the basketblogpoll

Just like with football, there is now a Blogpoll for bastaball. In case you're wondering, no, I don't know why it's starting now and not earlier. That's a question for Powers That Be, and I only vote, I don't make the rules. In any case here's my ballot for this week. If you remember the football one, the rules are the same; if you're new to the game, it's played like so: I post my preliminary ballot on Sunday some time, and you the reader are encouraged to straighten me out.

Rank	Team
1	Connecticut
2	North Carolina
3	Duke
4	Pittsburgh
5	Memphis
6	Oklahoma
7	Wake Forest
8	UCLA
9	Clemson
10	Michigan St.
11	Butler
12	Xavier
13	Marquette
14	Dayton
15	Utah St.
16	Missouri
17	Villanova
18	Louisville
19	Kansas
20	Louisiana St.
21	Davidson
22	Florida
23	Illinois
24	Arizona St.
25	Gonzaga

I offer along with this ballot an apology - it's in no way scientific or even particularly thorough in its thought process. It's written under the influence of a time crunch as well as extreme soreness and a pretty fair amount of fatigue - six hours ago, I was wrapping up my second straight seven-hour day on the ski slopes. Don't be jealous just 'cause I had an awesome weekend. It's at least a defendable ballot, though.

In the future, my rankings will very certainly be crunched by the numbers. How exactly, I don't know, but they'll involve the following:

- Some combination of the Pomeroy and RPI rankings. Pomeroy intends his rankings to be entirely predictive; RPI, like the Blogpoll rankings, is supposed to be based on resume.
- Some way of tabulating the value of the out-of-conference wins and losses on each team's schedule based on the above combination.
- Some involvement of strength of schedule.
- Some way of ranking the conferences. One major distinction I plan on making between the football and basketball rankings is this: I don't intend to take into account individual wins and losses within the conference. In football, the national championship demands perfection or near-perfection; in basketball, the quest for perfection is just a silly game the media plays. If Florida is going for the national football title, losing to a crappy team like Arkansas is a major crippling blow to their chances, and it's reflected in the rankings. If Florida's basketball team is a national title contender and loses to a crappy team like Arkansas, it hardly matters. Everyone has losses like that on their resume anyway. I'll take into account a team's record in conference play and which conference they play in, rather than who exactly they beat or lost to. So conference rankings matter - UNC's 7-2 is certainly more impressive than Miami (Ohio)'s 7-2. Out of conference, individual games - and their locations - do matter.