The Final 2010-11 RTC Top 25 is a little late this week as many of RTC’s correspondents and pollsters are traveling about the country in preparation for the NCAA Tournament, but nevertheless, here she is. Ohio State and Kansas—with matching 32-2 records—predictably did not move at the top as the Buckeyes remained at #1 and the Jayhawks #2.  QnD analysis after the jump…

QnD Analysis.

• Ohio State’s only two losses were on the road against Purdue and Wisconsin—two of the most hostile environments for an away team to play in—they recently won the Big 10 Tournament over Penn State, and boast an experienced group of talent around their freshman big man Jared Sullinger; it is no wonder why the Buckeyes are the clear #1 team in the country.
• High Risers and Big Droppers—No surprise here that UConn rose the most in the rankings compared to any other team. The Huskies did what no other Big East team has done before by winning five games in five days to capture the Big East crown, and their impressive performance was reflected in the poll as they rose nine spots. Three teams dropped four spots as they faltered in their conference tournaments. BYU was smoked by San Diego State, Wisconsin lost to Penn State by only three points—if you are a fan of offensive basketball this game was certainly not your cup of tea—and Kansas State lost to Colorado by a dozen.
• Where to rank Arizona?—After suffering a brutally tough loss to Washington in the Pac-10 Tournament, the Wildcats were ranked as low as 23 in one poll, and topped off at 12 in another. Arizona, among several other teams throughout the year, has seemingly always been all over the place in the rankings, but they will have an opportunity to prove their stay high in the poll with a successful weekend in the NCAA Tournament.
• Just one new face—UNLV snuck back into the rankings after a fairly long absence. The Runnin’ Rebels have won six of seven games with their lone loss coming by just two points to Mountain West Champion San Diego State.
• Also Receive Votes—Even though we have reached the end of the regular season, there is not much of an agreement with the teams ranked near the bottom of the poll and those who are on the outside looking in. In this week’s poll, there are six teams who received a vote for the top 25.
• Conference Call—Big East (7), Big 10 (3), Big 12 (4), MWC (3), SEC (2), Atlantic 10 (2), ACC (2), Pac-10 (1), WAC (1)

KDoyle (99 Posts)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 16th, 2011 at 4:05 pm by KDoyle and is filed under blogpoll, Regular Features. Tagged: arizona, byu, jared sullinger, kansas, kansas state, ohio state, uconn, unlv, 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.