INeedMoreCreativity's Week 2 Ballot

Rank	Team	Reason
1	Gonzaga
2	Houston
3	Duke
4	Baylor
5	Kentucky
6	UCLA
7	Texas
8	North Carolina
9	Kansas
10	Indiana
11	Arizona
12	Arkansas
13	Illinois
14	Alabama
15	San Diego State
16	Virginia
17	Tennessee
18	Texas A&M
19	Michigan State
20	Iowa
21	Auburn
22	Creighton
23	Texas Tech
24	West Virginia
25	Memphis

Overall Rationale

I rank teams mostly by resume, as if 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.