College Basketball BlogPoll Ballot: February 9

by Will Shelton on Feb 9, 2009 10:35 AM EST

Rocky Top Talk is once again proud to be a part of the CBS Sports BlogPoll, as the basketball edition makes its debut today. We join more than 50 of the web's best sports blogs in putting our collective best guesses together as the regular season moves into its final stages.

As always, we welcome your analysis here from week to week on these polls. Here's our ballot for this week:

Rank	Team

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

Notes and analysis after the jump...

- The top four seem pretty unanimous at this point; UConn and OU have only lost once and UNC and Pitt have only lost twice. These are the only four teams in the major conferences to have lost less than three times this season.

- It was a crazy week for teams 5-10 in the poll, who each lost once, so there's a lot of potential interchangeability (oh yeah, it's a word) there. Clemson blasted Duke by 27 points before losing to Florida State by 4. Marquette lost their first Big East game at South Florida by one point. Louisville lost to #1 UConn 68-51 at home. Wake broke a three-of-four losing skid with a win over Boston College today. And Xavier was upset at Duquesne 72-68. With Duke getting drilled and then needing overtime to beat Miami in Durham, I'm not sold on them at all. They'll get Carolina on Wednesday - if they're looking to prove otherwise, no better time than the present.

- Memphis put the lockdown on Gonzaga Saturday night, but the week's biggest winner is Villanova: winners of five straight, 19-4 on the year with losses to teams that were all ranked in the AP Top 15 last week, and fresh off a 102-85 beatdown of Syracuse. They'll get Marquette on Tuesday.

- Butler lost their second game of the year this week, but Utah State keeps rolling along at 23-1. Quick, tell me someone they've beaten this year.

- For Vol fans, familiar names should offer some comfort. Kansas has won eight straight, and is one of seven previous opponents I've got in this week's poll. For SEC fans, here's what happened: lots of teams in other conferences finally started beating up on each other enough to allow a handful of the SEC's top tier with fewer losses to sneak in the back end of this poll. Still hard to tell exactly how good LSU, Florida and South Carolina are on a national level because none of them played an overly difficult non-conference schedule.

- Just missing this week are five teams who are all in a bit of a slide: Minnesota, Purdue, Syracuse, Texas and Washington.

Alright...what did we get right, and what did we get wrong?

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Comments

Polls that don't matter, woo!

Here’s some thoughts:
- I don’t like Clemson at 5 toooo much (although at least they’re winning in conference play this year); I think Marquette and Louisville are both stronger than them, and from there you go to head-to-head, so put ’em behind Wake for now.

- I don’t like the Spartans either; I want to put them below Kansas, but, well, head-to-head.

- No arguments with the SEC occupying the ACC Honorary We Have No Freaking Clue How Good You Are But Have To Rank Your Teams Anyway spots, but I think Syracuse is better than South Carolina at worst still.

by Chris Pendley on Feb 9, 2009 7:17 PM EST reply actions

Interesting

The 5-10 portion was the hardest to do…I rewarded Clemson for having the best win and the best loss of the week among those teams. And yeah, Syracuse is probably better than South Carolina, but they’ve lost five out of seven (which is the Big East for you), so I rewarded Carolina.

by Will Shelton on Feb 9, 2009 7:46 PM EST up reply actions

I mean, I can't argue with it too much.

Part of that is not paying attention too much yet this season; part of it is thinking Marquette’s loss was a fluke and a half. (They win that game, with these teams, 49 out of 50 times.)

At the end of the day, Notre Dame wasn’t even close, and that puts you above Seth Davis. ;)

by Chris Pendley on Feb 9, 2009 8:37 PM EST up reply actions