[Enlund's Blog] How they voted: AP poll (Week 12)

[TomEnlundSays]

How they voted: AP poll (Week 12)
               



Marquette moved up from No. 21 to No. 17 in the latest Associated Press top 25 poll, nearly doubling its vote total.

               

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/137927828.html
               

[MUrugger]

Who does John Wilner write for?

[77ncaachamps]

Who does John Wilner write for?

http://bit.ly/wSAL3l





















San Jose Mercury News. If you recall, he was high on us last year.

I'm sure he felt vindicated when MU reached the (EDIT: mind fart) Sweet 16.

[reinko]

http://bit.ly/wSAL3l

San Jose Mercury News. If you recall, he was high on us last year.

I'm sure he felt vindicated when MU reached the Elite 8.

We made the Elite 8 last year?   

[Canadian Dimes]

how do you vote a team 24 one week then in the following week after they beat a ranked team and earn a conference road win to go 2-0 for the week do you unrank them?  not really a big deal, but surely odd?

[muneworleans]

Fletcher Mackel is an idiot sportscaster here in New Orleans and has no concept of good college basketball.

[real chili 83]

What's up with Fletcher Mackel?  He's from New Orleans.  Has MU "NR" for two weeks in a row.

Does he hold a grudge against Buzz for his time in New Orleans?  

MUNOLA....looks like we posted at the same time on the same topic.

[Benny B]

how do you vote a team 24 one week then in the following week after they beat a ranked team and earn a conference road win to go 2-0 for the week do you unrank them?  not really a big deal, but surely odd?

I won't give you the answer, but I'll give you the knowledge to discover it for yourself:

The writer who voted MU #24 last week and NR this week is the same writer who voted Wisconsin as #10 this week.

[mrr1981]

I won't give you the answer, but I'll give you the knowledge to discover it for yourself:

The writer who voted MU #24 last week and NR this week is the same writer who voted Wisconsin as #10 this week.

His reasoning:
http://weblogs.dailypress.com/sports/college/accblog/2012/01/defending_wisconsin_and_other.html

[strotty]

I won't give you the answer, but I'll give you the knowledge to discover it for yourself:

The writer who voted MU #24 last week and NR this week is the same writer who voted Wisconsin as #10 this week.

Here's Norm's rationale.

http://weblogs.dailypress.com/sports/college/accblog/2012/01/defending_wisconsin_and_other.html

Simply put, he's a robot and has no sense of what an eye test is.

[w0bbie]

Here's Norm's rationale.

http://weblogs.dailypress.com/sports/college/accblog/2012/01/defending_wisconsin_and_other.html

Simply put, he's a robot and has no sense of what an eye test is.

So his reasoning is that Wisconsin is the better team right now?  He didn't seem to use that same logic when ranking Louisville (#20) ahead of us. 

[MU82]

Polls aren't an exact science, we all know that. But this guy seems to be applying weird science, indeed.

Dismisses Marquette's win at Wisconsin as being waaaay back on Dec. 3 and glosses over MU's RPI being significantly better than Bucky's because Wisconsin has 4 wins against RPI 1-50 teams while Marquette has "only" 3.

Says Wisconsin has the better victory, at UNLV. OK, I guess that's much better than MU's win at Wisconsin.

Oy.

Look, rank Marquette or don't rank Marquette. But there is no legit rationale for ranking Wisconsin ahead of Marquette.

[Benny B]

Here's Norm's rationale.

http://weblogs.dailypress.com/sports/college/accblog/2012/01/defending_wisconsin_and_other.html

Simply put, he's a robot and has no sense of what an eye test is.

Ah yes... the elusive "eye test."   I'm glad to see that concept is not lost upon the next generation of sportswriters.

I wonder if Norm remembers not so long ago when the RPI calculation wasn't available at this point in the season... there's a reason that the NCAA waits until January 1 to release RPI numbers (and used to wait even longer) -- because RPI is a meaningless statistic until conference play is in full swing.  Look at the swings in RPI rankings over the past couple weeks, and compare to the swings in March during conference tournament play.  Nova moved up 30 spots in the RPI rankings by beating SHU and SJU last week.  If they do that in the BE tournament, they might move 10 spots at most.

The point being is that RPI is still fine-tuning itself over the next few weeks, and at best, it's a flawed metric right now.  Predictive RPI models are even worse if they use the current RPI as a baseline.  Even a model that simulates the entire season to predict RPI (e.g. applying the RPI algorithm to KenPom's results) is at best a proxy of that simulation.

In other words, using RPI or predictive RPI to develop a poll ballot is about as dumb as using Beetle Bailey comics to develop military strategy.  Use RPI as a baseline, examine it, and then adjust based on what your instinct tells you.  When KenPom had UW at #1 or 2 a few weeks ago, Pomeroy didn't stand by that ranking... he agreed that Wisconsin didn't belong there.  Here's a guy who has spent God-knows-how-many hours, weeks, months developing his methodology, but when something didn't pass the eye-test, he put his intuition first.  Either Norm didn't do that or his intuition sucks.

That being said, I'm interested in hearing what Wilner has to say about how he develops his ballot.  This is a guy who turns in the most schizo ballot every week, and if there isn't a method to his madness, the guy must be insane (or in love with Buzz, in which case, can you blame him?)

[Canadian Dimes]

Not sure if he realizes how stupid his blog post made him sound.  His rational is fine with me for ranking Wisconsin #10, there are no steafast rules for applying a ranking.  To use his basis of 16 teams have beateb 4 top 50 teams and wiskyis one of them hence the #10 is fine.  but then he goes on to say Mu has only beaten 3 top 50 teams and therefore is unranked. So did he only rank 16 teams? 
dumb

[77ncaachamps]

My "eyes" saw the whole game as Marquette beat Wisconsin AT Madison.

That's my "eye" test.

[wadesworld]

My "eyes" saw the whole game as Marquette beat Wisconsin AT Madison.

That's my "eye" test.

Without Cadougan.  Then again, with Otule.