Top 16

[Vowelguy]

Here's how I'd rank them right now:

1. UConn
2. ND
3. Stanford
4. So Carolina
5. Baylor
6. Louisville
7. Tenn
8. Duke
9. Penn St
10. W Virginia
11. Maryland
12. Kentucky
13. Purdue
14. Texas A&M
15. No Carolina
16. Oklahoma St

 

[UcMiami]

Of that list I am wondering if WVU doesn't deserve to be higher? They lost to Ohio State in the first game of the year then Baylor and at Texas. They played no one OOC but only had the one blip against Texas. Compare that to TN who lost to KY, LSU and Vandy - teams with 7, 7, and 6 losses in the SEC and PSU who have losses to Purdue, Iowa, and SDSU and no significant wins.

 

[Fightin Choke]

I would put Duke above Louisville. Duke is 6-4 vs. Sagarin's top 10, whereas Louisville is 2-2.

Duke's best wins are #7 Maryland (by 21), #15 Kentucky (by 8), and #17 Syracuse (by 33), #19 NC State (by 13), #21 Oklahoma (by 9), and #24 Georgia Tech.
Louisville's best wins are #21 Oklahoma (by 5 in OT) and #23 LSU (by 21).
Duke worst loss is to #11 UNC by 11 (the other losses were to #1 UConn and #2 ND twice).
Louisville's worst loss is to #15 Kentucky by 5 (the only other loss was to UConn).

Duke has beaten many more good teams and it's only "bad loss" is #11 UNC. Louisville's wins have been very, very weak and their chance for a good win (@Kentucky) failed whereas Duke won @Kentucky.

Unless you're factoring in the potentially season-ending knee injury to Alexis Jones, I cannot see dropping Duke so far.

 

[Vowelguy]

Unless you're factoring in the potentially season-ending knee injury to Alexis Jones, I cannot see dropping Duke so far.

The Gray and Jones injuries are killer. I was tempted to drop them to 9 or 10, but held them at 8 until we can see how they perform.

 

[triaddukefan]

So you put Oklahoma State in your top 16...ahead of NC State?

 

[Fightin Choke]

So you put Oklahoma State in your top 16...ahead of NC State?

So does Sagarin. He has OK St 14th and NC State 19th. The problem for NC St. is a weak schedule, ranked 60th by Sagarin, whereas OK St.'s SOS is 20th. The other problem for NC St. is their MOV. Looking just at W/L, NC St is ranked 13th (ELO) but when MOV is considered, they drop to 19th (PREDICTOR). OK St. is similar in both measures (13th PRED/14th ELO). But OK St doesn't have near the great win that NC St has (Maryland), as its best win is Oklahoma, Georgia Tech, or Michigan St.

 

[ochoopsfan]

If you watched Stanford's games this past weekend, two wins vs USC and UCLA, I dont think they would be rated this high.
Stanford was down 19 points to USC(a non NCAA Tournament team, again) but did find a way to pull out a win. The last time Stanford might have been down by 19 points to a USC WBB team, I had hair and it was brown in color. Stanford had to work their butts off against a UCLA team that has played shorthanded all season. By the way, Ogwumike in both games had 1 assist and 8 turnovers. I was at both of the Stanford games this weekend and could tell Ogwumike doesnt look anywhere near her old dominant self, regardless of how many points she scored(27 and 26). She only had 7 rebounds vs USC in 38 minutes, and was knocked down of fell down a few times.
Interesting to see how far they get.

 

[DobbsRover2]

Pretty reasonable, and the Duke move is probably the best guess, though they do have to be given the chance to show fully what they can do with what remains, and that will take through the ACCT to play out.

OK State after a last second one point win against B12-winless Texas Tech on Sunday will finish the regular season with a 16-8 home\away schedule skew that would be 19-8 if you added in the neutral games of the tournament they basically hosted. They need to show they belong in the top 16, but options to replace them are limited. NC State is maybe an option, but they too had a terrible OOC schedule and are dependent on a few good home wins in the ACC, since their best road win is against GTech and is not impressive.

Purdue also may be too high, with ratings back in the 20s in Sagarin and Massey, and just the two away wins at PSU and Nebraska as signature wins. Five game winning streak going against a group of weak teams, but still 4th in a weak B10.

 

[Vowelguy]

So you put Oklahoma State in your top 16...ahead of NC State?

Truth be told I didn't scrutinize those resumes. Just had a hard time picking a 5th ACC in the top 16. I'd put NC St, Cal also in the top 20.

 

[EricLA]

Hard to argue too much with Vowel's ranking. At this point, i'm not sure you can actually say "who would beat whom"... Tennessee has barely scraped by some crappy teams but have managed wins. I'm not sure they could beat Duke, never mind PSU or WVU. But, all you can really go off of for rankings is wins and losses. Ugly wins or good losses don't count that much (unless you are playing UCONN)...