The Low Major Poll, Week 7
In which 25 is actually 26
Welcome back to The Low Major Poll: our weekly look at the top 25 teams in college basketball as determined by four of our writers and one of our good friends.
Our voters:
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: a David Peterson! (@depeterson61) in a pear tree!
On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: two turtle Eli Powells! (@wellitseli)
On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: three French maddy!s (@maddybutsports)
On the fourth day of Christmas, The Wild Pitch gave to me:
four
s!On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: five golden Rets! (hides his socials)
Our Week 7 poll is as follows.
Unless specified otherwise, all rankings are from the morning of December 19.
Eli: Look at those last five rows. r/dataisbeautiful
David: God, I love it.
Ret: I love how Maryland is in there with the meme teams.
David: As if they’re not one and the same.
Eli: Arizona State is pretty legit. Kinda surprised you were the only one to throw them a vote. I have them 26th.
David: They’re right on the threshold for me as well. The Dep Zone kinda squeezes that stuff.
Eli: Yeah, you’re basically running a pre-1989 AP Poll (from when they only ranked 20 teams).
David: Yeehaw!
Eli: I’d like to discuss the Mountain West again.
David: I am extremely here for that. Obviously, I’m high relative to consensus.
Eli: It looks like we all have New Mexico ranked. Richard Pitino beat his dad yesterday and is officially back; the student has become the master. Utah State also in, but only for three of us. Preston and I discussed this earlier, but what exactly have they done aside from not lose?
David: Utah State or New Mexico?
Eli: Utah State. New Mexico has some impressive results, including a road win over Saint Mary’s.
David: That’s why I’m higher on UNM than USU. I think it’s a bit of preseason carryover. They started around the 70 mark on KenPom but they’ve still managed to comfortably handle most of their opposition to this point. Obviously Santa Clara, Bradley, and San Francisco aren’t world-beaters, but still…
Eli: That lower preseason expectation is making it hard for me to truly take them seriously given their lack of quality competition. Other teams on the fringe have played plenty of quality competition and that’s given us a true glimpse into whether they can hang with the best of the best. Utah State has not done that and also got taken to overtime by Steve Lavin.
David: That game was definitely not what I would call inspiring. I think the Mountain West will lend Utah State a lot of good opportunities, though. They’re wildly deep this year as a whole.
Eli: I’m sure Mountain West play will be interesting. New Mexico looks great, and San Diego State and Boise State and maybe UNLV are formidable. Unrelated: Kentucky is an enigma. Their own fans seem to hate this team but almost everyone else expects them to turn it around. Feels like the calls to fire Calipari are growing stronger, though I’m still not entirely sure why.
David: Yeah, I dunno. I feel like people need to appreciate Cal and I don’t really think it’s time to sound the alarms in any substantial sense. Losses to UCLA, Gonzaga, and in 2OT to Michigan State are not exactly what I would call miserable performances.
Preston: Half their fanbase seems to think they should be unranked.
David: (It’s me; I’m half the fanbase.)
Preston: On the basis of…playing a good Yale somewhat close and letting UCLA run away very late.
David: Honestly, for me they’re out solely because three losses is a lot to look past for most teams. Gonzaga is a rare exception in this case that only barely squeaked by (best coast supremacy).
Preston: It’s especially funny how mad Kentucky fans are after what is honestly maybe their best performance of the season. Playing UCLA to a one-score game in the first 35 minutes looks really good considering what UCLA had just done to another ailing top-25 team in Maryland.
David: Yeah, UCLA is really good this year. Ret having them at #20 is the clear outlier; they were right on the verge of my top five. And not just because they beat my team by 47!
Eli: Speaking of our own teams: re-rank North Carolina. Moving on and completely ignoring that, Houston. Real ones already had them ahead of Virginia last week. (I had kept them at #3 and Virginia somewhat lower.)
Preston: Houston to me seems a very definitive #3, although I can see Maddy’s argument for #2.
David: Eli, you’re not sold on Virginia, I noticed.
Eli: They’ve played four “meh” games in a row now. Performing about how I would expect a mid- or low-poll team to play, not a team that was getting AP #1 votes for some reason.
Preston: Their loss to Houston goes in the same bucket as Kentucky’s to UCLA for me. It’s a loss, but it affirmed pretty significantly that they’re not bad. I’m still not quite sure what to make of playing Florida State close because FSU since the end of November is…maybe kinda good? 10-point loss to Purdue, five-point loss to Virginia, 22-point win over Louisville, 17-point win over USC Upstate, 14-point loss to St. John’s.
Eli: Houston @ Virginia was a weird game to me. Both teams known for slowballing and defensive mastery, but the game ended with both teams in the 60s despite only having 59 possessions because the offenses were efficient. I agree that Virginia isn’t a bad team, per se. I had them unranked to start the season basically on principle but I'm significantly higher on them now. I just also think having them in the top five at this point has gotta be based on inertia from that Vegas tournament. They have underwhelmed since.
Preston: That’s fair, although I do think it’s based on a lack of strong candidates elsewhere. After the consensus top four + Alabama and UCLA, I feel there’s a reasonably significant gap.
Eli: Which brings me to Tennessee, whom I still have at #4.
Preston: Tennessee is on the other side of it.
Eli: I disagree.
Preston: I will say, I think there is a reasonable argument for Virginia to be on the other side of that gap.
Eli: Tennessee lost by five in Tucson in a game with a rather absurd FT discrepancy and they held Arizona — the most efficient offense in the sport, per KenPom — to 1.06 PPP despite all the free throws. The defense looks legit; in fact, on KenPom it is #1 by a mile.
Preston: Tennessee is the best of the teams that have had one massive WTF game. Of course, that’s partly because it’s been a long while since that game.
Eli: They beat Kansas handily and they beat Maryland just last week, both on neutrals and without Josiah-Jordan James. Imagine when they have him back healthy.
Preston: This might be adjusting to basketball after thinking primarily about football for a few months but it really feels like teams have been more variable over time this year, more quickly. We have so many examples of teams that already seem completely different from who they were a month ago, and that can make some résumés extremely different depending how much you value opponents’ recent performance and performance around time of game.
Eli: Case in point, TCU: pariahs after three games, but have since played pretty much how people expected them to. Maddy is the only one of us to rank them but I’m gonna be watching that Utah game closely.
Preston: I am very grateful to Northwestern State for beating them because their profile would be a nightmare to rank if they had won that game. They would be a 10-0 team, preseason ranked, which beat three non-top-250 teams by a combined 13 points, which has won almost every game since by a wide margin, including a dominant neutral-site win over Iowa. I guarantee they’d get multiple #1 votes and be left off multiple ballots entirely.
Eli: We’re still well within the realm of one or two in-game events greatly affecting full-season narratives. This is true basically throughout the season, but especially this early. What if Oscar Tshiebwe doesn’t foul out for Kentucky against Michigan State at the end of the first overtime? What if the refs get that block/charge call right and North Carolina ends up on the other side of that epic against Alabama? Et cetera, et cetera.
Preston: The other side of that is, of course: TCU could be 8-2 with losses to UAPB and Northwestern State, and I don’t see how that team gets one vote. A single one-point game between probably consensus top-ten and unanimously unranked.
Ret: I’m just hopping in quickly again to say ranking Ohio State is a CIA plot to get UNC ranked. Don’t do it, kids.
Eli: You could just rank Carolina and not even consider Ohio State, like me.
Ret: Absolutely not.
Thanks again to Preston Pack for joining us. If you like reading our stuff, you’ll love their newsletter The Wild Pitch, especially The SoCon Lowdown: their weekly recap series on Southern Conference basketball. Give 'em a sub!
Have an amazing week. See you next time!