' three ACC wins. This smells suspiciously like Clemson's annual fade. It hurt a lot more to drop Siena after the Saints ran into a buzzsaw up at Niagara, but I don't feel like I have a lot of choice after Siena fell behind by double-digits 5 minutes in and never got closer than 7. Sigh.