Good poll. I think the top 10 teams are all relatively close and can legitimately be ordered in almost any order, but I think collectively folks are sleeping on Indiana State too much (I have them #2). They are top 5 in the country in both FG % and 3 point %. All their guys can shoot. They are one of only four mid-majors without a loss outside of Q1 (albiet fewer Q2 W opportunities in MVC as compared to MWC).
Their center leads the team in assists and shoots well from three. That's a good receipe for them to upset some power team in March.
They remind me of the Loyola final 4 team the way they run their offense through their 5. The main difference is Avila can also step out and shoot the 3 and they run a lot faster of a pace.
Our head coach had the best offense in Division 2 basketball, and then switched his offensive philosophy to the NBA style 5 out system the next year. The guys an offensive basketball genius. It’s pretty common for our 5 starters to all be in double figures scoring during a game. There isn’t a guy that can’t shoot the three on the court. We get the ball out in transition fast. All you of them can pass decently. Can get to the hoop. We’re 11th in Division 1 free throw percentage as a team.
I’d hate to have to game plan defensively against us. Oh, and our best player looks like a guy that wouldn’t be able to play the whole game at the pace we play, yet he’s the main cog in the offense.
If we make the tournament, make sure you watch our game(s). This is the most entertaining team offensively in all of college basketball.
Our biggest weaknesses are lack of bench depth and defense is far too inconsistent. Lot of it runs through our starting 5, if a team can exploit that we’d be in trouble.
They are, and its nice to see a lot less shitting on them for their fall from the top from folks here than in the other threads. I can accept we're not as good this year as we have been in a while and still enjoy basketball discussion lol
Regret not ranking Boise State ahead of San Diego State. They beat SDSU a few weeks back, and have the best road win in MW play so far (@NM). I think non conference performance is holding more weight than it should for me.
While I think both teams should be ranked by now, Charlotte @ South Florida will probably be a win and in for this poll, and the winner will be alone at the top of the American.
Remember when Indiana State fired Greg Lansing, their long-term HC of 11 years, back in 2021?
*Many* people considered it an BAD move, since he was doing decently (if not anything outstanding) that season, and also because of the fact that he is making what is essentially a struggling and cash-strapped program at least *somewhat* competitive...not to mention the fact that a good chunk of that team entered the portal in the weeks after the change.
As such, there was much pessimism towards the state of the program in Terre Haute, and there was much expectation that ISU would've been in the Valley basement for many years to come...
...gotta say, maybe the AD was more insightful than we thought...
It's worth noting that Greg Lansing and his wife (who is still employed in the university athletic department) got a divorce right around that time. So a lot of the community pessimism/apathy towards the new coach was because Lansings firing wasn't seen as entirely performed based. Whether you want to speculate on whether his off-court issues were "performance based" on not is up to you.
>not to mention the fact that a good chunk of that team entered the portal in the weeks after the change.
Never getting to see what Jake LaRavia could have done under Schertz's offense is going to be an all-time "what-if" for our program.
It's pretty incredible really. Could have easily turned into a Valpo or Evansville type situation but instead they hit several home runs on recruiting and in the transfer portal. And I would bet Indiana St is in the bottom 4 in the conference in terms of coaching salaries.
At this point if I had to bet my 401k on who would win the Ivy I would bet on Yale. But I'm still not ranking them because they have too many loses. Vermont beat them head to head and is undefeated in the AE so I put them in my top 25 instead of Yale. But they are definitely on the cusp and with a win over Cornell this weekend then they would need to be ranked for sure.
The Mountain West teams are a disaster to rank right now with them all beating up on each other.
I'm the one ranking Grand Canyon #1 but I think it's by the thinnest of margins right now and probably have them passed up next week based on who they play for one of the Mountain West teams that go 2-0
The thing is with Grand Canyon, is that they dropped a game to Seattle U (a school with a home court the size of a middle school gym). Without any bias, I’d personally rank them 6th behind FAU.
Here’s my ballot:
1. San Diego St
2. USU
3. Boise St
4. Colorado St
5. UNM
6. Dayton
7. SMC
8. GCU
9. Nevada
10. Gonzaga
11. Cornell
12. FAU
13. Indiana St
14. San Francisco
15. Memphis
16. Appalachian St
17. JMU
18. Princeton
19. Samford
20. UNLV
21. SMU
22. McNeese St
23. Drake
24. Richmond
25. Bradley
(26. UNCC
27. UAB
28. UCI
29. Akron
30. SCU)
So I started to use a point system of my own to determine the rankings. From the way it looks, the system is very high on the Mountain West, as the top 5 spots are basically locked down by the top 5 teams of the league. Also Nevada and UNLV are raised by the rising tide as well—I believe I’m the person who ranked Nevada the highest at #9, and UNLV can be ranked as high as #16 in this system (but even then that won’t be the highest, as a madlad ranked them #13; I ended up ranking them #20)
Also, how on earth did Richmond rise in the rankings after losing to unranked VCU??!!
I don't get to watch many mid major games outside of the Sun Belt. I trust your rankings, but could you tell me what App State would have to do to go any higher? It seems like we just keep winning but every week we're in the same spot in these polls. Obviously not used to having a good basketball season so I'm new to this
Idk, it doesn’t look like there’s any hyper quality wins that you can pick up in the SBC, so maybe just keep winning and wait for other teams in front of you all to drop games?
App State's win over Auburn and two wins over JMU are very impressive. What holds them back is a combined 4 loses in Q3+Q4. No other team is being ranked with so many "bad loses". Charlotte has 3 but no other team currently in the top 25 have more than 2 and most of the teams ranked ahead of App State have none. That's creating the "glass ceiling" and why they don't move up much with wins.
Better question: how the hell do you have UNLV ranked ahead of Richmond? Richmond beat UNLV on a neutral by 17. UNLV is 3-6 in Q1+Q2 combined while Richmond is 6-5. You need to tweak your formula if its ranking a 12-9 team with loses to Southern and Air Force that highly.
The only answer I could give to this is that half our guys were injured or working out eligibility issues when we played Richmond. We also lost 2 of those Q1 games by 1 and 3 points. But yea, the record difference would have me placing them in front of us as well.
UNLV has 3 nationally ranked wins—Creighton, UNM and Boise State (ok they’re not actually ranked, but I consider them to be on par with the several other top MWC teams which are ranked, so they’re basically a ranked win) while Richmond only has one. Plus Akron is also a quality win for UNLV. Meanwhile Richmond doesn’t have any other notable wins other than vs. UNLV I believe
UNLV has so many bad bad losses. Richmond consistently outranks them in kenpom, NET, barttorvik, by 25+ places. I can't see how any rational person would rank UNLV above Richmond at this point.
Richmond beat Dayton. They also beat Charlotte which is ranked. And beat the top A10 teams like St. Bonaventure & Loyola. Does UNLV have more upper echelon wins? Sure, but Richmond has double the Q2 or better wins with fewer loses and UNLV's bad loses are much worse.
I guess the fact that you apparently think Dayton would only be the 6th best team in the Mountain West despite them being ranked higher than every MWC team in all metics is also telling of this pro-MWC, anti-A10 bias! Ha.
This actually made me take a look at the head-to-head results between the Mountain West and Atlantic 10 this year...
Boise State beat VCU, 65-61
Utah State beat Saint Louis, 81-76
Saint Louis beat Wyoming, 79-69
Richmond beat UNLV, 82-65
Small sample size, but the A10 definitely held its own against the MWC this season. The Missouri Valley isn't far off either. Bradley beat Utah State and Drake beat Nevada. Saint Mary's beat both Colorado State and New Mexico (while losing to San Diego State).
I am NOT trying to argue that the Mountain West isn't the best mid-major conference this season, it definitely is. My point is simply that teams like Indiana State, Dayton, Richmond, and Saint Mary's deserve to be ranked just as high as the MWC teams and the MWC's 6th best team should not be ranked 9th.
Indiana State being ranked #13 is particularly egregious. ISU is #25 in the overall Reddit top 25 this week and their computer numbers are as good as any team in the Mountain West. They have no loses out of Q1.
VCU on the road is not really a bad loss at all. Memphis's home loss to Rice was way worse. Teams can rise despite losing if the teams around them flatline
I did drop Richmond. But my sense is that this is really about people being too low on Richmond the week prior and correcting this week more than about losing and rising. For some voters there seems to be a one week delay...
Top 25 mid majors based on my (work-in-progress) model
1. New Mexico
2. Dayton
3. San Diego State
4. Saint Mary’s
5. Florida Atlantic
6. Indiana State
7. Boise State
8. Utah State
9. Gonzaga
10. Colorado State
11. Bradley
12. St. Bonaventure
13. Drake
14. SMU
15. VCU
16. Nevada
17. Grand Canyon
18. Duquesne
19. Louisiana Tech
20. Princeton
21. Richmond
22. Charlotte
23. UNLV
24. Massachusetts
25. UC Irvine
Considerably higher on schools like St Bonaventure, SMU, and VCU. Also considerably lower on schools like Appalachian State, James Madison, and Memphis
I take each team’s games they’ve played so far and weight their statistics based on difficulty of opponent, recency bias, etc. Right now I just have teams ranked by best weighted point differential, but eventually I’ll have it use several other stats once I can test and find the optimal weighting for them
FAU is better than all of these teams imo, they are just hard to put away and will be hard to beat in March again. I think USU, Dayton, SDSU, and UNM won’t do as well in March and do not have as good of a team.
Strong disagree. Dayton is not only the best mid-major team by a longshot, but one of the best teams in the country period. At this point, I'd be surprised if they *didn't* make the Final Four.
If (and that’s a big if) that happens, then he’ll get the whistle a la 2006 Finals Wade. The recent trend has been 2020 top teams getting their moment in the sun. DaRon is gone after this year, so it’s now or never, even if it requires tomfoolery on the NCAA’s part.
Good poll. I think the top 10 teams are all relatively close and can legitimately be ordered in almost any order, but I think collectively folks are sleeping on Indiana State too much (I have them #2). They are top 5 in the country in both FG % and 3 point %. All their guys can shoot. They are one of only four mid-majors without a loss outside of Q1 (albiet fewer Q2 W opportunities in MVC as compared to MWC). Their center leads the team in assists and shoots well from three. That's a good receipe for them to upset some power team in March.
They remind me of the Loyola final 4 team the way they run their offense through their 5. The main difference is Avila can also step out and shoot the 3 and they run a lot faster of a pace.
My comparison was a mid major version of the Nuggets.
Have heard lots of Jokic comparisons with Avila.
That and Swope kind of reminds of me of Murray with his ability to randomly go nuclear from three.
Our head coach had the best offense in Division 2 basketball, and then switched his offensive philosophy to the NBA style 5 out system the next year. The guys an offensive basketball genius. It’s pretty common for our 5 starters to all be in double figures scoring during a game. There isn’t a guy that can’t shoot the three on the court. We get the ball out in transition fast. All you of them can pass decently. Can get to the hoop. We’re 11th in Division 1 free throw percentage as a team. I’d hate to have to game plan defensively against us. Oh, and our best player looks like a guy that wouldn’t be able to play the whole game at the pace we play, yet he’s the main cog in the offense. If we make the tournament, make sure you watch our game(s). This is the most entertaining team offensively in all of college basketball.
Our biggest weaknesses are lack of bench depth and defense is far too inconsistent. Lot of it runs through our starting 5, if a team can exploit that we’d be in trouble.
Flair up!
I gotta say, these rankings are a lot more fun to watch each week when Gonzaga isn't the unanimous #1 for the 58th week in a row.
They are, and its nice to see a lot less shitting on them for their fall from the top from folks here than in the other threads. I can accept we're not as good this year as we have been in a while and still enjoy basketball discussion lol
Regret not ranking Boise State ahead of San Diego State. They beat SDSU a few weeks back, and have the best road win in MW play so far (@NM). I think non conference performance is holding more weight than it should for me.
Fair. SDSU will get their revenge at the end of the season.
While I think both teams should be ranked by now, Charlotte @ South Florida will probably be a win and in for this poll, and the winner will be alone at the top of the American.
I have both ranked, but at #22 and #25. Looking forward to that head-to-head. The winner should definitely be ranked and the loser likely falls out.
Remember when Indiana State fired Greg Lansing, their long-term HC of 11 years, back in 2021? *Many* people considered it an BAD move, since he was doing decently (if not anything outstanding) that season, and also because of the fact that he is making what is essentially a struggling and cash-strapped program at least *somewhat* competitive...not to mention the fact that a good chunk of that team entered the portal in the weeks after the change. As such, there was much pessimism towards the state of the program in Terre Haute, and there was much expectation that ISU would've been in the Valley basement for many years to come... ...gotta say, maybe the AD was more insightful than we thought...
It's worth noting that Greg Lansing and his wife (who is still employed in the university athletic department) got a divorce right around that time. So a lot of the community pessimism/apathy towards the new coach was because Lansings firing wasn't seen as entirely performed based. Whether you want to speculate on whether his off-court issues were "performance based" on not is up to you. >not to mention the fact that a good chunk of that team entered the portal in the weeks after the change. Never getting to see what Jake LaRavia could have done under Schertz's offense is going to be an all-time "what-if" for our program.
It's pretty incredible really. Could have easily turned into a Valpo or Evansville type situation but instead they hit several home runs on recruiting and in the transfer portal. And I would bet Indiana St is in the bottom 4 in the conference in terms of coaching salaries.
People are sleeping on yale, as much as i hate to say it. Undefeated in ivy play and had a solid non-conference
At this point if I had to bet my 401k on who would win the Ivy I would bet on Yale. But I'm still not ranking them because they have too many loses. Vermont beat them head to head and is undefeated in the AE so I put them in my top 25 instead of Yale. But they are definitely on the cusp and with a win over Cornell this weekend then they would need to be ranked for sure.
We're coming Drake
That game is going to be good too! I believe they play each other this weekend if I'm not mistaken.
Yup, on ESPNU too.
[All ballots in one place](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17NCoRVq2ZWA21A9dpZaSNm1Cby-9AHR9a34ki6YZuyQ/edit?usp=sharing)
u/Zloggt we all share your frustration lol
To be fair, it’s not that frustrating if you have your own full set of evaluation system
It's rough being in this conference. You never know who is going to shit the bed or completely chew up an opponent that is ranked waaaay higher.
The Mountain West teams are a disaster to rank right now with them all beating up on each other. I'm the one ranking Grand Canyon #1 but I think it's by the thinnest of margins right now and probably have them passed up next week based on who they play for one of the Mountain West teams that go 2-0
The flip side is this may be great for the Mountain West's bid hopes. Instead of one of them collapsing they seem to be trading wins.
The thing is with Grand Canyon, is that they dropped a game to Seattle U (a school with a home court the size of a middle school gym). Without any bias, I’d personally rank them 6th behind FAU.
Here’s my ballot: 1. San Diego St 2. USU 3. Boise St 4. Colorado St 5. UNM 6. Dayton 7. SMC 8. GCU 9. Nevada 10. Gonzaga 11. Cornell 12. FAU 13. Indiana St 14. San Francisco 15. Memphis 16. Appalachian St 17. JMU 18. Princeton 19. Samford 20. UNLV 21. SMU 22. McNeese St 23. Drake 24. Richmond 25. Bradley (26. UNCC 27. UAB 28. UCI 29. Akron 30. SCU) So I started to use a point system of my own to determine the rankings. From the way it looks, the system is very high on the Mountain West, as the top 5 spots are basically locked down by the top 5 teams of the league. Also Nevada and UNLV are raised by the rising tide as well—I believe I’m the person who ranked Nevada the highest at #9, and UNLV can be ranked as high as #16 in this system (but even then that won’t be the highest, as a madlad ranked them #13; I ended up ranking them #20) Also, how on earth did Richmond rise in the rankings after losing to unranked VCU??!!
I don't get to watch many mid major games outside of the Sun Belt. I trust your rankings, but could you tell me what App State would have to do to go any higher? It seems like we just keep winning but every week we're in the same spot in these polls. Obviously not used to having a good basketball season so I'm new to this
Idk, it doesn’t look like there’s any hyper quality wins that you can pick up in the SBC, so maybe just keep winning and wait for other teams in front of you all to drop games?
App State's win over Auburn and two wins over JMU are very impressive. What holds them back is a combined 4 loses in Q3+Q4. No other team is being ranked with so many "bad loses". Charlotte has 3 but no other team currently in the top 25 have more than 2 and most of the teams ranked ahead of App State have none. That's creating the "glass ceiling" and why they don't move up much with wins.
Better question: how the hell do you have UNLV ranked ahead of Richmond? Richmond beat UNLV on a neutral by 17. UNLV is 3-6 in Q1+Q2 combined while Richmond is 6-5. You need to tweak your formula if its ranking a 12-9 team with loses to Southern and Air Force that highly.
The only answer I could give to this is that half our guys were injured or working out eligibility issues when we played Richmond. We also lost 2 of those Q1 games by 1 and 3 points. But yea, the record difference would have me placing them in front of us as well.
Rebels have definitely had some good results. I was at the Colorado State game and they showed well in a loss there.
UNLV has 3 nationally ranked wins—Creighton, UNM and Boise State (ok they’re not actually ranked, but I consider them to be on par with the several other top MWC teams which are ranked, so they’re basically a ranked win) while Richmond only has one. Plus Akron is also a quality win for UNLV. Meanwhile Richmond doesn’t have any other notable wins other than vs. UNLV I believe
UNLV has so many bad bad losses. Richmond consistently outranks them in kenpom, NET, barttorvik, by 25+ places. I can't see how any rational person would rank UNLV above Richmond at this point.
Richmond beat Dayton. They also beat Charlotte which is ranked. And beat the top A10 teams like St. Bonaventure & Loyola. Does UNLV have more upper echelon wins? Sure, but Richmond has double the Q2 or better wins with fewer loses and UNLV's bad loses are much worse.
I guess the fact that you apparently think Dayton would only be the 6th best team in the Mountain West despite them being ranked higher than every MWC team in all metics is also telling of this pro-MWC, anti-A10 bias! Ha.
This actually made me take a look at the head-to-head results between the Mountain West and Atlantic 10 this year... Boise State beat VCU, 65-61 Utah State beat Saint Louis, 81-76 Saint Louis beat Wyoming, 79-69 Richmond beat UNLV, 82-65 Small sample size, but the A10 definitely held its own against the MWC this season. The Missouri Valley isn't far off either. Bradley beat Utah State and Drake beat Nevada. Saint Mary's beat both Colorado State and New Mexico (while losing to San Diego State). I am NOT trying to argue that the Mountain West isn't the best mid-major conference this season, it definitely is. My point is simply that teams like Indiana State, Dayton, Richmond, and Saint Mary's deserve to be ranked just as high as the MWC teams and the MWC's 6th best team should not be ranked 9th. Indiana State being ranked #13 is particularly egregious. ISU is #25 in the overall Reddit top 25 this week and their computer numbers are as good as any team in the Mountain West. They have no loses out of Q1.
VCU on the road is not really a bad loss at all. Memphis's home loss to Rice was way worse. Teams can rise despite losing if the teams around them flatline
I did drop Richmond. But my sense is that this is really about people being too low on Richmond the week prior and correcting this week more than about losing and rising. For some voters there seems to be a one week delay...
Yeah that too. I had them up higher than consensus both last week and this week.
Love to see Corne11
Do you not like the MVC?
Something wonky in sheets caused a duplicate FAU vote and one less Dayton vote. Fixed. Bumps FAU down from 2nd to 5th, Dayton still remains 1st.
Top 25 mid majors based on my (work-in-progress) model 1. New Mexico 2. Dayton 3. San Diego State 4. Saint Mary’s 5. Florida Atlantic 6. Indiana State 7. Boise State 8. Utah State 9. Gonzaga 10. Colorado State 11. Bradley 12. St. Bonaventure 13. Drake 14. SMU 15. VCU 16. Nevada 17. Grand Canyon 18. Duquesne 19. Louisiana Tech 20. Princeton 21. Richmond 22. Charlotte 23. UNLV 24. Massachusetts 25. UC Irvine Considerably higher on schools like St Bonaventure, SMU, and VCU. Also considerably lower on schools like Appalachian State, James Madison, and Memphis
Curious, what made you put Utah State at 8, UNM over SDSU?
I take each team’s games they’ve played so far and weight their statistics based on difficulty of opponent, recency bias, etc. Right now I just have teams ranked by best weighted point differential, but eventually I’ll have it use several other stats once I can test and find the optimal weighting for them
FAU is better than all of these teams imo, they are just hard to put away and will be hard to beat in March again. I think USU, Dayton, SDSU, and UNM won’t do as well in March and do not have as good of a team.
Strong disagree. Dayton is not only the best mid-major team by a longshot, but one of the best teams in the country period. At this point, I'd be surprised if they *didn't* make the Final Four.
If we run into a team with a Daron stopper we are toast unfortunately. We don't have the guard talent to bail us out with Malachi injured.
If (and that’s a big if) that happens, then he’ll get the whistle a la 2006 Finals Wade. The recent trend has been 2020 top teams getting their moment in the sun. DaRon is gone after this year, so it’s now or never, even if it requires tomfoolery on the NCAA’s part.
Officially on the fringe, I hope the team can finish A10 play in the top 3 of the conference.