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Message: [QUOTE="ConwayGmck, post: 3833959, member: 10442"] It's the question of what are the pollsters looking at for value to a team's season: is it head-to-head, is it overall schedule strength to wins-losses ratio, is it good wins versus bad losses? USC has perhaps the toughest schedule strength of all teams: they are #1 in SOS, #1 in ELO, #1 in RPI, and #3 in NET. Their only loss thus far is by 8 pts to #4 12-1 NC St. NC St. has the current #21 SOS. Their non-conference SOS is currently 118th. They have an overtime loss by 12 pts to a 9-7 un-ranked Virginia Tech. They had just barely beaten Virginia Tech by 2 pts at home 4 days earlier. Yes, they didn't have Cunane. USC has played 15 games thus far. Their 14 wins have come against opponents who are a combined 126-64 (.663) on the season at this point - they played 12-4 Alabama twice. NC St. has played 13 games thus far: their 12 wins have come against opponents who are a combined 86-56 (.606). They've played 9-7 Virginia Tech and 5-7 Boston College twice. The question is how much do the pollsters place on NC St. missing a top player for their Louisville game: this season with the covid, there have been most all programs that have had to deal with key players being out of lineups due to quarantining, of entire games being canceled and postponed at last minutes, of team's practice schedules being uprooted and scrambled, or shut down completely. The game they lost to VT on the 28th was a rescheduling of the game in a slot that originally was set for Duke. The game prior to that vs VT that they won by 2 pts on the 24th was the first game the Wolfpack played in 3 weeks, so even WITH Cunane, had they lost they would have had a valid excuse for not playing well. But most all teams have this excuse to varying degrees this season. Can the pollsters weigh and consider all of this? Perhaps the pollsters ranked USC above NC St. not due to any head-to-head, but due to the OVERALL weight of each team's schedule strength, and found USC's schedule to be more challenging. Perhaps they felt that USC's single loss was not as "bad" of a loss as NC St's single loss. Who can say for sure: Tennessee has beaten Kentucky, Arkansas, and Indiana, and all 3 of those teams are ranked higher than the Lady Vols.....in BOTH polls. And each of those teams have more losses than UT does. UCLA has 2 losses - one of them to Stanford - but both losses are to top-10 ranked opponents (one of those was to Stanford), and UCLA is ranked ABOVE Stanford in both polls - Stanford has one of its 2 losses to an un-ranked 5-8 Colorado. I imagine that each and every team's ranking position has its own unique story-line..... [/QUOTE]

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