basketblogpoll ballot 3

So that was exciting yesterday, huh? I defer to Mahini here, because I couldn't say it better myself:

And, I guess the Hoos missed starting slow and clawing their way back to a close defeat so much that they decided to do it twice in the same game. Awesome.

It would have been nice to find out the outcome of that game without spotting the 'Pack huge leads at the beginning of each half. Actually it would be nice to find out the outcome of this whole season without spotting everyone we play huge leads.

Part of the problem yesterday was having no answer for the NC State bigs. Ben McCauley's contributions don't show much on the stat sheet (except for the 10 rebounds) but defensively, our guys were clearly afraid to take it to the rack with him patrolling the post. He and Tracy Smith just killed us inside, which is obnoxious because they're not really that big. More of Mike Scott yesterday, and more of Jamil Tucker playing like his size, would have been really nice. Instead we just looked like a team desperately wishing it still had Lars Mikalauskas to bang people around, and since we don't, let's just give up and dribble around til a shot opens up.

Anyway, 'nuff bitching. Ballot time:

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

Dropped Out: Butler (#19), Davidson (#23), Dayton (#24).

- I really really really wanted to include teams like Dayton, Butler, and Siena. Mid-majors definitely got the shaft this week. But it's impossible to ignore the absurdly low formula rankings of teams like Dayton and Siena, and more importantly it's also tough to ignore that Butler and Dayton suffered some bad losses this week.

- I was really afraid I'd have to do some major shaking-up of the top echelon of the ballot, but it turns out everybody lost, so it's not like you can drop them all a spot. Pitt gets to be #1 by default for not losing, and knocking off UConn helps too. I see absolutely no reason anyone else should be first, frankly.

- I didn't leave #'s 4 through 11 untouched on purpose. Last week's ballot is something I take into account only at the very, very end of the process, so as to avoid having to answer questions like "why did Gonzaga drop eight spots after their two games this week were 40-point blowouts?"

- As always, you're more than encouraged to set me straight if something looks off.