INeedMoreCreativity's Week 8 Ballot

Rank	Team	Reason
1	UConn
2	Purdue
3	Kansas
4	Arizona
5	Houston
6	Alabama
7	UCLA
8	Tennessee
9	Arkansas
10	Gonzaga
11	New Mexico
12	Texas
13	Wisconsin
14	Baylor
15	Virginia
16	West Virginia
17	Miami (FL)
18	Duke
19	Missouri
20	Xavier
21	Memphis
22	Florida Atlantic
23	Mississippi State
24	Charleston
25	Kansas State

Overall Rationale

I rank teams mostly by resume, as if the season ended today and I were ranking them for the tournament. I am not trying to find the “best” team, I’m trying to find the “most deserving team”. ------------ I use eye-test evaluations along with computer metrics to inform my rankings. Having a good record against a good schedule is the most important thing for my rankings. Sometimes, a team may have an excellent resume despite poor SOS (such as previous years’ Gonzaga), or a poor resume despite a great SOS (some .500 power conference teams). If your team wins more games against its schedule than other teams would win against that same schedule, then your team has a good resume. ------------ FAQ: ------------ 1. Why is my team ranked so low? My team is ranked #5 in kenpom! -- It’s likely that your team has a resume that’s relatively poor. I bet your team will do pretty well later in the season, but until then, I’ll rank the team with the better resume higher. ------------ 2. Why is that team ranked so high? They don’t even have any ranked wins! -- That team likely still has a good resume! A win against an okay team can be just as good as a win against a great team, depending on where the game is played. An average top-25 team is as likely to win on the road against the #75 team as it is to win hosting the #10. ------------ 3. How do you have Team A ranked over Team B? Team B just whalloped Team A! -- Single game results are only a small part of a team's larger whole body of work. Team A dropped in my rankings according to how bad their loss was, and Team B rose according to how good their win was. I don’t assign any additional weight to the game.