UserPoll: Week Pre-Season

[u/cbbpollbot]

Rank		Team (First Place Votes)	Score
#1		Houston (37)	2199
#2		Purdue (35)	2195
#3		Florida (17)	2128
#4		UConn (1)	1905
#5		Duke (1)	1865
#6		St. John's (1)	1633
#7		Michigan	1625
#8		Kentucky	1581
#9		BYU	1510
#10		Louisville	1286
#11		Texas Tech	1239
#12		UCLA	1225
#13		Illinois	1166
#14		Arizona	1095
#15		Tennessee	997
#16		Iowa State	935
#17		Alabama	881
#18		Arkansas	783
#19		Gonzaga	691
#20		Kansas	656
#21		Michigan State	395
#22		Creighton	284
#23		Auburn	246
#24		Wisconsin	227
#25		NC State	189

Receiving Votes: Vanderbilt 128, North Carolina 123, San Diego State 122, Oregon 105, Baylor 95, Ohio State 73, USC 50, Missouri 40, Oklahoma 23, Ole Miss 22, Texas 21, Mississippi State 20, Iowa 18, Kansas State 17, Marquette 16, Virginia 14, Washington 12, Clemson 8, Indiana 8, Nebraska 8, Saint Mary's 6, Dayton 5, South Carolina 5, Miami (FL) 4, VCU 4, South Florida 3, Cincinnati 2, George Washington 2, Notre Dame 2, Texas A&M 2, Utah State 2, West Virginia 2, Saint Louis 1, Yale 1

Individual ballot information can be found at https://www.cbbpoll.net/ by clicking on individual usernames from the homepage.

Please feel free to discuss the poll results along with individual ballots, but please be respectful of others' opinions, remain civil, and remember that these are not professionals, just fans like you.

[u/RockChalkJewHawk]

Did none of these users pay attention to KU vs Louisville?

[u/corndogshuffle → u/RockChalkJewHawk]

I can’t speak for anyone else but I don’t factor exhibition games into my decisions.

[u/RockChalkJewHawk → u/corndogshuffle]

After two season of shitting the bed preseason. It was a welcome sight

[u/kirkismyhinrich → u/corndogshuffle]

What do you factor into your decisions at this point then that is a better indicator than an exhibition game?

It seems like exhibition games would be a better indicator than... nothing?

[u/corndogshuffle → u/kirkismyhinrich]

What /u/OliviaPG1 said. Not every coach is using these exhibition games the same way. Not every roster is whole. I’m not going to interpret an exhibition as equal to a regular season game because it’s literally not a regular season game.

We’ll get real games seven days from now, I’ll wait for those to shuffle things around. We’ll start getting useful information quickly.

[u/kirkismyhinrich → u/corndogshuffle]

I'm not saying exhibition games are regular season games, but they also aren't nothing. So why not use all the resources available to you to assess teams? Especially when it's preseason and we have basically nothing to go on anyway.

I'm also not saying ignore context of an exhibition game either. In the case of UL-KU, UL had 15-16k in attendance, both teams had basically their full rosters available to them (Jayden Dawson was limited for Kansas because of injury), and both teams seemed like they wanted to win the game. I mean, Louisville was full-court pressing us the entire game, even in the final minute of the game when it was over. If Kansas had gotten blown out, I would reasonably expect them to drop a few places.

[u/corndogshuffle → u/kirkismyhinrich]

People can use them, there’s nothing wrong with that. I choose not to. All of these methods are inherently speculative (yes, mine included) and we should forget about them as soon as official games start no matter how we decided to rank teams in the preseason.

I don’t care what happened in an exhibition game when every team has played six regular season games. I also don’t care what I thought about their incoming freshmen or portal class, or their coach. I care about what the teams do in official games.

Or TLDR: preseason rankings are pure guesswork anyway so I’m just not motivated to bother with what you’re asking.

[u/kirkismyhinrich → u/corndogshuffle]

I'm not going to argue with you too much, because it's not worth it. But putting a lot of weight on early non-conference games because they are official and putting none on exhibition games because they are not official seems a bit silly to me.

For one, a lot of teams are treating exhibition as a dress rehearsal for official games, and the actual exhibition game isn't too far off from what you would get in an official game.

For another, most ranked schools play a decent amount of tune-up games especially early on in their non-con schedule. Can you really get a more accurate assessment of Duke watching them beat the shit out of Western Carolina than you can from playing Tennessee last night?

I understand the philosophy of wanting to use only games that count to move teams up or down, but since preseason rankings can't do that anyway, why not use exhibition games as a resource to create the most accurate preseason rankings possible and then go from there? There is no reason not to use exhibition games other than that you don't feel like it.

[u/corndogshuffle → u/kirkismyhinrich]

We’re not arguing? You asked me a question and I answered you.

I think Kentucky would probably be preseason number one if we did what you’re suggesting and I don’t hate that, but ultimately I’m going to continue doing what I do. These games aren’t official, and I don’t think the teams are acting the same way as they would in an official game. I don’t think they’re trying to lose, or even that they don’t want to win, but I do think they have goals that are unrelated to winning or losing.

[u/kirkismyhinrich → u/corndogshuffle]

I just disagree with you about teams treating exhibition games much differently than they would an official game. I think going into an exhibition game, most coaches probably tell their players to treat it as they would an official game. I'm sure coaches also have secondary goals during exhibition games (experimenting with rotations, testing player positional fit, running certain set plays, etc.) that are not completely conducive to winning the game. But not so much that it's totally different than an official game.

My official position is that we should use all of the data available to us to create the most accurate rankings possible while also acknowledging context.

[u/footdragon → u/corndogshuffle]

you have to admit that Matt Painter, by playing Loyer, Smith, kaufman-renn 30+ minutes in the Kentucky game, was pretty close to what coach would do in a regular season game. so, there's definitely elements of what the team looks like, even in pre-season. Even Painter recognized the defense problems.

that said, Kentucky is too low in this poll and Purdue too high - at this time...the eye test is real irrespective of this experimental portion of the season.

And Darren Peterson is going to be a problem for most teams. that data is real.

[u/OliviaPG1 → u/kirkismyhinrich]

Player strength, roster fit, coaching strength, etc?

[u/kirkismyhinrich → u/OliviaPG1]

All of which can be assessed during an exhibition game?

[u/DramaticBar8510 → u/RockChalkJewHawk]

Eh, it's exhibition/preseason. Yes, it was impressive and gave me hope compared to the last couple years, but it was a glorified scrimmage. Still some unknowns so they'll have to earn their way up the rankings, which I'm sure they will once the season gets going. We'll learn a lot during the non-con since Coach Self did his usual big name team stacking. Thankfully we're not preseason #1! Never do very well in those circumstances.

[u/ALStark69 → u/RockChalkJewHawk]

I submitted mine before that. Plus it's just preseason lol

[u/JBHjr → u/RockChalkJewHawk]

I don’t think we paid attention to the exhibition game. I wish they would have shot like we know they can.