Poll Attacks: If Purdue fans think Parrish ranks Purdue too low, wait till they see this

One AP voter has the Boilermakers 16th and behind teams with obviously inferior resumes

By Gary Parrish

Jan 8, 2018 at 4:36 pm ET • 1 min read

Purdue fans have been in my Twitter mentions every day since Thanksgiving -- mostly because they believe I've consistently had the Boilermakers too low in the CBS Sports Top 25 (and one). At this moment, I have Purdue 10th, which is five spots below Purdue's place in Monday's AP poll. But that's nothing compared to how Graham Couch of the Lansing State Journal is treating Matt Painter's team.

Couch has Purdue 16th on his ballot.

That's four spots lower than any other AP voter has Purdue. And so we've finally found something on which Purdue fans and I can agree: Yes, 16th is too low for the Boilermakers. And would you believe Couch has Purdue four spots below Miami?

To be clear, I like Miami.

(Sunday's win over Florida State was nice.)

But I can't think of a single approach to ranking basketball teams that should have somebody ranking Miami ahead of Purdue right now. It breaks down like this: Purdue is 15-2 and on an 11-game winning streak featuring wins over Arizona, Louisville, Maryland and Butler. Miami is 13-2 -- but just 3-2 in its last five games. Purdue's losses were November neutral-court losses to the teams ranked 16th (Tennessee) and 58th (Western Kentucky) at KenPom. Miami's losses were more recent and to the teams ranked 69th (New Mexico State) and 114th (Georgia Tech) at KenPom. So it's reasonable to conclude Purdue has better losses than Miami. And it's undeniable that Purdue has better wins than Miami considering the Boilermakers have five top-45 KenPom wins compared to Miami's one. Meantime, every metric available -- KenPom, KPI, RPI, Sagarin, etc., -- also prefers Purdue to Miami. So any way you chop it, Miami ahead of Purdue on a Top 25 ballot doesn't make much sense. And yet Couch has Miami ranked 12th and Purdue ranked 16th.

Perhaps it's just a Florida thing, though.

Because here's something I noticed: Couch has Florida ranked eighth on his ballot, which is eight spots higher than any other AP voter has the four-loss Gators. And he has Florida State ranked 13th on his ballot, which is at least one spot higher than every other AP voter has the Seminoles. So maybe he's just obsessed with Florida-based schools.

We'll know for sure if he sneaks USF in next Monday.