College Basketball Man and Machine Consensus Top 25: 10 Teams Are Rated #1 By At Least One Human Or Computer

December 19, 2011 - by David Hess

In the latest set of polls, Syracuse is securely in the top spot of both rankings. They’re listed first on 30 of 31 AP ballots, and on 53 of 64 in the Coaches poll.

Given the simple, biased mechanism that drives the polls — start with last week’s rating, then move people up when they lose and down when they win — the Orange make sense at #1.

We’re not going to argue they don’t deserve that top spot. But it’s by no means a unanimous decision, and no team has yet emerged as a clear front runner this season.

In fact, here are 10 different teams that are ranked first by at least one human poll voter or one respected computer ranking.

Team	W-L	Best Win	Lost To	Rated #1 By
Syracuse	11-0	vs Florida	--	83 humans, both polls
Ohio State	10-1	vs Duke	@ Kansas (w/o Sullinger)	6 humans
Kentucky	9-1	vs UNC	@ Indiana	4 humans, TR Priored Predictive
Louisville	10-0	vs Memphis	--	2 humans
Wisconsin	10-2	vs UNLV	@ UNC, vs Marquette	Sagarin Predictive, Pomeroy
Missouri	11-0	vs Cal (N)	--	TR Pure Predictive
Baylor	9-0	@ BYU	--	Sagarin Elo Chess, TR Overall
Indiana	10-0	vs Kentucky	--	TR Wins Only
Marquette	10-0	@ Wisconsin	--	Sagarin Overall
Duke	9-1	vs Kansas (N)	@ Ohio State	RPI*

*Yes, we know we said “respected”. The RPI is respected — by the selection committee.

The Man And Machine Consensus Top 25

With all these dissenting opinions, we thought it would fun to do a poll of the polls and rankings.

We let each poll or ranking listed above have one ballot, and awarded 25 points for a first place vote, 24 points for a second place, and so on, down to 1 point for 25th place. Here are the results:

Rank	Team	TR Priored	TR Pure Pred	TR Wins	TR Over	Sag Pred	Sag Elo	Sag Over	Pom	RPI	AP	Coach	Total
1	Syracuse	2	2	8	5	2	8	3	4	2	1	1	248
2	Kentucky	1	4	3	6	4	5	2	2	20	3	3	233
3	Marquette	7	5	4	4	5	2	1	8	9	10	10	221
4	Ohio St	4	7	9	8	3	10	4	3		2	2	208
5	Louisville	12	10	5	7	8	6	5	9	10	4	4	206
6	Duke	11	15	6	9	10	7	6	10	1	7	5	199
7	Baylor	14	3	2	1	16	1	9	13		6	7	188
8	Wisconsin	3	6	15	12	1	15	8	1	13	13	14	185
9	Kansas	10	11	12	11	7	11	10	6	12	12	11	173
10	N Carolina	5	9	16	14	6	14	11	5		5	6	169
11	Missouri	6	1	7	2	14	22	16	7		9	8	168
12	Indiana	9	8	1	3	15	3	7	14		17	18	165
13	Murray St		14	10	10	24	4	12		6	22	22	110
14	Michigan St	13	16	18	17	9	21	15	12	19	19	20	107
15	Florida	8	13	23	18	11		21	11		11	12	106
16	Georgetown	15	19	14	15	17	16	14	16		16	16	102
17	UNLV	20	18	19	16	12	18	13	20	8	21	23	98
18	Connecticut	22		20		23	19	18	15	7	8	9	93
19	Ohio		22	11	13		9	17		17			67
20	S Mississippi		24	21	21		17	19		4			50
21	Stanford	16	17		19	13		20	22				49
22	N Iowa			24	23		20	24		3			36
23	Harvard			17	22		13	23		21		25	35
23	Virginia	18	21			18		25	19	22	24		35
25	California	23	12		24	22			17				32
26	Northwestern			13	25		12						28
27	Pittsburgh										15	13	24
28	Xavier										14	15	23
29	Seton Hall									5			21
30	St. Mary's	25	20		20	25	25	22					19
31	Wichita St	17				19			24				18
32	Mississippi St										18	17	17
33	St. Joseph's									11			15
33	BYU	21				21			21				15
33	Saint Louis		25			20			18				15
36	Michigan										20	19	13
37	Iona									14			12
38	Indiana St									15			11
39	Vanderbilt									16			10
39	Creighton	24									23	21	10
39	Texas	19							23				10
42	Minnesota									18			8
43	Marshall		23	22									7
44	Denver									23			3
44	Cleveland St						23						3
44	Illinois										25	24	3
47	Alabama									24			2
47	Mississippi						24						2
49	Kansas St									25			1
49	C Florida			25									1
49	Purdue								25				1

Syracuse is in first place here because of the humans and the RPI. Ignore those, and Kentucky rises up to number one.

The RPI looks absolutely ridiculous when you put it in context here. No Ohio State. No Baylor. No North Carolina. No Missouri. No Indiana. And so on.

Marquette may be the most underrated team in the country right now, at #10 in both polls, despite coming in third in the consensus.

Either that or Wisconsin. The Badgers are ranked in the top 6 of every predictive rating listed, yet are only #13 and #14 in the polls. (This could explain why Marquette is underrated, since their best win is against Wisconsin.)

Snubbed By The Polls?

Five teams make the consensus top 25 despite not being ranked in either human poll:

Ohio — When I saw the Bobcats listed here, I went back and checked to make sure I didn’t accidentally give them any votes that should have gone to Ohio State. Nope, this ranking is legit. Ohio is 9-1, with the only loss coming at Louisville by 4 points. Their best win up to this point is probably Marshall, which explains why they’re unranked.
Southern Miss — This is more an example of why you should ignore the RPI, as opposed to a true poll snub. The Golden Eagles are ranked #4 by the RPI, which is absurd.
Stanford — Now here’s a true case where the voters and the reliable computer ratings disagree. The Cardinal are 9-1, and their lone blemish is a 6-point loss to Syracuse in New York City. Stanford definitely looks like a solid club, and a contender in the Pac-12. This looks like an example of anti-Pac-12 bias. Yes, the league is down. Conference play hasn’t started yet, though, so that should be totally irrelevant for evaluating Pac-12 squads right now.
Northern Iowa — See Southern Miss. Northern Iowa is ranked #3 in the RPI, otherwise they wouldn’t be listed here.
California — Here’s another case of possible anti-Pac-12 bias. Or, it could be anti-lost-to-Missouri-by-40-points bias. That was certainly a stinker, but no team is as bad as they appear in their worst loss. Cal came close to winning on the road against a good San Diego State team, and has taken care of business outside of that, including blowing out a decent Denver team.

Why Are They Ranked?

Five teams are ranked in both the AP and Coaches poll, despite not appearing in the top 25 of any of the computer rankings we included. Not even the RPI.

Pittsburgh — Pittsburgh has been winning (they are 9-1), but not against great competition, and not by all that much. Their early loss to Long Beach State has initially hailed as a great win by LBSU. It’s looking more like a bad loss by Pitt, given that Long Beach’s next best victory is probably over Idaho.
Xavier — Completely explainable: the computers don’t know that several key players were suspended in the loss to South Carolina.
Mississippi State — Yes, they are 11-1. But they lost to Akron at home, and are getting too much credit for beating a couple teams whose name recognition outstrips their 2011-12 quality: Texas A&M and Arizona.
Michigan — The Wolverines are rated around #30 by quite a few computer ratings, so this isn’t as big of a disagreement as it looks. They may be a bit overrated, but not much.
Illinois — The Illini’s ranking was inflated due to their undefeated record. That bubble burst with a 16 point loss to UNLV. They fell, but not quite all the way out of the polls.