willweaverrva's Week 17 Ballot
| Rank | Team | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Houston | Houston and Purdue move up by virtue of not losing, but Houston notched two very impressive wins against strong competition. |
| 2 | Purdue | |
| 3 | Tennessee | |
| 4 | UConn | The Big East is weird. UConn gets blown out by Creighton, and Creighton gets blown out by St. John's. |
| 5 | Marquette | |
| 6 | Arizona | Arizona drops a bit after coming up short against Washington State in one of the best games of the season. A tournament 1-seed is still not out of reach. |
| 7 | North Carolina | |
| 8 | Duke | Wake Forest is now ranked on this ballot, so Duke doesn't fall quite as far as I wanted them to here. |
| 9 | Auburn | |
| 10 | Kansas | |
| 11 | Illinois | |
| 12 | Iowa State | |
| 13 | Alabama | |
| 14 | Saint Mary's | I am still high on the Gaels, but they're slowly moving down because their wins just aren't nearly as strong as the teams ahead of them, though San Francisco is pretty decent. |
| 15 | Gonzaga | |
| 16 | Washington State | Washington State's stunning win (and season sweep) of Arizona offsets the damage of their rather bad loss to Arizona State for the most part. |
| 17 | South Carolina | The Gamecocks are holding on but they have four brutal games left on their regular season schedule, and Torvik only favors them to win one of them. |
| 18 | Florida | |
| 19 | Wake Forest | New to this week's ballot. Wake Forest has been under the radar all season but they are very good metrics-wise and are in the top 25 of the NET. It's time to rank them. |
| 20 | Utah State | I'm probably in the minority in keeping Utah State ranked but they beat a good San Diego State team and have stopped the bleeding. |
| 21 | Dayton | I feel like this is a bit generous since they lost a game they absolutely should have won, but George Mason is not that bad and EagleBank Arena is a tough place to play. No more mistakes, though. |
| 22 | South Florida | USF is the hottest team in the country. The metrics hate them and they have no Q1 wins, but my eyes see differently. If they don't make any mistakes they are dangerous. |
| 23 | Clemson | New to this week's ballot. |
| 24 | Boise State | New to this week's ballot. A lot of teams in the bottom half of my ballot from last week and in my "almost famous" section lost, so I kind of had to stretch here. |
| 25 | Kentucky | New to this week's ballot. Okay, Kentucky, you can come back after putting up 117 points against Alabama without needing overtime. |
Overall Rationale
Dropped from poll: Virginia (20), San Diego State (21), Baylor (22), Colorado State (23). New to poll: Wake Forest, Clemson, Boise State, Kentucky. Almost famous: San Diego State, McNeese State, BYU, New Mexico, Nebraska.