I am an analytics acolyte and my point is maybe the people whose actual job it is to vote on such rankings, should also use analytics to rationalize their voting instead of what I view is sheer laziness.
The other frustrating aspects are some of the other narratives around injuries that teams are now touting. These fall into 2 categories:
1.
Season ending injuries where said team will not have those players services to "create upside". Think Paige,
Madison Greene from tOSU, Soares from ISU as these examples so the team ranking assessment has to be constituted "as is".
2. In-season injuries where a player is out but is expected back. Grace Berger who missed time, Jayce Sheldon who continues to miss games for tOSU but is expected back and Azzi Fudd/Dorka Juhasz who both missed 6+ games during which UConn lost 2 of them. These types of injuries can and should have the "yeah but" notation assigned to them when assessing a team's relative strength. I think the voters applied Charisma Osborne's being out of the Oregon State game to excuse that loss but have not necessarily done that with our team.
They also do not consider the schedule a team has played. I am happy that LSU is doing well (especially happy for our
@SECbbfan24 ) but to think they are the #5 team in the country by playing the WORST P5 schedule who have played a grand total of 2 Quadrant 1 games all the while playing a schedule ranked 200 in RPI is absurd. Any Creme or sanctioned NCAAT bracket that has them as 3 (9-12 overall ranking) or better bracket seed only feeds into the nonsense of allowing Kim to play cupcakes.
ESPN should do an analysis of the voting by each member to show the bias and laziness. That would be worthwhile to discuss and shame the voters into more responsible efforts.
Ok, rant over, back to our skewed perspectives.
