Oh, come on Jay

[Lord Ash]

Listen, I love Jay Bilas as much as anyone... but give me a break.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/powerrankings/_/show/first


Louisville AHEAD of Duke? Dude, DUKE JUST BEAT LOUISVILLE.

Unless Jay bases his ratings on "How the team would be ideally" and not on "What the team actually is in reality" I just don't get it. Did he rank us when Irving was out imagining that Kyrie was actually uninjured?

I know so many people pick on Jay, and I hate to, but wow.

[Wander]

I'm sure Jay will find a way to blame this mistake in his rankings on the NCAA.

[sporthenry]

Listen, I love Jay Bilas as much as anyone... but give me a break.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/powerrankings/_/show/first


Louisville AHEAD of Duke? Dude, DUKE JUST BEAT LOUISVILLE.

Unless Jay bases his ratings on "How the team would be ideally" and not on "What the team actually is in reality" I just don't get it. Did he rank us when Irving was out imagining that Kyrie was actually uninjured?

I know so many people pick on Jay, and I hate to, but wow.

I'm sure Hubert Davis would do the same for UNC given the opportunity.

Andy Katz, who I wouldn't call a Duke hater but definitely isn't a Duke lover, wrote an excerpt explaining why Duke should be #1 and voted them such in this poll.


The Blue Devils, who continue to be the masters of the neutral court, have a legitimate claim to be the No. 1 team in the country when the polls come out Monday. No other team has knocked off two top-five squads this season, as Duke followed up a win over Kentucky at the Champions Classic with a win over Louisville at the Battle 4 Atlantis. Give coach Mike Krzyzewski credit for this: When his team is in these tournaments, he always wants the high-level opponents. He doesn't request softer openers like plenty of other coaches. The Blue Devils opened with a blowout of a talented Minnesota team that won its other two games in Atlantis, and then beat a VCU team that had just taken apart Memphis.

Indiana may have more of a ceiling and certainly hasn't done anything to deserve falling off its No. 1 perch. But polls are snapshots from week to week, not projections to March. And so far, Duke has done more on the court to be considered the top team in the country.

[MChambers]

Louisville was missing a key player. I can see rating Louisville ahead of Duke on that basis.

[Lord Ash]

Louisville was missing a key player. I can see rating Louisville ahead of Duke on that basis.

So when Kyrie was out injured, Jay ranked us as if Kyrie was actually on the team and playing? I've never heard of anyone doing such a thing.

Listen, I defend Jay non-stop when it comes to fools thinking he has some anti-Duke vendetta, when he clearly loves Duke. But this is just bizarre.

[gus]

Didn't he also rank Kentucky one spot ahead of Duke after Duke won that game? At least he's consistent.

[CDu]

So when Kyrie was out injured, Jay ranked us as if Kyrie was actually on the team and playing? I've never heard of anyone doing such a thing.

Listen, I defend Jay non-stop when it comes to fools thinking he has some anti-Duke vendetta, when he clearly loves Duke. But this is just bizarre.

Who cares? It's irrelevant. We'll play a bunch of games this year. We'll win most of them. Hopefully we'll win all of the ones in March and April. But how Bilas chooses to rank teams (in November, no less) has absolutely no bearing on our season whatsoever.

[mapleleafdevil]

So when Kyrie was out injured, Jay ranked us as if Kyrie was actually on the team and playing? I've never heard of anyone doing such a thing.

Listen, I defend Jay non-stop when it comes to fools thinking he has some anti-Duke vendetta, when he clearly loves Duke. But this is just bizarre.

There is a nuance here. The relative seriousness of an injury is relevant. If Kyrie missed a game with the sniffles in which Duke lost, I would not imagine that they would have been docked too much by the people making the rankings. Of course, this is the other end of the spectrum, but it is done to prove a point.

[Lord Ash]

Yeah, but Dieng is really badly hurt; a broken scaphoid or something, which is quite serious. They are saying it might be months before he returns. So why should Louisville be ahead of us?

And yeah, noticed the Kentucky thing. I guess their excuse was Ryan Harrow being out. Never mind that we had Josh Hairston guarding Noel for a while there.

And I care because... well, this is a prominent national sports writer and Duke grad and player and coach who is ranking Duke in a rather strange way, and I care about sports and stuff. Hence, writing on this forum about it:) I would think it is obvious why I would care, no?

[CDu]

And I care because... well, this is a prominent national sports writer and Duke grad and player and coach who is ranking Duke in a rather strange way, and I care about sports and stuff. Hence, writing on this forum about it:) I would think it is obvious why I would care, no?

My question should have been "why care?" Does it change Duke's chances of winning? No. Does it affect your ability to enjoy Duke's season? It shouldn't.

[freedevil]

My question should have been "why care?" Does it change Duke's chances of winning? No. Does it affect your ability to enjoy Duke's season? It shouldn't.

By that logic, why read (or write) anything at all about Duke basketball, including this board?

[CDu]

By that logic, why read (or write) anything at all about Duke basketball, including this board?

Plenty can be gained, in my opinion. You can pick up inside info on players and recruits. You can discuss the outcome of games as well as learn about upcoming opponents. You can learn historical information. It just seems silly to fret over whether Bilas thinks we're better or worse than Louisville in November.

[MChambers]

Yeah, but Dieng is really badly hurt; a broken scaphoid or something, which is quite serious. They are saying it might be months before he returns. So why should Louisville be ahead of us?
Maybe Jay didn't know that when he voted. I didn't know it when I posted.

[Turtleboy]

One of Duke's six best players, (according to K), has been injured all season and has yet to play a game. It's most experienced and best scoring guard is hobbled and unable to practice. I don't hear anyone cutting the Blue Devils any slack, and I never have. You play the game with the players you have.

[vick]

Yeah, but Dieng is really badly hurt; a broken scaphoid or something, which is quite serious. They are saying it might be months before he returns. So why should Louisville be ahead of us?

I'll defend Bilas on this one. The fluctuations in polls after a small sample of the 5-6 games most teams have played aren't really warranted if a poll is trying to identify the best team. Take the AP poll as an example. Ken Pomeroy documented a few years ago (http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/weblog/entry/the_pre-season_ap_poll_is_great) the performance of the #1 team in the preseason poll vs. the #1 team at the end of the season (his post is from November 2010, I updated with the last two seasons):


Win CH F4 E8 S16 R2 R1
Preseason #1 6 10 12 15 18 22 23
Final #1 4 7 11 14 19 23 23

Think about how bizarre this is: after a full season of watching basketball, knowing who is healthy and who is hurt, pollsters are worse at identifying teams who go deep in the tournament. Now, frankly, the sample size here is still small enough that it could be chance-driven, but Pomeroy thinks (and I agree) that a lot of what's happening is that voters have 'rules' in their head such as overweighting single-game head-to-head results. Surely the fact that voters do no better should lead us to question whether the usual poll heuristics ('but we won the head-to-head!') are useful.

In the first poll (http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/powerrankings/_/week/3/show/first), Bilas had Louisville #1 and Duke #6, or 5 spots apart. Moving them to #2 and #4 (2 spots apart) after a five-point game where one of Louisville's best players is hurt strikes me as quite reasonable, actually. Given that, unlike with football polls, basketball polls have very little meaning, I wish more pollsters would do what Bilas seems to be doing, looking at a longer-term view of a team's quality. They'd probably produce more accurate polls in the end.

[Lord Ash]

But are polls in November meant to represent where a team will end? Or are they meant as a snapshot of the basketball landscape at that point in time? I am not sure if that has ever been established.

[MChambers]

ESPN says Deng will be out 4-6 weeks. If you think that polls are intended to measure a team's ultimate success, rather than where they are at the moment, it seems perfectly reasonable to discount Louisville's loss to Duke, on the theory that Deng will be back in plenty of time for the key part of the season.

[roywhite]

Ah, the annual Bilas controversy.

Pro-Jay...He knows hoops better than any other commentator; he's the smartest pollster since Nate Silver; he takes a longer view; he's wise enough not to over-rate a head-to-head meeting; he's so objective that he's even objective about his alma mater. Etc., etc.

Anti-Jay...He cultivates anti-Duke fans; he bends over backwards so far that he's actually not fair to Duke; his treatment of UNC is overly nice; he is influenced by anti-Duke fans and hoops people.

A sure sign of hoops season.

[vick]

But are polls in November meant to represent where a team will end? Or are they meant as a snapshot of the basketball landscape at that point in time? I am not sure if that has ever been established.

Well, I'd imagine they're supposed to represent what a voter thinks is the best team in general, which is admittedly a sort of vague concept (should a team of all-freshmen be moved up ahead of their November results in anticipation that they will likely improve?). But I don't think that really matters here. I'm not saying I agree with him or disagree with him (I haven't watched nearly enough basketball this year, or of last year's Louisville team) to say, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with Bilas believing that, right now, Louisville is a better basketball team than Duke is, despite a single head-to-head matchup.

I mean, we could do it all by computer, moving teams up and down by algorithm, but I think it would be both boring and probably inaccurate (and of course, quickly unworkable as a method to avoid head-to-head 'problems' where a team is ahead of one to which it lost).

[NSDukeFan]

But are polls in November meant to represent where a team will end? Or are they meant as a snapshot of the basketball landscape at that point in time? I am not sure if that has ever been established.

I think this is the key question and one that different people judge differently. If you are going based on games to date, it would be hard to not rank Duke as the top team because of the strength of the teams it has defeated. I have no problem with keeping IU at number one since they have played well in all their games and started at #1. My only problem with how Jay is ranking teams is the whole hypothetical argument. He is making the argument that Louisville would have beaten Duke had Dieng been available. I expect he knows more about basketball than I do, but I would think actual results of actual games would be a better gauge of how good teams are than estimations of how teams would do with or without certain players, or if a certain player was or wasn't healthier, or if a player did or didn't pick up a cheap foul, etc.
The counter argument may be that he is picking teams based on who he feels would win a game between the teams if they played again right now, or at some time in the future.

[tele]

I've wondered in the past if ranking polls have a bias toward initial rankings, like a sensitivity to initial conditions. So that teams moving away from their initial ranking display more "stickiness" than they do in a return toward them. Or in terms of the person doing the ranking a tendency toward rankings that show, "see I was right all along."

[sagegrouse]

I've wondered in the past if ranking polls have a bias toward initial rankings, like a sensitivity to initial conditions. So that teams moving away from their initial ranking display more "stickiness" than they do in a return toward them. Or in terms of the person doing the ranking a tendency toward rankings that show, "see I was right all along."

Absolutely. And it may even be worse than that. No one has a good basis for ranking teams at the beginning of the season, and voters frequently give unwarranted emphasis to the previous year. For example, defending champions UNC in 2010 and Kentucky this year were top ten teams even though every significant player left both programs; UNC was really rotten in 2010, and although I expect Kentucky to be pretty good, the 'Cats aren't now.

Thus, it is both true that voters tend to stick with the original choices barring losses and that the original choices were fairly haphazard to begin with. The polls will become more meaningful in January, once the conference schedules begin and as teams begin to jell. Which is pretty much the case with Pomeroy and the other data-driven rankings.

sagegrouse

[DownEastDevil]

I think Brennan, Katz and Greenberg are right on target. No Tar Heels in the top 25!:D

[crimsondevil]

I mean, we could do it all by computer, moving teams up and down by algorithm, but I think it would be both boring and probably inaccurate

Umm, what? KenPom (http://kenpom.com/) Sagarin (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/bkt1213.htm)

In answer to the original point, Pomeroy and Sagarin's "Predictor" rating both have L'ville (#5 and 5) ahead of Duke (#8 and 7) still. In Pomeroy's case, though, #2 through 8 are all very close, only .0063 difference.

Let's just keep winning, then rankings (human and computer) will take care of themselves.

[vick]

Umm, what? KenPom (http://kenpom.com/) Sagarin (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/bkt1213.htm)

In answer to the original point, Pomeroy and Sagarin's "Predictor" rating both have L'ville (#5 and 5) ahead of Duke (#8 and 7) still. In Pomeroy's case, though, #2 through 8 are all very close, only .0063 difference.



I love computer rankings, but Pomeroy in particular does things much more in the 'Bilas' way (if this is indeed what he's doing) of including an implicit preseason rank. From a Pomeroy post (http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/weblog/entry/what_happens_to_pre-season_ratings_when_its_not_pre-season_anymore) two years ago (I assume it's basically the same today):


Currently, the pre-season ratings hold the weight of a little less than five games of play. This figure was selected somewhat arbitrarily, but in doing some testing I felt like it provided suitable resistance to the results of the first few games of the season. I saw enough warts in the system to know that teams need some freedom to move around in the first week or two, but I still trust the system enough to value DePaul’s initial rating more than its 33-point win over Chicago State.

The pre-season ratings will be degraded as real data accumulates. Starting next Monday, the influence of the initial rating will be dropped gradually each day until it reaches zero on the morning of January 23. This seems like a long ways away, but this date was chosen for a couple of reasons.

In other words, he doesn't stop using preseason rankings until more than halfway through the season--he does exactly what Bilas is being attacked for! I'm pretty confident Sagarin does the same thing as well (he definitely does for football, the page is unclear for basketball), though I don't think the preseason rankings last as long for him, if memory serves.

[sagegrouse]

In other words, he doesn't stop using preseason rankings until more than halfway through the season--he does exactly what Bilas is being attacked for! I'm pretty confident Sagarin does the same thing as well (he definitely does for football, the page is unclear for basketball), though I don't think the preseason rankings last as long for him, if memory serves.

As math profs like to say, the influence of the preseason rankings becomes "vanishingly small" as the season progresses, going to zero on January 23. Doesn't mean that it amounts to very much at all after December.

sage

[Lord Ash]

Sorry, just had to point out... not only does Jay have Duke the lowest of the 18 analysts they asked, he is the only one to pick Louisville above Duke.

I almost always defend Jay, but how on earth does he come up with this? It is frustrating, because I cannot tell if he is being genuine and just has a totally different system for ranking teams than everyone else (which I would hope is the case) or if he truly is being an anti-homer, which would be REALLY disappointing.

[-jk]

Perhaps Jay compares every Duke team to his '86 team - and (quite reasonably) every Duke team falls short. Of course, college hoops isn't the same game as it was then, and every team falls short. But from his vantage, Duke's shortcomings are the greater for a more intimate understanding. "Familiarity breeds contempt".

Or perhaps K just asks him to downplay us to help manage expectations.

-jk

[Turtleboy]

The idea that the voters are voting today for who they think will be the best team in March seems absurd to me. Just absurd.

As for which computer system is the best, well, what difference does it make? There is actually a better way to determine which team is better. Have them actually compete in a sanctioned, refereed contest and glance at the scoreboard after the final horn has sounded. Assuming, of course, that by "best" we mean "who would score the most points in a game between the two."

[MChambers]

The idea that the voters are voting today for who they think will be the best team in March seems absurd to me. Just absurd.

As for which computer system is the best, well, what difference does it make? There is actually a better way to determine which team is better. Have them actually compete in a sanctioned, refereed contest and glance at the scoreboard after the final horn has sounded. Assuming, of course, that by "best" we mean "who would score the most points in a game between the two."

I see your point, but what about preseason polls? Aren't they trying to pick who will be best in March? Don't we judge them in hindsight, by looking at how the preseason polls compare to the actual season results?

I understand your point of view, but there's a bit of a disconnect in how we look at polls.

[COYS]

I'll defend Bilas on this one. The fluctuations in polls after a small sample of the 5-6 games most teams have played aren't really warranted if a poll is trying to identify the best team. Take the AP poll as an example. Ken Pomeroy documented a few years ago (http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/weblog/entry/the_pre-season_ap_poll_is_great) the performance of the #1 team in the preseason poll vs. the #1 team at the end of the season (his post is from November 2010, I updated with the last two seasons):


Win CH F4 E8 S16 R2 R1
Preseason #1 6 10 12 15 18 22 23
Final #1 4 7 11 14 19 23 23

Think about how bizarre this is: after a full season of watching basketball, knowing who is healthy and who is hurt, pollsters are worse at identifying teams who go deep in the tournament. Now, frankly, the sample size here is still small enough that it could be chance-driven, but Pomeroy thinks (and I agree) that a lot of what's happening is that voters have 'rules' in their head such as overweighting single-game head-to-head results. Surely the fact that voters do no better should lead us to question whether the usual poll heuristics ('but we won the head-to-head!') are useful.

In the first poll (http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/powerrankings/_/week/3/show/first), Bilas had Louisville #1 and Duke #6, or 5 spots apart. Moving them to #2 and #4 (2 spots apart) after a five-point game where one of Louisville's best players is hurt strikes me as quite reasonable, actually. Given that, unlike with football polls, basketball polls have very little meaning, I wish more pollsters would do what Bilas seems to be doing, looking at a longer-term view of a team's quality. They'd probably produce more accurate polls in the end.

I think this is a very good analysis of what's going on here, especially since Jay's rankings are basically like Mark Stein's NBA Power Rankings. I think Jay is taking a longterm view and, not unjustifiably, arguing that Louisville, despite the early season loss to Duke, still has SLIGHTLY more long term potential. In the 2000-2001 season, Duke managed to lose to Stanford after blowing a pretty safe lead. Stanford had a good team that year, but I doubt that even the most critical Duke fans would have seriously considered trading Jason Williams, Carlos Boozer, Shane Battier, Mike Dunleavy, Nate James, or Chris Duhon for Casey Jacobson and the rest of the Cardinal squad. I know that events that happened later in the season color my analysis a little bit, in that the Duke team went on to win the title and, of course, most of Duke's players have gone on to have long NBA careers. However, I still think most people would agree that, though Duke lost, Duke also had more talent to compete in the long run.

In the case of Louisville, by moving Duke up to 4 and Louisville down to 2, Jay is basically saying that he thinks Louisville is still SLIGHTLY better equipped to win over the long term than Duke. Considering Louisville's excellent defense, this is not a crazy proposition. If Duke ever moves ahead of Louisville in Jay's rankings, it is because Duke has shown consistent improvement over a long period of time that indicates that Duke is perhaps better equipped for March than even most Duke fans would have guessed going into the season. Obviously, most of us had believed that this team had a chance to do very well this season. But the question marks (point guard play, defense, defending the three, consistent low post play, etc.) were enough to prevent most of us from believing we were a favorite to make it to the Final Four. I think the season has gotten off to a great start. Quinn has begun to answer many of the questions we had about the point guard spot. Mason has more than answered the questions we had about whether he was capable of taking his game to another level. However, I'd like to see our defense over a longer period of games before I'm completely satisfied that we are back to Duke standards on that end of the court. From that perspective, ranking Duke around the 3-5 range seems perfectly justifiable. To be honest, if I were a sportswriter like Jay, I might have put Duke and Louisville in just about the same spots.

[superdave]

Who cares? It's irrelevant. We'll play a bunch of games this year. We'll win most of them. Hopefully we'll win all of the ones in March and April. But how Bilas chooses to rank teams (in November, no less) has absolutely no bearing on our season whatsoever.

I was just about to write this. Let's not get carried away with rankings or November wins. I want to see this team progress and grow from month to month. We'll measure their success in April.

[HaveFunExpectToWin]

I kinda like this theory on Bilas: he's messing with you all, and it seems to be working.

http://dukeland.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/jay-bilas-is-messing-with-you/

[Turtleboy]

I see your point, but what about preseason polls? Aren't they trying to pick who will be best in March? Don't we judge them in hindsight, by looking at how the preseason polls compare to the actual season results?

I understand your point of view, but there's a bit of a disconnect in how we look at polls.As far as they have any use at all, I think preseason polls refer to how good teams are predicted to be in Week One of the season. Subsequent polls indicate the voters' choice for how good teams are right now.

It seems to me that pollsters don't account for injured players, mid-season transfers, suspended players, or other factors that would suggest a team might play better if only ... How could all that be factored in? You might as well take a team's upcoming schedule into account. Back in the day we all knew Clemson would crash and burn as soon as conference play began, even though a cupcake schedule often had them unbeaten and ranked. I don't remember that costing them votes until they actually lost. If polls predicted how good a team will be instead of reflecting how good it is, they have received far fewer votes to start with.

I could be wrong. The only poll that matters is the one conducted by the seeding committee in March. And FWIW, Duke is #2 in the the ESPN poll. Bilas' vote was for the Power Rankings, whatever that means.

[oldnavy]

Perhaps Jay compares every Duke team to his '86 team - and (quite reasonably) every Duke team falls short. Of course, college hoops isn't the same game as it was then, and every team falls short. But from his vantage, Duke's shortcomings are the greater for a more intimate understanding. "Familiarity breeds contempt".

Or perhaps K just asks him to downplay us to help manage expectations.

-jk

jk, I TOTALLY AGREE. Right before I read your post I was thinking the same thing. I believe Jay Bilas to be honest, meaning I do not think he is trying to come off as something he is not. However as jk said so beautifully, perhaps Jay's intimate understanding of the Duke system makes him a much harder grader than someone from the outside.

[Rich]

Think about how bizarre this is: after a full season of watching basketball, knowing who is healthy and who is hurt, pollsters are worse at identifying teams who go deep in the tournament.

I think this can be partly attributed to the fact that pre-season polls are based on talent (new and returning individuals and team-based) while in-season polls are based on results on a weekly basis. I believe that in the NCAA Tournament the cream (i.e., the most talented teams/players) tend to rise to the top regardless of the games they lost over the course of the season. I always look at the pre-season top 5 when I fill out my toruney brackets and while I don't always win, I usually do very well.

[mjones723]

My question should have been "why care?" Does it change Duke's chances of winning? No. Does it affect your ability to enjoy Duke's season? It shouldn't.



Why not call him out on the absurdity of his rankings? There are no objective or subjective reasons to have Duke ranked any lower than number two right now.

[mjones723]

I kinda like this theory on Bilas: he's messing with you all, and it seems to be working.

http://dukeland.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/jay-bilas-is-messing-with-you/




If he's trolling the fanbase of his alma mater then that's even worse than him pandering to UNC fans and the highers up at espn. Either way he's monsterous boob.

[Kedsy]

There are no objective or subjective reasons to have Duke ranked any lower than number two right now.

Well, Pomeroy has us ranked #8, based on a combination of his subjective pre-season rankings and his objective computer calculations based on play so far. So, I'm not sure your statement holds.

[mjones723]

Well, Pomeroy has us ranked #8, based on a combination of his subjective pre-season rankings and his objective computer calculations based on play so far. So, I'm not sure your statement holds.



My statement is based on common sense. Today...right now...nobody should be ranked ahead of Duke, and certainly not a team we beat four days ago. It's completely absurd to argue otherwise.

[Kedsy]

My statement is based on common sense. Today...right now...nobody should be ranked ahead of Duke, and certainly not a team we beat four days ago. It's completely absurd to argue otherwise.

Seriously? UCLA just lost to Cal Poly Pomona. As bad as UCLA might be (compared to expectations), do you really think Cal Poly should be ranked ahead of them? Is that what "common sense" tells you? Head to head is simply not a legitimate way to rank teams in college basketball. Arguing otherwise is what's "completely absurd."

[sporthenry]

Seriously? UCLA just lost to Cal Poly Pomona. As bad as UCLA might be (compared to expectations), do you really think Cal Poly should be ranked ahead of them? Is that what "common sense" tells you? Head to head is simply not a legitimate way to rank teams in college basketball. Arguing otherwise is what's "completely absurd."

You can't just ignore head to head either or that devalues the game itself. So UK was the best team in 2010? I don't think he is saying head to head is all that matters but it does matter and should hold a decent amount of weight and rightly so. It is the easiest way to compare two teams. Of course that doesn't mean Cal Poly gets ranked ahead of UCLA but when all other things are equal or near equal, the result of two teams on the same court on the same day should hold weight.

[COYS]

You can't just ignore head to head either or that devalues the game itself. So UK was the best team in 2010? I don't think he is saying head to head is all that matters but it does matter and should hold a decent amount of weight and rightly so. It is the easiest way to compare two teams. Of course that doesn't mean Cal Poly gets ranked ahead of UCLA but when all other things are equal or near equal, the result of two teams on the same court on the same day should hold weight.

I totally agree about head to head holding weight, but in this particularly instance, we are talking about Jay putting Duke at #4 and Louisville at #2 after a game in which Duke beat Louisville by a slim margin one game after Louisville lost an important cog in their defensive machine. Clearly Jay did give Duke credit for knocking off the team he had previously ranked number 1. He moved Duke up two spaces from number 6. Similarly, he also knocked Louisville down from the number 1 spot to number 2. I am ecstatic about Duke winning the Battle for Atlantis. But I am equally cautious about moving the team too far up in my own ranking system. Louisville was without an important player (doesn't mean they would have won if he had played, but it's still something to consider), and Duke struggled enough in certain aspects of the game, such as rebounding and occasionally perimeter D, that it is not unreasonable to think that they need to prove themselves a little bit more before they move ahead of a team that went to the Final Four last year and returned most of its talent . . . especially when that team lost a game after an important player went down with an injury. I actually find Jay's rankings perfectly justifiable, although I admit that there is also a legitimate argument to be made for Duke being number 1, as well. However, I'm more inclined to prefer the cautious approach where thoughtful preseason rankings hold a lot of weight and teams move slowly in one direction or another as they add to their body of work, even if that means ranking a team like Duke just a few spots behind a team that they have already defeated.

[Turtleboy]

My statement is based on common sense. Today...right now...nobody should be ranked ahead of Duke, and certainly not a team we beat four days ago. It's completely absurd to argue otherwise.Agreed. Computers and statistical analysis are tools to predict the outcome of a game between two teams. They mean piss-all when compared against the outcome of the actual game.

No disrespect to anyone, but I fell more than a little bit like King Arthur in Monty Python's The Holy Grail, arguing with the Black Knight over who won the fight (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eMkth8FWno).

[Kedsy]

You can't just ignore head to head either or that devalues the game itself. So UK was the best team in 2010? I don't think he is saying head to head is all that matters but it does matter and should hold a decent amount of weight and rightly so. It is the easiest way to compare two teams. Of course that doesn't mean Cal Poly gets ranked ahead of UCLA but when all other things are equal or near equal, the result of two teams on the same court on the same day should hold weight.

If the #2 team in the country played the #4 team in the country 100 times, the #4 team would win pretty close to half the time. If the #2 team was playing without their only legitimate big man, the #4 team would win more than half the time. Which means if Jay Bilas's rankings are correct, we should have expected Duke to win the game in the Bahamas, and thus the Duke win shouldn't necessarily put Duke ahead of Louisville.

That said, I don't have any problem with someone ranking Duke ahead of Louisville at this point in time. It's a perfectly legitimate position. But to say it's completely "absurd" that a rational person could have any "objective or subjective reason" to rank Duke lower than Louisville is ridiculous.


(Also, how'd UK get into this discussion? In 2010, pre-tournament, most experts pegged Kansas as the best team. Frankly, even though they lost in the 2nd round and Duke won the championship, I believe it would be a completely reasonable position for someone to think Kansas was, in fact, the best team in 2010. Being the best team and winning the NCAA championship are two entirely different and largely unrelated things. See UConn in 2011, Kansas in 1988, Villanova in 1985, NC State in 1983, and so on and so on.)

[Turtleboy]

I totally agree about head to head holding weight, but in this particularly instance, we are talking about Jay putting Duke at #4 and Louisville at #2 after a game in which Duke beat Louisville by a slim margin one game after Louisville lost an important cog in their defensive machine.Duke has an important cog who has yet to play a game, and another one who is playing hobbled. Why don't any Bilas defenders address that? Imagine how good they would be with those two healthy.

Price and Van Treese had 12 points, one block, and 11 rebounds. I'd say that's a pretty fair replacement for Dieng, and in fact Pitino did say so.

[Wander]

It IS absurd to have Duke below Louisville right now. This isn't the preseason poll anymore. We have actual results to go on, and those results clearly show that Duke deserves to be above Louisville. That doesn't mean that this is how things will end up at the end of the season or even in a month, but ranking any one-loss team ahead of Duke is just being stubborn right now.

The UCLA-CalPoly comparison is nonsense. It might be valid if CalPoly hadn't lost to TCU and Fresno State. Nobody is claiming that head-to-head results are the absolute beginning and end of the argument.

I think the "Jay Bilas is biased against Duke" stuff is silly - he just has a bad habit of stubbornly harping on one point for too long until it ends up making him look ridiculous, whether it be ranking Duke lower than most pollsters this year, repeatedly trying to convince everyone how much VCU sucks weeks before they make the Final Four, or blaming the NCAA for the heavy rain outside.

[Jim3k]

Seriously? UCLA just lost to Cal Poly Pomona. As bad as UCLA might be (compared to expectations), do you really think Cal Poly should be ranked ahead of them? Is that what "common sense" tells you? Head to head is simply not a legitimate way to rank teams in college basketball. Arguing otherwise is what's "completely absurd."

Cal Poly Pomona is a Div 11 school. That would've been a fireable offense. But UCLA actually lost to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, a Div. 1 team from the Big West. Still pretty bad.

[mjones723]

Seriously? UCLA just lost to Cal Poly Pomona. As bad as UCLA might be (compared to expectations), do you really think Cal Poly should be ranked ahead of them? Is that what "common sense" tells you? Head to head is simply not a legitimate way to rank teams in college basketball. Arguing otherwise is what's "completely absurd."



Yikes.

[mjones723]

I miss the days when people watched the games and made judgements based on what they saw and not based on what some dork's convoluted math equation spits out of his computer.


Duke's resume is the best in the land TODAY. Thus they shouldn't be ranked below a team they actually faced head to head and BEAT.


Some of you are living in an alternate universe.

[MChambers]

I miss the days when people watched the games and made judgements based on what they saw and not based on what some dork's convoluted math equation spits out of his computer.


Duke's resume is the best in the land TODAY. Thus they shouldn't be ranked below a team they actually faced head to head and BEAT.


Some of you are living in an alternate universe.
Look, you can disagree with us, but there's no need to say we have no common sense or are living in an alternate universe. We just analyze things differently.

[mjones723]

Look, you can disagree with us, but there's no need to say we have no common sense or are living in an alternate universe. We just analyze things differently.



If we were to take your brand of analysis all the way to the finish we'd end up crowning some 1 seed that lost in the Elite Eight national champions. I'm sorry, it's ridiculous.

[roywhite]

18 analysts (all experienced college basketball commentators) in the Nov. 26 ESPN Power Ratings (http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/powerrankings/_/show/first)

Of 18 analysts, only one rated Duke as low at #4
Of 18 analysts, only one rated Louisville ahead of Duke

Who was that one analyst?
Jay Bilas

[MarkD83]

If we were to take your brand of analysis all the way to the finish we'd end up crowning some 1 seed that lost in the Elite Eight national champions. I'm sorry, it's ridiculous.

Or hanging a banner when a bakery tells us we are number one. Oh wait that happened down the road.

[Deslok]

If we were to take your brand of analysis all the way to the finish we'd end up crowning some 1 seed that lost in the Elite Eight national champions. I'm sorry, it's ridiculous.

If we took your brand of analysis all the way to the finish we'd end up with what college football has been trying to get away from for decades and still hasn't managed to get completely away from.

[MarkD83]

I will add some additional facts to the discussion. In the preseason college basketball show all of the analysts mentioned that they put very little weight into any of the polls and that the polls were really just there to "market" games. (In a match up of top five teams......) Jay then mentioned that he tended to rank teams based on what he thought teams would do at the end of the year.

[mjones723]

If we took your brand of analysis all the way to the finish we'd end up with what college football has been trying to get away from for decades and still hasn't managed to get completely away from.


Huh?

[mjones723]

I will add some additional facts to the discussion. In the preseason college basketball show all of the analysts mentioned that they put very little weight into any of the polls and that the polls were really just there to "market" games. (In a match up of top five teams......) Jay then mentioned that he tended to rank teams based on what he thought teams would do at the end of the year.



Then Jay should concentrate on projections and bracketology, not weekly power rankings.

[sagegrouse]

Then Jay should concentrate on projections and bracketology, not weekly power rankings.

Why? This way he gets to play with our heads while he lurks on the Board.

sagegrouse

[dukeofcalabash]

Louisville was missing a key player. I can see rating Louisville ahead of Duke on that basis.

If it worked like you say there would be no need to play the game! Give Duke credit, they won, Louisville lost! End of story.

[CameronBlue]

If he's trolling the fanbase of his alma mater then that's even worse than him pandering to UNC fans and the highers up at espn. Either way he's monsterous boob.

I dunno. I tend to side with the "Jay is messing with Duke fans" take on the matter. ESPN solicits weekly rankings from no less than 18 pundits and analysts. Eighteen...really? That seems a bit excessive for what is really a pointless exercise at this juncture of the season. Typically the column produces a few nuggets of basketball insight and wisdom buried amongst an overwhelming dose of repackaged sports cliches. But if the column is of questionable existentialistic value to college basketball in November you're still left with the economic imperative to attract readers and sell advertising space. Someone with Jay's snarky wit might want to take advantage of the whole affair and let the faithful scrounge for clues in the subtext. You can just smell the scandal. Could be he's just doing his part to generate interest in a feature that is otherwise a bit of a yawn. He ranked us below Louisville! The horror, the horror!

[DevilYouthCoach]

I counted the votes, and Jay Bilas was the only person to vote Louisville #2. Here was the other voting for Louisville: #3 - 3; #4 - 3; #5 - 6; #6 - 2; #7 - 2; and #8 - 1. Mr. Bilas is way out on a limb with this positive appraisal of Louisville. Maybe it's his way of praising Duke's victory over them?

[moonpie23]

speaking of bilas, someone on the UK board mentioned (convo about maggette) that Jay had actually come out and said that he thought the NCAA should have vacated the games Corey played in. Any truth to that?

[MChambers]

If it worked like you say there would be no need to play the game! Give Duke credit, they won, Louisville lost! End of story.
You don't play games for the polls. The polls are just the voters' views of who is best.

You play games to determine championships, ultimately. That's why worrying about polls, especially in November and December, is a waste of time.

Moreover, you can't take too much from a close win. Basketball is sufficiently random that a five point win isn't all that different from a one point loss, from the point of view of deciding who the better team. From the point of view of determining a champion,of course, winning is everything.