College basketball rankings: UNC drops 10 spots in Top 25 (and 1) after loss

[BandAlum83]

College basketball rankings: UNC drops 10 spots in Top 25 (and 1) after loss to Wofford

The Tar Heels' loss to the Terriers was the biggest upset of the season

I wanted to give it its own thread instead of it being embedded in the Wofford thread.

North Carolina took a 23-game home winning streak into Wednesday night's contest with a Wofford team that oddsmakers made a 25-point underdog. So, on paper, this should've been light work.

But it wasn't.

The Terriers led by a point at the half, by as many as 14 points in the second half and ultimately held on for a 79-75 win over the reigning national champions at the Dean Smith Center. It was, by some measurements, the biggest upset of the season

Duke moved up 1 to number 9. They dropped from #1 to #10 after the BC loss.

[UrinalCake]

That sounds about right. Parrish updates his poll every day and is not afraid to have drastic swings in response to a single game. Not only did UNC lose to a really lowly ranked team at home but their win over Tennessee doesn’t look quite as impressive after the Vols struggled against Furman. Their best wins are I guess Michigan and Arkansas.

[ChillinDuke]

College basketball rankings: UNC drops 10 spots in Top 25 (and 1) after loss to Wofford

The Tar Heels' loss to the Terriers was the biggest upset of the season

I wanted to give it its own thread instead of it being embedded in the Wofford thread.





Duke moved up 1 to number 9. They dropped from #1 to #10 after the BC loss.

I get the inexactness of rankings. And the various viewpoints that people have on how to use rankings and why and how to construct rankings.

But any list that has Duke as the 10th (or now 9th) best team in the country has next to zero utility for me. It just seems terribly off base and probably overreactive, to my eye. To say nothing of UK being ranked 4th (wait, can we talk about that for a second? what has UK done this season? they haven't played a single true road game, have beaten only two Top-100 KenPom teams - #35 VT by 7 and #69 Vermont by 4, and have close wins against #162 Harvard (9 pts), #168 Troy (8), and #153 Utah Valley (10). that is the resume of an extrapolated Final Four team? c'mon Gary. even KenPom has UK at #16.)

- Chillin

[UrinalCake]

I really like Parrish, I think he understands the game well and he follows it relentlessly and he has always been fair to Duke. But after seeing his latest daily top-25 and 1, I am starting to wonder if he is bi-polar. After the BC loss he dropped us from #1 all the way down to #10, with the reasoning that nobody else in the top 15 had a loss as bad as that one. But then after this weekend's carnage he has us back up to #1. He kept AZ State at #2 despite the loss, perhaps in order to prove the point he has been making lately that a loss shouldn't automatically cause a team to drop.

I don't disagree with his rankings, but he's sort of contradicted himself from week to week.

[fuse]

I’m not a Parrish fan at all.
He knows his basketball for sure.
Tying his identity to something so negative as his Poll Attacks schtick has really left me disinterested in his opinions.

[Wander]

I really like Parrish, I think he understands the game well and he follows it relentlessly and he has always been fair to Duke. But after seeing his latest daily top-25 and 1, I am starting to wonder if he is bi-polar. After the BC loss he dropped us from #1 all the way down to #10, with the reasoning that nobody else in the top 15 had a loss as bad as that one. But then after this weekend's carnage he has us back up to #1. He kept AZ State at #2 despite the loss, perhaps in order to prove the point he has been making lately that a loss shouldn't automatically cause a team to drop.

I don't disagree with his rankings, but he's sort of contradicted himself from week to week.

I don't think he's contradicted himself. He argued very logically that Duke deserves to be #1 in part because that one loss matters less and less as the season goes on, and in part because the BC loss doesn't look as bad as it did at the time:

"But the truth is that Boston College, over the past few weeks, has proven to be better than anybody realized back when the Eagles beat Duke earlier this month. They're now a top-75 KenPom team -- one that nearly upset Virginia at Virginia on Saturday. And Michigan State still hasn't even played, much less beaten, a top-75 KenPom team on the road, for whatever that's worth."

I agree with him we should be #1 right now.

[ipatent]

This is the CBS rankings.

[weezie]

...I agree with him we should be #1 right now.

Me too. Plus we beat a ranked team yesterday and sparty only pounded on our old pals cle state.

All in good fun at this point but I'm also enjoying Buzzie's boy get their keisters kicked in syr. syr is TALL.

[BD80]

... syr is TALL.

We're taller ...

[slower]

Wasn't there some discussion by the mods that UNC issues should be dealt with in general "This Week in The ACC" threads?

[sagegrouse]

Wasn't there some discussion by the mods that UNC issues should be dealt with in general "This Week in The ACC" threads?

Yes, as opposed to being treated in separate threads, although this thread is as much about Duke's ranking as UNC's.

[richardjackson199]

#1. Sparty
#2. Duke
#3. Villanova
#4. ASU
#5. Xavier
...

http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/rankings

[BandAlum83]

Wasn't there some discussion by the mods that UNC issues should be dealt with in general "This Week in The ACC" threads?

This thread was created prior to that aforementioned rule. But this thread was created to talk about the Gary Parrish approach to the Top 25 and one. He knocked down Duke significantly (1 to 10) after the BC loss. As expected, Carolina's loss cost big time. Now that no undefeted teams remain, Duke is back to number one. Parrish points out that Duke is the only team with 4 top 40 kenpom wins. Also BC was on the road and is now in the top 75 on kenpom.

He generally tries to look at overall resume instead of how they are playing at the current moment. Take from it what you will.

[UrinalCake]

I don't think he's contradicted himself. He argued very logically that Duke deserves to be #1 in part because that one loss matters less and less as the season goes on, and in part because the BC loss doesn't look as bad as it did at the time:

I agree with his reasoning for why we should be #1 over MSU, I guess my issue is why he dropped us down to #10 to begin with.
Ranking teams is a tough job, some people place more emphasis on good wins while others value bad losses. His metric of top-40 wins really helps us, but seems like an arbitrary cutoff point. I imagine we have a couple wins over teams that are right in the 30-40 range while other top teams have wins over opponents ranked 40-50, so using the cutoff of top-40 rather than top-50 makes us look better.

Overall I think that we, Nova, and MSU are in a group by ourselves. For some reason I'm still not sold on Arizona State.

[JasonEvans]

I agree with his reasoning for why we should be #1 over MSU, I guess my issue is why he dropped us down to #10 to begin with.
Ranking teams is a tough job, some people place more emphasis on good wins while others value bad losses. His metric of top-40 wins really helps us, but seems like an arbitrary cutoff point. I imagine we have a couple wins over teams that are right in the 30-40 range while other top teams have wins over opponents ranked 40-50, so using the cutoff of top-40 rather than top-50 makes us look better.

Overall I think that we, Nova, and MSU are in a group by ourselves.

I agree that T40 seems arbitrary, but it is a good guide for teams making the NCAA tourney. Most years, every team ranked in the top 40 in KenPom will at least get an at-large bid. Once you get outside the top 40, you start to see teams missing. So T40 can be see as "tourney teams."

-Jason "and now that I have finished somewhat defending Parish, I need to go take a shower" Evans