Poll Attacks: Would you believe an AP voter dropped SMU seven spots for winning?

Mustangs are on 11-game winning streak but still falling on one ballot

This Poll Attacks column originated years ago after I kept seeing Associated Press voters rank college basketball teams nonsensically week after week after week. But here’s the truth: I never anticipated the idea would forever provide content because I always figured that somebody, like myself, publicly holding voters accountable would eventually lead to them taking their roles more seriously, at which point I’d be out of material and forced to find a different way to spend Monday afternoons.

But I was dead wrong.

Because voters keep doing nonsensical things.

Every week.

And this week’s winner is Cormac Gordon -- the only AP voter who has SMU ranked outside of the top 20. Which is fine, I guess. I’m not here to take issue with where a man is ranking a team with only one top-50 RPI victory. That’s not the point. The point is that Gordon had SMU ranked 16th last week. Then the Mustangs won at UConn, extended their winning streak to 11 games, took sole possession of first place in the AAC standings and ... dropped to 23rd on Gordon’s ballot.

Seriously.

He dropped SMU seven spots for winning at UConn.

Has a school on an 11-game winning streak ever dropped seven spots on an AP ballot from one week to the next? Did Gordon make AP poll history here? Can somebody look into this, please?

Meantime, Gordon moved Florida up from 13th to 12th on his ballot after the Gators lost to a Kentucky team that was missing its starting point guard. But that’s nothing compared to what he did with Purdue. Last week, Gordon had the Boilermakers ranked 18th on his ballot. Then Purdue lost 82-70 at unranked Michigan and Gordon responded by ... moving them up four spots to 14th. To be clear, I have no problem with anybody ranking Purdue 14th. But if you thought the Boilermakers should’ve been 18th last week, what was it about an 82-70 loss at Michigan that made you think they should be 14th this week?

So in summary ...

SMU won comfortably at UConn, extended its winning streak to 11 games and got dropped seven spots on Cormac Gordon’s ballot while Purdue lost by double digits at Michigan and got moved up four spots on the same man’s ballot. What that suggests is that Gordon was more impressed with Purdue’s double-digit loss at Michigan than he is by SMU’s 11-game winning streak that features a victory over the school (Cincinnati) he has ranked four spots ahead of the Mustangs. Or, more likely, it just shows he didn’t spend much time on the task assigned.