CougCenter blogpoll ballot: Week 3

You, my friends, are looking at an award-winning blog.

That's right, CougCenter.com has won the coveted "Mr. Stubborn" award from Jerry Hinnen, the Blogpoll Editorial Guy who posts and breaks down the poll, after submitting the ballot you see below, which featured only a cumulative 32 spot changes from week 2. As it turns out, I'm much more stubborn than everyone else -- the next closest was 52 spot changes.

He has a little fun at my expense pointing out three facts:

1. Nobody dropped more than four spots.
2. UCLA dropped just one spot, despite losing to WSU at home.
3. Villanova didn't move up at all, despite beating Syracuse on the road.

To which I say ...

Should UCLA lose to WSU at home? No, but am I supposed to wildly penalize them for losing a game to a freakishly hot shooting team playing in a way that was totally out of character for them? Especially when I already had UCLA ranked lower than most other people? Never mind the fact that they also beat the team I had ranked No. 12 last week. And, who should I rank ahead of UCLA? Marquette -- who plays in the Big East, yet has played an absurdly easy Big East schedule? Purdue -- who I already moved up 3 spots?

Seems to me that moving a team down just one spot after it beats my No. 12 team and then loses a somewhat fluky game is perfectly reasonable.

Same goes for Villanova. Should I move them past someone above them just because of a road win over a team that I don't think is all that good anyway? Kenpom only has the Wildcats ranked No. 20.

If you look at the rankings taken on the whole, nobody is really distinguishing themselves in the middle. I don't generally drop teams just because they lose. Since I'm trying to guage who's better than whom, I need to see reasons to move other teams up. If a team does something truly spectacular that needs to be rewarded, then I'll do it. But nobody did.

I will admit to one dumb mistake. I don't know why I put Syracuse in the poll and took out LSU. I think I must have clicked something by accident, because Syracuse was not in my poll last week, and after going 1-1 last week, the Orange certainly didn't do anything to force their way in. Conversely, LSU didn't do anything to be left out. So, I guess all I can say is ... my bad. Not sure how or why I did that.

Oh, and one other thing -- the ballot was submitted yesterday morning, before Kansas beat Oklahoma. Everyone else's ballots can be found here.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Pittsburgh	2
2	Connecticut	1
3	Memphis	2
4	North Carolina	2
5	Oklahoma	1
6	Duke	1
7	Louisville	1
8	Michigan St.	2
9	Missouri
10	Clemson
11	Villanova
12	Arizona St.	1
13	Washington	1
14	Wake Forest
15	Kansas	1
16	UCLA	1
17	Marquette
18	Arizona	1
19	Purdue	3
20	Utah	1
21	Illinois	1
22	Xavier	4
23	Syracuse
24	Gonzaga
25	West Virginia
Last week's ballot