I don't want to keep picking on that newspaper guy from Montana.
But wait to you see what he did this time.
Here come the Poll Attacks.
AP poll: Nobody wants UAB to be good more than me. For starters, I wrote a column about the Blazers last week, and I did that with the hope that I'd look smart after they played well in New York. Beyond that, I live near a C-USA city, which means it's better for me when C-USA is good, and for C-USA to be good it needs UAB to be good.
And I think UAB will be good.
I like the roster.
But there is no way to rank UAB after it lost by double-digits to Oklahoma and by six to Boston College at the NIT Season Tip-off. I mean, Boston College is 4-2 with a loss to Saint Louis. And Saint Louis is 2-3 with a loss to Detroit. And Detroit is 2-3 with a loss to Western Michigan. And Western Michigan is 2-5 with a loss to damn-near everybody it has played ... except Detroit. So that's a long-winded way of saying that UAB's loss to Boston College was a bad loss, and that a previously unranked team like UAB shouldn't be getting votes when it is on a two-game losing streak, particularly when the second loss came to Boston College on a neutral court. Still, John Shinn of the Norman Transcript ranked the Blazers 18th on his ballot, and there is no explanation for this save that he simply got confused while watching the BCS show Sunday afternoon.
Also, I have an update George Geise.
You remember George, right?
He's the guy from the Great Falls Tribune in Montana who ranked Memphis, USC and Seton Hall last week but failed to rank Xavier, which won the Puerto Rico Tip-off that Memphis, USC and Seton Hall each played in. That was a glaring mistake. So I called him on it, and this week George vaulted Xavier all the way up to No. 16 even though the Musketeers didn't really do anything over the past seven days, and he dropped Seton Hall and USC out of his rankings even though the Pirates and Trojans didn't lose over the past seven days.
In other words, George is a week behind everybody else.
But he's trying his best.
So good for him.
Anyway, now we have a new problem.
It involves Syracuse.
As you might know, the Orange beat Florida and Kansas last week, which is why I have Syracuse ranked 12th in the Top 25 (and one). But our pal George has a history of not letting games affect the way he votes, which is (presumably) why he ranked Florida 17th, Kansas 21st and omitted the undefeated team with wins over both those schools (i.e., Syracuse). Furthermore, he still has Louisville ranked fifth (despite a loss to WKU), Michigan State ranked seventh (despite a fourth-place finish in the Old Spice Classic) and Marquette ranked 14th despite a loss to Dayton.
By the way, Dayton is undefeated with a double-digit win over that Marquette team George ranked 14th.
So where does George have Dayton ranked?
Naturally, he didn't rank the Flyers at all.
My God.
Coaches poll: Try to follow me, if you can. Baylor beat Arizona State and then lost to Wake Forest on a neutral court in Anaheim. That's a good weekend, splitting against a pair of Top 25 teams. But the coaches watched (or didn't watch) all this and filed their ballots and ranked the first-place team (Wake Forest), second-place team (Baylor) and third-place team (Arizona State) in the 76 Classic as follows:
- 17. Wake Forest
- 19. Arizona State
- Others receiving votes: Baylor
In other words, the coaches didn't care that Baylor and ASU -- a pair of one-loss teams -- played on a neutral court, and that Baylor won that game 87-78. That's bananas. But on the other hand, I'm told Oklahoma football fans believe this makes perfect sense.
