November 23rd MBB Polls

[juise]

ESPN list this as being dated 11/20, but I'm not sure that's accurate since it's listed as news on their front page. Here are the rankings (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/rankings).

Duke is listed as seventh in both polls, but somehow received a first place vote in the coaches poll. :) Carolina is 11 in the AP and 12 in the coaches poll. Kansas is still #1 in both. I'm not convinced that Purdue is better than Duke. Too bad we don't get a rematch in the "challenge" this year.

[Battierfan01]

ESPN list this as being dated 11/20, but I'm not sure that's accurate since it's listed as news on their front page. Here are the rankings (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/rankings).

Duke is listed as seventh in both polls, but somehow received a first place vote in the coaches poll. :) Carolina is 11 in the AP and 12 in the coaches poll. Kansas is still #1 in both. I'm not convinced that Purdue is better than Duke. Too bad we don't get a rematch in the "challenge" this year.

Yeah I believe in no way is Purdue a better team then us, but only time will prove that to the "experts". :D


Battierfan01
Defense Minister NS FAN CLUB

[Hermy-own]

I wish there were more highly ranked ACC teams. GT and Maryland will probably finish the year top 25, but probably no one else will. Wake Forest has a chance to get in the top 25. It's good for a Duke team to have a lot of hard games during the season, so we know how to play our best basketball against tough competition.
On the other hand, it's always good to see You-know-who sliding down the rankings, to #12. They were seriously overrated. Probably because people thought their freshman guards could score. They can't. :D

[uh_no]

I wish there were more highly ranked ACC teams. GT and Maryland will probably finish the year top 25, but probably no one else will. Wake Forest has a chance to get in the top 25. It's good for a Duke team to have a lot of hard games during the season, so we know how to play our best basketball against tough competition.
On the other hand, it's always good to see You-know-who sliding down the rankings, to #12. They were seriously overrated. Probably because people thought their freshman guards could score. They can't. :D

terrible team (GT) + great player (DF) != top 25 team.....they were bottoms in the ACC....no way one player fixes that....as they've already shown early in the season

[airowe]

terrible team (GT) + great player (DF) != top 25 team.....they were bottoms in the ACC....no way one player fixes that....as they've already shown early in the season

You're crazy if you think Georgia Tech has a terrible team. They have a lot of good pieces of the puzzle laying right there on the table.

Problem is, the guy in charge of putting the puzzle together has lost the boxtop and keeps just throwing the pieces on the table, hoping they'll stick together. Granted, sometimes they fit together by accident, but more times than not they just keep bumping into each other and falling onto the floor...

[DevilHorns]

Glad to see UNC drop, as always.

One thing I don't get is why we recieved a 1st place vote. All this does is inflame the anti-Duke sentiment out there, often pushed as some "evidence" that Duke has pro-bias that helps us in tourney seeding, AP ranking, what have you. I think we deserve to be ranked in the top-10, but don't deserve a 1st place vote (yet). I wonder who gave it to us.

I think UK should have dropped a few spots. Have any of these voters seen them play defense, I sure haven't.

[Kewlswim]

I wish there were more highly ranked ACC teams. GT and Maryland will probably finish the year top 25, but probably no one else will. Wake Forest has a chance to get in the top 25. It's good for a Duke team to have a lot of hard games during the season, so we know how to play our best basketball against tough competition.
On the other hand, it's always good to see You-know-who sliding down the rankings, to #12. They were seriously overrated. Probably because people thought their freshman guards could score. They can't. :D

Hi,

I like many of your points. I agree with what you wrote. Furthermore, what I would like to see is us having to face many different styles of ball played at a high level. Make sense? For example, different defenses, even junk ones, just so our players know how to play them. If the team is always facing man-to-man and then all of the sudden in the 3rd round we have to face a zone team, that could be harder than need be. Jump shooting and penetrating guard play, and who knows what else so we get used to defending different offenses would be great too. I don't think in practice one can simulate as well as in a game that counts.

I think the ACC gets disrespected in the seeding and selection committee. If the Pac-10 (in even down years) seems to get 5 or 6 teams in, then the ACC should normally get almost all teams into the NCAA tournament because the conference is usually that good, but we can't (as a conference) keep laying an egg like last year. Sure the bad men from Chapel Hill won it all, but the rest of the conference didn't do so well.

GO DUKE!

[Kedsy]

terrible team (GT) + great player (DF) != top 25 team.....they were bottoms in the ACC....no way one player fixes that....as they've already shown early in the season

There have been plenty of terrible teams who added one great player and became a top 25 team. In 1979 a great player named Larry Bird took a team that was pretty much a mediocre low major (other than him) all the way to the NCAA title game.

I'm not suggesting Favors is Bird, or anywhere close. But I am saying that adding Favors to a team that should have been a lot better than it was last year can easily make Tech a top 25 team.

[El_Diablo]

terrible team (GT) + great player (DF) != top 25 team.....they were bottoms in the ACC....no way one player fixes that....as they've already shown early in the season

GT got more than one player btw...they got six new players. Besides Favors, they also landed two 4-star recruits, including the #5 pg in the class (Udofia). Their recruiting class was ranked #5 overall by scout.com...three spots higher than ours.

They will have some growing pains, but they could become very dangerous this year.

[BD80]

... One thing I don't get is why we recieved a 1st place vote. ...

The teams ahead of us have either looked bad or have lost key players

[soccerstud2210]

You're crazy if you think Georgia Tech has a terrible team. They have a lot of good pieces of the puzzle laying right there on the table.

Problem is, the guy in charge of putting the puzzle together has lost the boxtop and keeps just throwing the pieces on the table, hoping they'll stick together. Granted, sometimes they fit together by accident, but more times than not they just keep bumping into each other and falling onto the floor...

those were my thoughts as well, when i read this . they will give us troubles i think. with favors and lawal and shumpert, with daniel miller. they are tough.

[Newton_14]

You have to love WRAL. Too many UNC-CH homers to count.

They posted an article at 1:45 today that the new AP Poll was out and stated that UNC-CH is 6th and Duke 9th. A few of the posters in the comments under the article pointed out that this was not the new poll but the article is still up.

Keep drinking the kool-aid WRAL....

http://www.wralsportsfan.com/college_basketball/story/6429817/

[Bob Green]

You have to love WRAL.

I've always considered my hometown newspaper, the Fayetteville Observer, a blatantly biased Carolina rag, but WRAL.com takes the cake for Carolina Homerism.

[chadlee989]

I wonder who put us first?

[jesus_hurley]

I wonder who put us first?

I was curious as well - I went out and looked at the list of voters thinking maybe the coach of a team we've played had a vote but that was not the case. Amaker and Boeheim have a vote and Gary Williams is the ACC voter. The full voter list is under the poll at the NABC site:

http://www.nabc.org/coaches_corner/coaches_corner-polls-div1.html

[El_Diablo]

I wonder who put us first?

If I had to guess: Herb Sendek

[Hermy-own]

The link you gave doesn't list Duke with a #1 vote, though I know they got one.

[duketaylor]

Could be Spurrier, he's known to do that;)

[feldspar]

I think it's Tommy. He'll keep voting us #1 until Scheyer commits a turnover.

[ice-9]

I wish there were more highly ranked ACC teams. GT and Maryland will probably finish the year top 25, but probably no one else will. Wake Forest has a chance to get in the top 25. It's good for a Duke team to have a lot of hard games during the season, so we know how to play our best basketball against tough competition.
On the other hand, it's always good to see You-know-who sliding down the rankings, to #12. They were seriously overrated. Probably because people thought their freshman guards could score. They can't. :D

Don't forget about Clemson! They can make some noise this year.

[Newton_14]

I've always considered my hometown newspaper, the Fayetteville Observer, a blatantly biased Carolina rag, but WRAL.com takes the cake for Carolina Homerism.

Was not aware the Fayetteville media are homers as well. I do like one of their writers though. Dan Wiederer seems to always write good articles.