It took 345 hours but we just wrapped up our second annual Tweeting the Preview series, and unsurprisingly, Duke is the choice for everyone here at RTC to repeat as national champions.  In the interest of transparency, we’ll be publishing our Top 25 each Monday with the editors’ ballots attached so that if you’re wondering how on earth your favorite team could be ranked so low, you’ll know exactly who is responsible.  This will also be the official RTC ballot that we submit each week to the Blogpoll folks, assuming someone is running that again this year.  We’ll also try to note any trends and interesting items each week to give the poll a little more context, and that will be located below the poll and after the jump each week.  To see how we did last year, check out our 2009-10 preseason poll — some good (Butler, WVU); some not (UNC, Texas).

QnD Analysis.

• The unanimous #1 team in the nation: Duke. This was an inevitability once Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith decided to join forces with Kyrie Irving and the Plumlee brothers on a quest for back-to-back titles. It became even more of a lock when Purdue‘s Robbie Hummel went down with a torn ACL the first day of practice, dropping a popular candidate for the #2 spot behind the Blue Devils down to #9 (and that’s high compared to most other preseason polls).
• Our experts don’t seem to be buying into North Carolina as much as the AP or coaches. We won’t deny that there’s a wealth of talent on the roster, notably diaper dandy extraordinaire Harrison Barnes. The general consensus here, though, is that we need to see improvement before we hand the Heels a top-10 ranking.
• Variance.  One voter is taking a page out of Doug Gottlieb’s book and buying Illinois more than the rest. The same applies to another voter’s non-belief in Kentucky at this early stage, likely due to their inexperience, while he does like Georgetown’s backcourt. Two voters also envision Wisconsin making their usual ascent into the rankings. Their vote was likely because of the trust they have for Bo Ryan and his Badgers to overachieve.
• Conference Call.  Big Ten (5), Big East (4), Big 12 (4), ACC (4), SEC (2), Pac-10 (1), Atlantic 10 (1), MWC (1), Horizon (1), C-USA (1), WCC (1).

zhayes9 (301 Posts)

This entry was posted on Monday, November 8th, 2010 at 5:14 pm by zhayes9 and is filed under 2010-11 Season Preview, blogpoll. Tagged: baylor, butler, duke, florida, florida state, georgetown, gonzaga, illinois, kansas, kansas state, kentucky, memphis, michigan state, missouri, north carolina, ohio state, pittsburgh, purdue, san diego state, syracuse, temple, villanova, virginia tech, washington, wisconsin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.