Folks, the AP Women's basketball poll has evolved quite a bit since Mel Greenberg of the Philadelphia Inquirer started it way back in the late 1970s, and unfortunately, not all for the better. While many of the voters perform due diligence in their weekly analysis and review, there are a handful of voters who pander to their readership constituency and adjust their votes accordingly to appease their base. This results in anomalies, usually manifesting themselves towards the bottom of the poll (to include "Others receiving votes"), or in gigantic voting swings from week-to-week. For example, Maggie Hendricks, from Bally Sports out of Las Vegas raised Arizona a full 10 spots on her ballot this week (from #24 to #14) even though Arizona lost its last three games - go figure!
In contrast, the three AP voters with ties to UConn (Carl Adamec, Roger Cleveland and Rebecca Lobo) almost never have large vote swings, and one could argue that they seem to go out of their way to avoid the appearance of bias. This week, for instance they slotted UConn into #4 (Adamec and Cleveland) and #7 (Lobo), which all seem rational at face value.
From week to week it is fascinating to watch how different AP voters react to UConn. Right now, we have a vote range from #2 (one voter, Jeff Linder from the Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa (who by the way, dropped Iowa two slots to #4)) all the way to #9 (two voters, Kevin Tresolini from Delawareonline (who actually moved the Huskies down two spots this week!) and the aforementioned Maggie Hendricks). The other 27 voters fall out as follows: #4 (four voters), #5 (5 voters), #6 (4 voters), #7 (8 voters) and #8 (six voters). Quite a spread!
My takeaway? When I was a kid, the AP and UPI polls were gospel. Of course, everything has evolved over the past half century, and yet I foolishly keep holding onto the notion of journalistic integrity, which is what drives me to analyze voting patterns from week to week across the AP voters. Fortunately - at least by my assessment - the majority of AP voters show a consistency, which I I like to think of as a critical component of journalistic integrity. That being said, I don't put much stock in the results of the polls. To me, they are more of a weather vane showing media (or coaching) sentiment towards the teams I want to follow. I won't lose sleep over them!
Go Huskies!
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