Maladroit44's Week 2 Ballot

Rank	Team	Reason
1	Gonzaga	Didn't crush Michigan State, but the Spartans are probably solid and in fairness, the game was played on a literal aircraft carrier.
2	Houston	Took care of business, including a really dominant win at Saint Joseph's.
3	Duke	Rocked a decent Jacksonville team out of the gate.
4	Kentucky	Routed Howard and Duquesne in definitive fashion.
5	Baylor	Let Norfolk State hang around just a bit, but I don't hold it against them much.
6	UCLA	Didn't let LBSU think they had a chance for even a second.
7	Kansas	Kansas struggled a little against a very bad Omaha team. Not much, but they did.
8	Arkansas	Arkansas dilly-dallied a bit against NDSU, but pulled away in the second half and dispatched Fordham in comprehensive fashion.
9	Arizona	Arizona established themselves with authority by crushing solid Nicholls and Southern squads.
10	Wisconsin	Perhaps nobody posted a more impressive first-week win than Wisconsin, which throttled Stanford and didn't let the Cardinal within a score in the second half.
11	North Carolina	It took UNC quite a while to put Charleston away, though in their defense, Charleston is pretty decent.
12	Alabama	Neither Longwood nor Liberty is a true marquee win, but they're both capable foes and Alabama made both look silly from the jump.
13	Michigan State	For a team with a lot of uncertainty about where it stands, nearly stunning Gonzaga is a major point in their favor.
14	Creighton	Hard to say just yet how bad struggling with Saint Thomas is, but it's probably not great.
15	Virginia	Briefly trailed NC Central in the second half, but otherwise a clean week.
16	Saint Mary's	Two very complete wins against ORU and Vermont (each hanging around the top 100 in Kenpom/Torvik).
17	UConn	Put away Stonehill and Boston in thoroughly dominant fashion.
18	Texas	The win over UTEP was fine. The win over HCU? Now that was just funny.
19	San Diego State	Needed all 40 minutes to pull out a home win over BYU, but you could argue getting that win is a net positive.
20	Indiana	I was kind of expecting Indiana to play with their food. They didn't. Credit to them for that.
21	Texas Tech	Methodically blew out Northwestern State and TX Southern.
22	West Virginia	Beat the living daylights out of Pitt (who are supposed to be...well, not good, but solid).
23	Dayton	SMU took them down to the wire, but Dayton came away with a 12-point win. Some questions have been raised, however.
24	UC Irvine	Walked into Eugene and simply took apart a ranked Oregon team, leading by as much as 27.
25	Texas A&M	Dismantled Abilene Christian by 19 points, their second-largest loss since the start of the 2021-22 season.

Overall Rationale

I'm re-ranking from scratch each week this year! So, uh, don't bother yelling at me about week-to-week movements, since I'm not looking at those. Next five: Miami, Illinois, Xavier, Auburn, Purdue