Now that the NCAA college basketball regular season is complete, it's time to look back at the preseason predictions to see which outlets were closest to the current set of rankings, and which teams have been the biggest disappointments and over-achievers.
A review of Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, Athlon and Lindy's preseason publications showed that Duke and Michigan State were the odds-on favorites for the #1 and #2 slots--Duke was chosen as the preseason favorite by three of the pubs and was second in another while Michigan State was #1 in SN and #2 or #3 in the others.
Who were the biggest surprises, based upon current rankings and/or the lack of mention by these four publications? BYU would likely qualify as the biggest surprise, given its current status as a possible #1 or #2 seed compared to its lack of mention in preseason top 20 lists, or low ranking on those lists. Another surprise is Texas, a non-top 20 team by SI, SN and Athlon. Ohio State over-achieved, according to the predictors, as most had Michigan State and Purdue as the top two teams in the Big Ten. Kansas was not expected to win their seventh straight conference championship nor was Notre Dame expected to be a top ten team.
As for disappointments, look no further than the Big 12's Baylor, selected #8 by SI, #16 by SN, #10 by Athlon and #15 by Lindy's. Another Big 12 squad, Kansas State, was predicted to win the league and finish in the top five or top ten by all four publications. The biggest disappointment, though, has to be Tom Izzo's Spartans, firmly planted on the NCAA Tournament bubble even though these four pubs thought highly of them and had them ranked #1 through #3.
It's not that these magazine writers and editors did a bad job of predicting, it's that too much emphasis was placed on late season 2010 performance (see Kansas State) or the media fell in love with the prior season's Cinderella story (see Butler, selected #12 by SI, #19 by SN and #8 by Lindy's.) Re-predicting at the end of December would likely provide a better set of potential final rankings versus the guessing game engaged in by the media when these various publications close their deadlines in late summer prior to the coming season.
The beauty of all this? We now get to decide a true champion--in the coming week we'll engage in post-season conference tournaments leading into Selection Sunday, a week from today, and the 68-team field which will then determine the real #1. Let March Madness begin!
No comments:
Post a Comment