WBB: Landmark Conference

[gordonmann]

Well, I was going to vote for Scranton No. 1 and then I read Saratoga's post and changed my mind!

Seriously, I went round and round and round on whether to pick Amherst, Tufts or Scranton No. 1 in the preseason. I settled on Tufts and will probably stay there. Unfortunately I probably won't learn much about Tufts until they play CNU at the Stevens holiday tournament.

Fortunately I will get to see Scranton in person at the D3hoops.com Classic. So if the Lady Royals beat George Fox convincingly, I could switch without Tufts doing anything wrong.

[Rofrog]

Gordon I hope your joking on that take.You should vote on who beat who up to that date not wait until they play someone in Vegas.That is a piss poor way to vote in my eyes,just saying!

[saratoga]

Ro:

Take your B/P medicine...Gordon is yanking your chain.

All is well.

I do wonder why all those voters gave the number 1 nod to Scranton pre-season (8 I believe), then defected to Amherst after 2 games?

Hopefully, the Lady Royal's will win their hearts back.

In my book:

1.Scranton
2.Tufts
3.Bowdoin
4.Hope
5.St. Thomas
6.Amherst

Then you guys can take it from there.

[Rofrog]

Yes:Saratoga I  take the B/P every morning thanks for the concerns!!!Hopefully i can catch you at a game and grab a drink maybe this upcoming tournament before heading to Vegas !!!

[Tim the Enchanter]

Saratoga:  I was wondering the same thing. 

Amherst gained 4 first place votes from Scranton as well as from Bowdoin, + 2 more from Tufts.  I wonder what the appeal to the voters was to move their votes to Amherst, as none of the other three have lost and Amherst appears to have had the weakest schedule to date of any of these.

[saratoga]

Tim:

Probably 2 primary factors....

*Name recognition
*Demonstrated history of success.

Ro:
Sounds like a plan.

[Rofrog]

Gordon:I like your idea putting Tufts 1in the pool!I will never forget that day The Lady Royals just became the number 1 team in the nation and they where going into a trap game that same night at MT St Mary's and man did they get there ass handed to them I think they lost by 20 and that was with  Mellody,Williams,Matt's etc.That  was an ugly game lol. I was at that game it wasnt pretty believe me it remind me of that game at Desales when they had a lead over 20pts and Mellody by herself brought the team back.Still today the best player to wear that Lady Royals uniform in my eyes!!

[saratoga]

Not that this Top 25 carries any weight come tournament time, nor is it any more reliable than Stanky's Nanticoke Grill D-3 Top 25, but I'm having a bit of a difficult time wondering how this voting crew goes from giving Tufts 3 first place votes last week & after beating 2 teams with a combined record of 8-5, they somehow have opened the eyes of the masses and pick up an additional 11 first place votes?

Meanwhile, the Lady Royal's knock off the then undefeated number 9 team plus another (both with a combined record of 9-3 & both on the road) and they only pick up two, as in 2 additional first place votes?

Splain that to me Lucy?

Truly a head scratcher but not worth arguing.

Hard to believe the season is one quarter over already.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

A difference of 12 points means it wasn't that cut and dry. It was debatable and not everyone was on the same page. Scranton was clearly on top of some ballots and ahead of Tufts in others. Just not all.

The Royals are #2. Enjoy that fact. I don't think it's worth getting too upset about. Sure, they beat DeSales ... impressive. That will still be part of their resume every week there is another vote.

[saratoga]

Not upset in the least.

I can think of about 390 other schools wishing they had Scranton's problem.

Just trying to figure out the logic of some of the voters.

Perhaps on your next show you can bring in Steve Kornacki to break down the geographic voting patterns & what the exit polls are saying.

[gordonmann]

My guess is that several people had Amherst, Tufts, Scranton in that order and just slid those teams up in that order after Amherst lost. The order of the Top 5 overall tends to be reflected in a lot of individual voters' ballots.

This is also a guess, but I think some voters saw Hope's massive margins of victory and decided they are the best team, at least right now. Hope didn't have any No. 1 votes last week. If Hope had lost to Calvin or had a close margin of victory, maybe Scranton picks up those No. 1 votes instead of Hope.

One other thing that's more specific to my ballot. I had DeSales as No. 19 last week, much lower than No. 9 in the poll. This isn't intended to denigrate a really good win for Scranton, but I generally expect a Top 3 team to beat the No. 19 team in the country by 11 points on the road. I know the game was tighter than 11 points, so I bumped DeSales up to 16th, which is still lower than No. 11. Scranton remains in front of every team but Tufts because that's how I had them entering the week but it's certainly reasonable to go the other way.

[Dave 'd-mac' McHugh]

Gordon's point is a good one. When I vote on the men's side, I first always feel the higher ranked team is going to win (thus the reason I voted for them as such) and I don't downgrade the lower ranked team on my ballot for losing. I also don't have teams ranked like the rest of the poll - that hardly happens for any voter; I in fact don't have four teams on my men's ballot who are in the Top 25 one of which is pretty high up and I haven't voted for them once. So in Gordon's example if I was voting similarly, I wouldn't give Scranton more credit for the win than I was already going to give them. I probably would have done the same as Gordon or at least made sure I didn't push DeSales further down my ballot with the loss.

So there are voters like Gordon who probably didn't have DeSales nearly as high and thus didn't feel they needed to push Scranton up in their ballot with that victory. Others also probably had DeSales pretty high (thus the compensation for those who voted like Gordon lower and left DeSales as high as they had been) and instead of necessarily pushing Scranton up higher probably felt they misread DeSales and instead lowered the Bulldogs instead.

There are many ways to skin the same cat - as it where - and no voter thinks the same. When a team is near the top, there is less ability to really move them up and a lot of voters will readjust the teams they play ranked below them. It doesn't mean the top teams can't move, but it is far easier to move down than it is to move up especially when you get towards the top of a ballot.

[Rofrog]

I just don't see that logic because you had Number 1 team Amherst get beat by a team that wasn't ranked at 4-3 and drop only four spots.But Scranton Beats Desales at Desales which by the way ranked 8/9 in both polls and Gordon you said you had them 19th where was Emmanuel ranked in your poll.See if you call desales a close game then what do you call Tufts 4pt win  over Brandeis and are they ranked?

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I just don't see that logic because you had Number 1 team Amherst get beat by a team that wasn't ranked at 4-3 and drop only four spots.But Scranton Beats Desales at Desales which by the way ranked 8/9 in both polls and Gordon you said you had them 19th where was Emmanuel ranked in your poll.See if you call desales a close game then what do you call Tufts 4pt win  over Brandeis and are they ranked?

You can't look as polls by position, because it's an aggregate of how 25 voters positioned a team.  You really have to look at the points.  Scranton went from 575 to 599.  Four voters already had them #1, so they couldn't gain any points from those four.  That means 21 voters gave them an extra 24 points.  Essentially, everyone who could moved them up one spot (likely the one Amherst vacated) and a couple moved them up multiple spots (jumping a team that didn't lose, unless there was a real funky ballot somewhere).

Not sure what else you want from the voters.

(By the way, Tufts only gained 19 points despite picking up an additional 11 first place votes - that means four voters who didn't have them at #1 didn't move them up at all - those are probably the voters who already had Scranton at #1).

You can tell a lot about how people voted by looking at the points changes, especially at the top of the poll.

We can tell from Week 3 that voters were, overall, more impressed with what Scranton did that week than what Tufts did, although it's still very close, as you'd expect.

[Pat Coleman]

nor is it any more reliable than Stanky's Nanticoke Grill D-3 Top 25

Sure it is.