Rush The Court

A few weeks ago we reintroduced out BCS rankings that tried to figure out what college basketball would look like if it adopted a system similar to what college football presently has. We also listened to our readers and incorporated many of their suggestions for potential computer rankings to reconfigure our rankings. We now have five computer polls included and were able to throw out the highest and lowest computer rankings for each team. We wanted to go to six computer polls to mirror the BCS, but neither Colley nor the Bradley-Terry rankings were out by noon and frankly by the time they were updated another set of games would probably have been played. The human polls are all from Monday and the computer polls are all from today. For the human polls were used the AP and ESPN/USA Today polls. For the computer polls we used the following polls:

• KenPom.com
• Sagarin ratings (ELO CHESS version)
• RPI
• LRMC (no margin of victory version)
• Massey Ratings

We used the same basic rules as we had listed in our reintroduction post with the exception of adding more computers allowing us to drop the highest and lowest scores.

Note: The highest and lowest computer rankings, which were both thrown out, were marked in green and red respectively.

General Notes

• Out of the top teams the computers had the hardest time figuring out San Diego State(#1 in Sagarin and #16 in KenPom) and UConn(#6 in both Sagarin and RPI, but #24 in the KenPom). Washingtonwas also an interesting team that was ranked 6th in KenPom, but failed to make the top 25 in Sagarin or LRMC. Georgetownwasn’t far behind as it was ranked 7th in RPI, but failed to make the top 25 in KenPom or LRMC.
• Duke was punished much more severely by the computers, which ranked them 8th overall, than they were by the human polls, which ranked them 5th, after their loss at FSU.
• A couple other notes for teams that failed to make our BCS top 25, but made a big impact in a single poll: St. John’s wasn’t in the top 25 in three computer polls, but was ranked 11th in the RPI; Maryland wasn’t ranked in four computer polls and didn’t receive a single human vote for being in the top 25, but was ranked 14th in KenPom; Tennessee also wasn’t in four computer polls and didn’t receive a single human vote for being in the top 25, but was ranked 11th in the LRMC.
• A special shout-out goes to Belmontfor almost making the top 25 in the KenPom poll (ranked 26th).

BCS Match-Ups

• Rose Bowl: #3 Syracuse (At-large) vs #17 Washington (Pac-10 Champ) – Having lost the Big Ten champion to the BCS Championship Game, the Rose Bowl officials would take the first at-large pick to select a marquee program with a large fan base to help pull in the fans. Both teams are experiencing some injury issues at this time although Syracuse’s appear to be relatively minor in terms of duration than Washington’s and the Huskies are also dealing with some potential off-the-field legal issues. I would expect Syracuse to be heavily favored in this one particularly if Kris Joseph were able to return from his head injury in time for the game.
• Sugar Bowl: #10 Kentucky (SEC Champ) vs #11 Texas(At-large) – The Big Easy would be rocking for this one with two huge fan bases that are relatively close to New Orleans filling Bourbon Street and the French Quarter. Bothteams feature a lot of talented young players so the NBA scouts would be all over this one. Our big question here is whether the Texas big men would be able to keep up with Terrence Jones. We say what Alex Oriakhi did against them a couple weekends ago and Oriakhi hasn’t been as productive as Jones has been this season. If Tristan Thompsonand Gary Johnson aren’t up to the task, it could be a long night for Rick Barnes.
• Fiesta Bowl: #4 Pittsburgh (Big East Champ) vs #5 San Diego State(At-large) – This one would be a slugfeston the inside with Kawhi Leonard and Malcolm Thomas going up against the Panther front line that is 2nd in the nation in rebounding while the Aztecs are surprisingly bad on the boards (139th nationally). On the outside D.J. Gaywould have his hands full trying to keep up with Ashton Gibbs and Brad Wanamaker. Either way this should be one of the most interesting games of any of the BCS match-ups.
• Orange Bowl: #6 Duke (ACC Champ) vs #9 BYU (At-large) – The Orange Bowl marketers would love this one even if the South Beach clubs wouldn’t (not expecting Mormons to be ringing up huge tabs on Collins). The big match-up here is Nolan Smith versus Jimmer Fredette. Jimmer would have his hands full trying to guard Smith, but we think that Jimmer would still finda way to score 30. The big question is whether BYU has enough fire power to compete with the rest of Duke’s team especially Kyle Singler. Our guess is probably not particularly if Duke is able to use the time off to get a healthy Kyrie Irving back, but we can just tell that the entire country is getting worked up for this one. It’s basically the Boise State–OklahomaFiesta Bowl times a hundred since most of the nation doesn’t despite the Sooners. 

• BCS Championship Game: #1 Ohio State (Big Ten Champ) vs #2 Kansas (Big 12 Champ) – A dream match-up for all of those in the Midwest who complain about East Coast bias. Jared Sullinger against Marcusand Markieff Morriswould be a phenomenal match-up although we would give Sullingerthe slight edge. The big question is how the guards would perform because they have been much more erratic. With Aaron Craft, William Buford, and David Lighty going against Josh Selby, Tyshawn Taylor, and Tyrel Reed there should be plenty of firepower on the outside to make this one of the more entertaining championship games in years.

Miscellaneous

• Everyone will be talking about how two Big East teams that were in the top 10 (Villanova and UConn) got shut out, but the more interesting point may be that the Big Ten, which many consider to be the premier conference in the nation this year didn’t even get an at-large team into the BCS. This is primarily a reflection of the relatively large gap in the BCS rankings between the Buckeyes and the next highest rated team from the Big Ten (Purdue). The BCS Committee would have a hard time justifying putting in a Big Ten team over another of the at-large teams given how well Texas and BYU travel. You could make a case for putting Purdue in ahead of BYU, but I think the committee would go with BYU’s equally strong fan base and the advertising excitement of Jimmer trying to take down the defending national champions.