While we’ve been out of pocket, we haven’t been able to produce a blogpoll ballot in several weeks, but our fearless basketblogging cabal went on without us in the interim, and we’re now at week seven. By virtue of its scintillating second half against Georgetown last weekend, Memphis proved worthy of earning the #1 spot in this week’s poll – the third #1 team of the season (UCLA and UNC were the others).

Quick thoughts. Pitt made the biggest leap of the week (from #15 to #8), thanks to Levance Fields’ game-winning deep three against the Dookies last week. Funny how one shot can make that much of a difference. By the same token, Duke fell from #5 to #10 as a consequence of that dagger. Duke is better than we thought, but Pitt exposed their relative weakness inside – they seemed to corral just about every rebound available down the stretch. Dejuan Blair (20 rebs) in particular damn near outrebounded the Devils by himself. Clemson also made a big drop by virtue of its loss to Ole Miss last week, who effectively took its spot higher up in the rankings. We didn’t submit a ballot this week, but had we done so, Clemson still wouldn’t be ranked. We refuse to rank those poseurs until they show us once and for all they won’t tank come ACC season. And look at Bobby Thuggins at #24 – he just gets it done (in the regular season) wherever he slithers, doesn’t he?

Uncertainty. Things have pretty much begun to settle in amongst the bloggers, as the top seven are largely the same on most ballots. Everyone has Memphis or UNC in the top two, followed by Kansas (every ballot had KU #3). For some reason #14 Texas A&M is showing a large amount of variance in its placement in the poll, ranking as high as sixth in one ballot to unranked in another. Weird. As usual, and we’re partially responsible for this, #23 Clemson is also showing wide variance in its poll position, ranking as high as eleventh to also being unranked.

Conference Call.

• Big East – 5
• ACC – 4
• Big 12, Pac-10, SEC – 3 each
• A10, Big 10 – 2 each
• CUSA, Horizon, Mtn West – 1 each

Props to the A10 for stepping up and showing some game this year thus far. Dayton (@ Louisville) and URI (@ Syracuse) both have marquee road wins on their resumes, and UMass (also @ Syracuse) isn’t far behind either one. Throw in Xavier, and this could be the best A10 since the days of Chaney and Calipari – possibly a four-bid league if things break down the right way.

An absolute ton of newsworthy stuff to catch up on from the weekend…

• 2008 #1 player Greg Monroe committed to Georgetown after his visit there this weekend.  It couldn’t have had anything to do with that now-ubiquitous Jerry Rice dance, could it?  “Hoops” Weiss has the definitive take on how Monroe will impact the Hoyas.  Above the Rim writes that Duke (who was hot-n-heavy for Monroe) isn’t used to losing out on these guys. 
• Making the Dance reports that after Georgetown (who obviously had the best MM weekend), Illinois (Bruce Weber can recruit after all?!?!), Indiana, Louisville and several others had good weekends. 
• Lots of Midnight Madness and practice coverage from the weekend…
  • Huggins taking over the reins at his alma mater.  (there’s an amusing wmv file floating around where Huggins is giving a speech to some WVU booster club – it’s longwinded and rambling, but the DerMarr Johnson payoff is funny) 
  • A general roundup of MM from Lexington to Lawrence.
  • Catching up with Tubby in Minnesota. 
  • Pat Forde takes in the scene at UK with Billy Gillispie.  Apparently Goodman did the same.   
  • Andy Katz checks in on the hype surrounding Memphis. 
  • Goodman also took a road trip to Saluki country to report on the best mid-major not named Gonzaga, while en route to seeing Pitino in Louisville. 
  • Wake’s first practice without Skip Prosser. 
  • Dave Odom tries to save his job with transfers at South Carolina.
  • Pitt has XXXL expectations for DeJuan Blair. 
  • The defending champs (2x) start the rebuilding process.
• Sad news that former Georgia star and current surgeon Alec Kessler died of a heart attack last weekend. 
• Injuries, suspensions and dismissals:
  • Gonzaga’s Josh Heytvelt was reinstated on Friday but will miss the first week of practice due to shroom farming foot pain.
  • Louisville’s Juan Palacios injured his ankle and may have to redshirt his senior season. 
  • Brandon Rush reports that he’s on target for his Dec. 1 return to Kansas.
  • Georgia suspended three players for not attending classes, including top two scorers Takais Brown (9 games) and Mike Mercer (15 games).  Seriously, fellas?  SEC Hoops:TGTBTD has the take on how this will affect the Bulldogs.
  • Northwestern’s best player Kevin Coble is taking a leave of absence to be with his sick mother. 
  • Ball St. coach Billy Taylor booted two more players off the team, making a total of six since he was hired in August. 
• More Preseason goodies:
  • Gary Parrish and Ben Howland converse about whether the Pac-10 will have the most first round picks ever this year.
  • Pitino bitches about the difficulty of the unbalanced league schedule Louisville is being forced to play. 
  • MMAS continues its comprehensive review with its non-BCS top 25. 
  • Seth Davis asks us 20 questions, then he answers them. 
  • Gary Parrish lists his start-of-practice top 26.  Memphis, eh?
  • The Fanhouse wonders if Memphis is even the best team in its own state.
  • Jeff Goodman takes a realistic look at Duke’s expectations for this season.
  • ESPN plans on showing a grand total of TWO Pac-10 games this year!  Up from zero last year. 
  • The Big 12 handed out its preseason awards – DJ Augustin is the projected POY. 
  • Shawn Siegel lists his top 25 Big 12 players and top 25 Big 10 players for 07-08.