basketblogpoll ballot #5

A little late today - I usually prefer to do this in the morning - because today wraps up the regular season and I especially wanted to wait for UNC-Duke to finish up before I did anything. So without further ado:

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

Dropped Out: Purdue (#15).

- I continue to place more emphasis than before on leading your conference, since conference champions get the autobid. This, combined with losing at Pitt, explains UConn's relatively precipitous drop below conference #1 seeds Louisville and Memphis. Also why Washington is so high. Ken Pom calls the Pac-10 the second-best conference by a very slim margin, and Sagarin has them fourth-best. U-Dub's been solid and unspectacular all year and they don't have an OOC win they can hang their hat on (Oklahoma State is the best they've got) but the Pac-10 is a deep conference and winning the regular season title outright justifies their spot.

- Syracuse has had a fair amount of success lately and has the computer rankings to back it up. Problem was I had the toughest time deciding who among Purdue, Illinois, Utah, and Arizona State would make room for them. Purdue got clocked by Northwestern this week and further, didn't really put up a fight against MSU the other day, so Purdue it is. Illinois didn't exactly show up against Penn State either, but somewhere back in the dog days of the season, Illinois beat Purdue. So the Illini get to keep their place on the ballot. Barely.