Luke DeCock’s AP Top 25 basketball poll ballot: Week 11
Poll inertia is a real, living, breathing, organic thing. It’s tough to move a team down when it hasn’t lost. That’s a psychological hurdle for any voter. So a team like Houston can play second-tier opposition and climb all the way up to the No. 5 slot on this ballot, only for an upset loss at East Carolina to reset things and prompt a reassessment.
Belated congrats to the Pirates on the entire state of North Carolina’s second win over a top-25 team this season, an amazing stat courtesy of ESPN researcher Bryan Ives (a must-follow on Twitter at @awaytoworthy for priceless nuggets).
In this case, Houston’s status was actually more or less deserved, so it’s probably not the best example, but it happens at the bottom of the ballot with teams like Drake that can float up week after week (that got taken care of this week, too, thanks to Gonzaga) or at the top of the ballot with teams like Gonzaga.
And that’s where things get tricky this week.
Gonzaga has been No. 1 since before the season started, on this ballot and in the poll itself. And for good reason: The Zags have delivered on all of the lofty expectations heaped upon them in the preseason, and that was before anyone really knew just how good Jalen Suggs actually was.
But for the past month, Gonzaga has been beating up on weaker WCC teams while Baylor has been running rampant through the Big 12, an exponentially more difficult slog. Five of Baylor’s past eight games have been in the KenPom “A” category. Gonzaga hasn’t played in an “A” game since Virginia the day after Christmas, but will this week at BYU.
Gonzaga hasn’t done anything wrong, but at some point, you have to tip your cap to the Bears. And that point is now. The two teams are ranked No. 1 and 2 in every legitimate metric — predictive and results-based — and their overall strength of schedule is almost equal. If they had been able to play in November, only one would be undefeated, but at the moment both are.
On the whole, it’s still Gonzaga by a hair. As of this morning, the Zags are No. 2 in KenPom and No. 1 in Wins Above Bubble, but they were No. 2 in both for a couple of days midweek. If the poll was held on Wednesday, Baylor would have been No. 1 on this ballot. That’s how close it is.
It’s been easy to ink in Gonzaga at the top and Baylor right behind from week to week, but it’s going to be a lot harder going forward. The No. 1 spot is truly up for grabs.
THIS SEASON’S BALLOTS
Preseason | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10
THIS WEEK’S TOP 25 BASKETBALL BALLOT
1. Gonzaga (last week: 1)
2. Baylor (2)
3. Illinois (7)
4. Michigan (4)
5. Ohio State (6)
6. Villanova (3)
7. Virginia (12)
8. USC (18)
9. West Virginia (14)
10. Missouri (22)
11. Alabama (10)
12. Houston (5)
13. Wisconsin (11)
14. Iowa (8)
15. Texas Tech (17)
16. Loyola-Chicago (21)
17. Tennessee (16)
18. Creighton (13)
19. Texas (9)
20. Purdue (NR)
21. Rutgers (NR)
22. Colorado (NR)
23. Florida State (23)
24. UCLA (15)
25. Oklahoma (24)
OUT Kansas (19), Drake (20), Virginia Tech (25)
This story was originally published February 8, 2021 at 9:56 AM.
