Luke DeCock’s AP Top 25 basketball poll ballot: Preseason
I typically like to post my preseason ballot ahead of the release of the first AP poll, get my contrarian thoughts on the record, maybe steal a little thunder as people who aren’t totally up on the schedule — which includes almost all of the college basketball population — search for the actual poll and get my ballot instead. (Apologies.)
Usually I like to throw a couple wild cards in there and play a few hunches. Now’s the time, before a game has even been played, when nobody really does know nothing. Two years ago, I was the only voter to have national championship runner-up Texas Tech in my opening ballot. Last year, I was mostly right about Illinois and Utah State and very wrong about Missouri and Harvard. C’est la vie.
I didn’t have any sneaky hot picks to surprise this year, perhaps because of the odd way last season ended, so I figured I’d wait and see what the consensus was when the actual poll came out Monday and how my choices differed.
My guess was: not much. The reality was: not much at all.
Florida was the biggest outlier: 16th on my ballot and unranked in the poll but third in the “also receiving votes” category, not a huge disparity. (Most voters looked, I think, at what the Gators lost. I think what they still have is pretty good.) I was also higher on Texas Tech and Texas by six or seven spots, lower on Tennessee by nine spots and I had Louisville (and Florida) instead of No. 22 UCLA and No. 24 Rutgers. There’s really not much to see there.
There was another reason I delayed: I’m still conflicted about being a voter at all. On the one hand, it’s mostly harmless fun and a topic for healthy discussion — we’re not picking tournament teams, after all — and for those of us who watch a lot of college basketball and follow the sport closely and benefit from its existence in some way, it is incumbent upon us to do our share for the body politic of the sport. I’m involved in the U.S. Basketball Writers Association as well, which advocates for the media that covers college basketball. We all have a role to play to keep this little engine humming along.
But the combination of the ill-thought mishandling of last year’s final poll and the social media vitriol that is delivered, without fail, to every single voter every single week — a mob mentality encouraged and rallied by the misguided within the business under the guise of accountability that discourages many smart basketball people from voting — did leave me wavering. Again. Here’s to the better angels of our nature.
The usual word on methodology: I rely heavily on analytics (specifically KenPom’s efficiency ratings [predictive, how good we think you are] and Wins Above Bubble [results-based, how good what you’ve done is, I use the version at barttorvik.com but there are others]), one game is just one data point of 30 so I will not overreact to head-to-head results, and most important: I hate your team and under no circumstances do I know what I’m talking about or should be allowed to vote, so I’m told.
LAST SEASON’S BALLOTS
Week 1 (Preseason) Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 Week 10 Week 11 Week 12 Week 13 Week 14 Week 15 Week 16 Week 17 Week 18 Week 19
PRESEASON TOP 25 BASKETBALL BALLOT
1. Gonzaga (actual poll rank: 1)
2. Baylor (2)
3. Villanova (3)
4. Virginia (4)
5. Kansas (6)
6. Wisconsin (7)
7. Texas Tech (14)
8. Illinois (8)
9. Iowa (5)
10. Kentucky (10)
11. Creighton (11)
12. Duke (9)
13. Texas (19)
14. West Virginia (15)
15. Michigan State (13)
16. Florida (Also receiving votes)
17. Houston (17)
18. North Carolina (16)
19. Florida State (21)
20. Arizona State (18)
21. Tennessee (12)
22. Ohio State (23)
23. Oregon (20)
24. Louisville (ARV)
25. Michigan (25)
PRESEASON ALL-AMERICA PICKS
- Luka Garza, Iowa (POY)
- Jared Butler, Baylor
- Cade Cunningham, Oklahoma State
- Ayo Dosumnu, Illinois
- Remy Martin, Arizona State
This story was originally published November 9, 2020 at 3:55 PM.
