Want to know teams with Final Four potential? Check the poll
I spend a decent portion of every Sunday night ranking what I believe to be the nation's most worthy 26 teams. Then I post my conclusion, and, within seconds, messages from fans start arriving via e-mail and Twitter. They almost always end with question marks.
No Northern Iowa?
Why is Duke so low?
Are you a stupid and dumb idiot?
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| If your team isn't in the Top 10, it will need a Carmelo Anthony to pull off what Syracuse did in 2003. (Getty Images) |
Technically, I guess that's true.
But you'd be wise to recognize that recent history suggests at this point in the season -- i.e., the last week of January -- we usually have a pretty good idea about which teams are what, and that if your favorite team isn't in the top 10 today the odds of it making it to the Final Four are remote. In other words, the polls do matter if only because they're a great predictor of what's to come.
Want to know who's going to Indianapolis?
Just scan the top 10.
Don't let your eyes drift any lower.
Because the truth is this: At least three of the four Final Four participants in four of the past five seasons have been ranked in the top 10 of the AP poll in the final week of January. That means you can reasonably assume 75 percent of the Final Four will come from a group consisting of Kentucky, Kansas, Villanova, Syracuse, Michigan State, Texas, Georgetown, Duke, West Virginia and Purdue -- otherwise known as the top 10 of the latest AP poll.
The fourth participant might also come from that group, as was the case in 2008, when all four Final Four teams (Kansas, Memphis, North Carolina and UCLA) were ranked in the top five in the final week of January. More likely, though, it'll be a little bit of a surprise -- a team that took some lumps early but has room to grow and get hot (Gonzaga? Ohio State? Georgia Tech?), you know, like last season when Villanova went from being ranked 21st with a 3-3 mark in the Big East in the final week of January to finishing with a 13-5 league record that allowed the Wildcats to earn a No. 11 ranking before advancing to the Final Four.
Can somebody come from outside of the Top 25?
Yes.
But it's highly unlikely.
Only two Final Four participants in the past seven years have been unranked in the final week of January -- specifically George Mason in 2006 and Georgetown in 2007. How many schools in the past nine seasons have gone from outside of the top 20 in late January to the Final Four? Just six. That's six of 36. And 18 of the past 19 national champions have all been ranked in the top 10 in January's last AP poll, the only exception being the 2003 Syracuse team that entered February ranked 24th. So if your favorite team isn't in the top 10 right now, it had better try to enroll Carmelo Anthony. Otherwise, your favorite team isn't winning the national championship.
The average late-January ranking of the past 19 champions is No. 5, by the way, and that's with that Syracuse team pulling down the average. More than half of the past 19 champions have been ranked in the top three at this point in the season, four of the past five champions have been ranked first or second at this point in the season. So, please, stop it with the "rankings don't matter because everything will be settled on the court at the end of the season" e-mails and Tweets.
Yes, that's technically true.
But late-January rankings do a great job of telling us where we're headed.
To dismiss them so easily is to dismiss reality.
