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Hi gang! It’s poll time again. Brad usually does this, but he’s been doing what I usually do, so... turnabout’s fair play and all that. Anyway, here’s what the assembled minds of the Associated Press think of the best 25 (and change) NCAA basketball teams in the first division.
AP poll
| Rank | TEAM | RECORD | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | TEAM | RECORD | PTS |
| 1 | Villanova (59) | 14-0 | 1,619 |
| 2 | Baylor (6) | 13-0 | 1,532 |
| 3 | Kansas | 12-1 | 1,503 |
| 4 | UCLA | 14-1 | 1,406 |
| 5 | Gonzaga | 14-0 | 1,357 |
| 6 | Kentucky | 11-2 | 1,280 |
| 7 | West Virginia | 12-1 | 1,179 |
| 8 | Duke | 12-2 | 1,090 |
| 9 | Louisville | 12-2 | 1,063 |
| 10 | Creighton | 13-1 | 1,015 |
| 11 | Virginia | 11-2 | 954 |
| 12 | Florida State | 14-1 | 902 |
| 13 | Wisconsin | 12-2 | 865 |
| 14 | North Carolina | 12-3 | 785 |
| 15 | Oregon | 13-2 | 771 |
| 16 | Xavier | 12-2 | 634 |
| 17 | Arizona | 13-2 | 613 |
| 18 | Butler | 12-2 | 477 |
| 19 | Saint Mary's | 12-1 | 416 |
| 20 | Purdue | 12-3 | 405 |
| 21 | Virginia Tech | 12-1 | 293 |
| 22 | Cincinnati | 12-2 | 258 |
| 23 | Notre Dame | 12-2 | 250 |
| 24 | Florida | 10-3 | 193 |
| 25 | Indiana | 10-4 | 74 |
| 25 | USC | 14-1 | 74 |
So there you go. Is Gonzaga really better than Creighton or UK? Is the Oregon team that lost to Georgetown at a neutral site better than the Xavier team that beat Georgetown in DC? I don’t know.
That’s not the most inexplicable thing on here though. For doofus of the week, we could talk about John Feinstein, whose ballot regularly reads like a piece of satirical art about how pointless polls are. This week he put VCU (whose best win may well be a neutral-site victory over St. John’s) and UNC Wilmington (with 10 of their 12 wins coming outside the KenPom top 100, including 2 against non-D1 teams) in his top 25. Instead, let’s look at Clemson.
Clemson is 21st in the KenPom and 22nd in the Massey composite. They lost to Xavier and Oklahoma the weekend before Thanksgiving and haven’t lost since, ripping off 9 straight wins, the last 3 of which have been inside the KenPom top 50. For their trouble, they received two 24th-place votes and a 25th. They won twice since the last poll came out and somehow dropped off of seven ballots. Did Clemson take the AP poll’s mother out to a nice seafood dinner and then never call her again? Something’s going on here; all I really know is that polls remain stupid.