Stupidity of Rankings

[osullfam]

My assumption is that SU will be #1.
The formula is very simple. Preseason rankings are tallied. Teams jump around a bit in the first month. After that, you lose, you drop. You win, you don't. A monkey could do the polls.

I bleed orange, but OSU does not deserve to drop. They lost to a ranked team, on their court, without their best player.

 

[texascpa]

We're No. 1, regardless of the stupidity of polls.

 

[SaltLakeOrange]

It's still pretty cool!


Sent by George from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[OttoMets]

And maybe Syracuse deserved to be #1 after losing to Louisville, on their Senior Day, at the final game at their 50-year-old arena, when a guy from the end of their bench scored 22 points from all over the court.

But that's not how the pollsters do it. Most people who know college basketball would agree that Ohio State is better than Syracuse. Tomorrow's poll probably won't reflect that. It's silly and meaningless, but surely not worth complaining about (unless the complaint involves Duke).

 

[SWC75]

My assumption is that SU will be #1.
The formula is very simple. Preseason rankings are tallied. Teams jump around a bit in the first month. After that, you lose, you drop. You win, you don't. A monkey could do the polls.

I bleed orange, but OSU does not deserve to drop. They lost to a ranked team, on their court, without their best player.

The nice thing is that it doesn't matter. It's like being handsome and you hope you're smart, too.

 

[longislandcuse]

So if KJo has to sit out a game this year at any point and we lose can we just declare a mulligan? OSU is 9-1, Cuse is 10-0 with a top 10 win on our resume and 2 solid wins at MSG. Dont try to tell me we dont deserve to be number 1.

 

[Ghost]

This was exactly my reasoning for why we still should have finished #1 in 2009! AO was hurt, we lost to a Top 20 G'Town Sucks team in the BET and the eventual runner-ups in the championship game! Yet we were penalized then!! We were the rightful #1 - not Duke!!!

It's just a poll - I'm sure OSU isn't all that upset.

 

[longislandcuse]

In the wake of the Bernie Fine fiasco, from a recruiting standpoint of putting all that crap behind us, being number one is huge imo.

 

[SWC75]

This was exactly my reasoning for why we still should have finished #1 in 2009! AO was hurt, we lost to a Top 20 G'Town Sucks team in the BET and the eventual runner-ups in the championship game! Yet we were penalized then!! We were the rightful #1 - not Duke!!!

It's just a poll - I'm sure OSU isn't all that upset.

We were #3 going into the Georgetown game, haivng already lost to Lousiville. And Duke wasn't #1. They won the tournament to win the national title. Kansas and Kentucky were ranked ahead of us after we lost to the Cardinals.

 

[dasher]

Ohio state doesn't deserve to drop but they don't deserve to move up. They can stay at #2 (they won't) and we move to #1

 

[Knicks411]

So if KJo has to sit out a game this year at any point and we lose can we just declare a mulligan? OSU is 9-1, Cuse is 10-0 with a top 10 win on our resume and 2 solid wins at MSG. Dont try to tell me we dont deserve to be number 1.

Depending on who it is against, sure. Kansas is a very good team, they don't lose a lot at home. and of course, Sullinger is a much better player than Joseph.

But didn't that pretty much happen last year? Without KJo, we lost to Pitt at Pitt in a pretty close game.

By the standards of the poll, yes, we deserve to be #1, because that's how they work. Do I think we're the best team? Probably not, but we're also probably pretty close. It isn't like it's a travesty.

And yes, that Stanford win looks pretty good. They are up to 15 in the Pom rankings.

 

[OttoMets]

Frankly, neither of those teams deserves to drop. I don't think Kentucky's the best team in the country, but if ranking them #1 was somehow justifiable a couple weeks ago, a last-second road loss to a talented (and undefeated) team doesn't make that ranking any less justifiable. And Ohio State looks like the best team in the country.

But sometime in the last decade-plus, some goofy pollsters decided to hypersensitize their rankings and drop top teams after they lose. Doesn't seem right, but that's how they want to do it.

 

[Orangemen]

There's no guarantee OSU wins that game even with Sullinger.

KU kept a consistent 5-10 point lead throughout the game. Sure Sullinger could have helped them overcome that, but you can't say it's 100%.

Either way, they lost. It's a poll that really only has meaning for the fans.

Honestly, do other fan boards have multiple threads by fans arguing that their team doesn't deserve to be #1? This seems a little crazy.

 

[Cadillac]

This is awful. No need to contort yourself to appear objective. OHIO STATE LOST. We are #1.

 

[StopCoolio]

We're going to be #1. Not a doubt about that. I think the bigger question is who becomes #2.

Ohio State, UK, or a pretty underwhelming, yet still undefeated Louisville team.

 

[longislandcuse]

2 years ago when we were number 1 we had half the people here trembling at the thought, now half the people dont think we deserve it. :blah:

 

[OttoMets]

We're going to be #1. Not a doubt about that. I think the bigger question is who becomes #2.

Ohio State, UK, or a pretty underwhelming, yet still undefeated Louisville team.

I hope it's Louisville, although they are past due for their inexplicable blowout December loss to an unranked mid-major.

Anything that has us both on a path to being ranked top-five for the Senior Day game is important.

 

[CorduroyG]

2 years ago when we were number 1 we had half the people here trembling at the thought, now half the people dont think we deserve it. :blah:

Its unbelievable. How do we not deserve it? We're #3, the #1 and #2 teams lost, its not rocket science. This is how the polls have always worked, you lose you drop, you win you stay the same or move up. But because we may actually be #1 because of that its a bad system? Of the preseason top 5 we're the only team still undefeated, seems pretty deserving to me. Lets not act like indiana is some powerhouse team, kentucky has a ton more talent than them.

Being #1 is a good thing. We weren't ranked #1 in like 20 years, now we're on the verge of being #1 for the 2nd time in 3 years.

 

[stuckinbig11]

My assumption is that SU will be #1.
The formula is very simple. Preseason rankings are tallied. Teams jump around a bit in the first month. After that, you lose, you drop. You win, you don't. A monkey could do the polls.

I bleed orange, but OSU does not deserve to drop. They lost to a ranked team, on their court, without their best player.

With that logic, we should not have dropped in the polls when we lost after AO got hurt. A true #1 team should have enough players to make up the difference.

 

[OttoMets]

Its unbelievable. How do we not deserve it? We're #3, the #1 and #2 teams lost, its not rocket science. This is how the polls have always worked, you lose you drop, you win you stay the same or move up.

Though it's not how the polls have historically worked. This is a recent (past 15 years) trend mirroring the college football polls. As SWC noted elsewhere, we sat at #1 after a loss to #3 North Carolina in 1987. This was common practice for years.

 

[Flacusian]

Syracuse Basketball is the number 1 team in the country, PERIOD.
Thank you and have a nice day.