Illinois #19 in final AP Poll

#5      
Rocky
It's interesting that Iowa is under rated, and we are too.
 
#6      
mydosburns
It's amazing how much ap voters took recency bias into account with conference tournaments. Just goes to show how much these polls really mean.
 
#13      
Roundball Sage
The Illini never really established a solid baseline for what kind of team they were with regard to the others and the ranking.

Initially ranked high, then fell out of the Top 25, then back up, then up and down bit. Which mirrored the on-floor performance of a team that could play with great skill and dominance one night and then play scared and have another 5-minute scoring drought the next.

This is still puzzling for a veteran team with Super Seniors.

A lot of players were still finding their game each night. Hawkins... Goode... the red-hot Plummer or the one who couldn’t buy a hoop... the dominant Kofi or the one boxed-in and taken out of his offense rhythm.

Job One for next season is to develop some on-floor consistency at a high level as the (other) Blue Bloods establish for themselves.
 
#14      
Illini_1979
The question I have on these polls is what are they ranking? Overall performance for the year or just a team's performance for the last week or two? Depending on the answer to that question, there could be wildly different polls out there.
 
#15      
phats22
someone needs to validate a snakebitten score correction factor (ie, SBS), because i think that'd get us into the top 10 :)
 
#16      
the juiceman cometh
Illini_1979 said:
The question I have on these polls is what are they ranking? Overall performance for the year or just a team's performance for the last week or two? Depending on the answer to that question, there could be wildly different polls out there.
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I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be overall performance, otherwise youd see much bigger swings in the rankings of teams. Many publications put out "power rankings" which have more of an emphasis on recent performance.
 
#17      
illini80
the juiceman cometh said:
I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be overall performance, otherwise youd see much bigger swings in the rankings of teams. Many publications put out "power rankings" which have more of an emphasis on recent performance.
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And I don’t know either, but my impression is the AP poll is ranking how teams are playing lately (Maybe their last 12-15 games), vs NCAA seeding which is supposed to take into account the entire season. At least the results of the poll seem to indicate that to me. Teams that finish weak tend to fall more than their overall record might indicate and teams that finish strong with similar records likely finish above the previous mentioned teams.
 
#18      
the juiceman cometh
illini80 said:
And I don’t know either, but my impression is the AP poll is ranking how teams are playing lately (Maybe their last 12-15 games), vs NCAA seeding which is supposed to take into account the entire season. At least the results of the poll seem to indicate that to me. Teams that finish weak tend to fall more than their overall record might indicate and teams that finish strong with similar records likely finish above the previous mentioned teams.
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You may be right, but I'm thinking if all the AP cared about were the last few weeks, they'd have put Iowa in the top 10. They're 9-1 in their last 10 (we were the only team to beat them in that stretch). To me that says they take the whole season into account to at least some degree. It's probably overall performance, with some degree of recency bias.
 
#20      
Epsilon
I was looking for some kind of guidance document for how each pollster is supposed to go about the evaluation process (found it for football AP poll but not basketball), when I came across this little gem. If you were ever curious to know who voted for what ranking, here it is.

Side note, was surprised to see Seth Davis actually vote for us to be 2 spots higher than we are, and vote Duke way down to 16 (Duke is 9th in last poll).

Basketball Pollsters at College Poll Tracker

collegepolltracker.com collegepolltracker.com
 
#21      
Epsilon
Hard to imagine it but there actually is at least one pollster that doesn’t even have us ranked.

Matt Murschel at College Poll Tracker

collegepolltracker.com collegepolltracker.com

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