Coaches Poll Looks Froggy!

GARY PARRISH, College Basketball Insider

Poll Attacks: Did Pete Carroll vote in the coaches poll or what?
February 2, 2015 7:58 pm ET

TCU got zero points in last week's coaches poll. Then the Horned Frogs lost two more games to fall to 1-7 in the Big 12, and now, somehow, they have five points in the coaches poll, which means they are, I believe, the first team in college basketball history to ever gain Top 25 votes while on a four-game losing streak and with a 1-7 league record.

And sometimes the Poll Attacks just write themselves, you know?

Let's get into it!

Associated Press poll: Sunday was Super Bowl Sunday, which means some Associated Press voters were probably distracted and possibly drunk (or at least hungover) when they filed their ballots. So it's easy to understand how some mistakes might've happened. But voters who make mistakes should at least own up to them, preferably in advance of the Poll Attacks, which is what Cecil Hurt did early Monday.


See that?

Cecil realized he accidentally did something silly, told me as much this afternoon, and we're all good. Like I said, mistakes can happen in a post Super Bowl haze. I understand. But, best I can tell, Randy Rosetta did not accidentally leave Baylor unranked the same way Cecil Hurt accidentally left VCU unranked.

Randy did that wackiness intentionally.

So now here we are.

Simply put, there's no smart way to rank 25 college basketball teams and not have Baylor listed somewhere. I do this each day. So just trust me when I tell you there's no smart way to rank 25 college basketball teams and not have Baylor listed, which is why 64 of the 65 AP voters actually have Baylor listed somewhere between 15th and 25th.

The Bears are 13th in KenPom, 16th in Sagarin, and 16th in the RPI. So it doesn't matter which computer formula you prefer, every relevant computer formula has Baylor in the top 16. Meantime, Scott Drew's team is 16-5 with two top-25 RPI wins, four top-50 RPI wins and zero losses outside of the top 85. Without context, that might not mean much. But, again, just trust me when I tell you it's impossible to find 25 better resumes.

And yet Randy Rosetta didn't rank Baylor on his ballot.

But he did rank Texas A&M, which is 33 spots lower than Baylor in KenPom, 31 spots lower in Sagarin, and 16 spots lower in the RPI. The two schools have similar losses, I admit. But, according to both the RPI and KenPom, Baylor has four wins better than Texas A&M's best win, and, according to KenPom, Baylor has seven top-50 wins.

How many top-50 KenPom wins does Texas A&M, you ask? One. That's it. And I don't know if head-to-head matters much to you, but it's worth noting that Baylor also has a 14-point win over Texas A&M in the only head-to-head meeting between the two this season.

Bottom line, here's the deal: Baylor is better than Texas A&M in every relevant computer ranking, Baylor has six more top-50 KenPom wins than Texas A&M possesses, and Baylor beat Texas A&M by double-digits. But Randy Rosetta has Texas A&M ranked 22nd and Baylor not ranked at all. And I wish I could tell you this silliness was merely an oversight. But, if it were merely an oversight, it seems like Randy would've told us by now.

Coaches poll: Lots of you requested I write about one coach taking a first-place vote from Kentucky and giving it to Gonzaga, and I could. But that seems so obviously weird, at this point in the season, that calling it wacky sorta goes without saying, doesn't it?

I'm more interested in how TCU got five points.

I mean, in all seriousness, how is TCU on anybody's ballot?

The Horned Frogs have lost seven of their past eight games and are just 1-7 in the Big 12. And I don't care how much you like the Big 12, you can't rank a team that's lost seven if its past eight and is just 1-7 in the league. Beyond that, there's this: TCU got zero points in last week's poll, meaning some coach somewhere watched TCU lose to Kansas last Wednesday and Iowa State on Saturday, then decided to add TCU to his Top 25 this week.

Only thing dumber than that is throwing on 2nd-and-goal from the 1-yard line.

With 26 seconds left in the Super Bowl.

When you have a dude literally nicknamed "Beast Mode" in your backfield.

Good lord.

It's like Pete Carroll had a vote in this week's coaches poll.