HHS Top 25: Academic Final Exams and Basketball “Midterms”
Last week, the Oregon women’s basketball team dropped two spots in our top 25 ballot (from No. 4 to No. 6) despite being undefeated up to that point. We explained that the Ducks hadn’t proven much in a relatively easy start to the season and that impressive wins by Baylor and Mississippi State over ranked teams prompted us to shuffle our top six teams. The other national polls disagreed, keeping Oregon at No. 3 ahead of Baylor and Mississippi State.
As it turns out, we were a week ahead of the pack. After an upset loss to then-unranked Michigan State on Sunday, the AP and Coaches’ Polls dropped Oregon to No. 7, while the Sport Tours International (STI)/Hoopfeed Top 25 Poll (the poll in which we vote) slotted Oregon in at No. 8. The three polls also added Michigan State at No. 22 or No. 23. Our ballot this week kept Oregon at No. 6 and welcomed Michigan State at No. 24.
Here is the ballot that we submitted to the STI/Hoopfeed Top 25 Poll for Week 5, which covered games played from Tuesday, December 4 through Monday, December 10. Movement up or down from our Week 4 ballot is denoted in parentheses.
1. UConn
2. Mississippi State
3. Louisville
4. Notre Dame
5. Baylor
6. Oregon
7. Oregon State
8. Maryland
9. Tennessee
10. Stanford
11. North Carolina State
12. Minnesota (↑2)
13. Syracuse (↓1)
14. Drake (↓1)
15. DePaul
16. Iowa
17. Texas
18. Missouri
19. Marquette
20. Arizona State
21. Kentucky (↑1)
22. South Carolina (↓1)
23. California
24. Michigan State (NR)
25. Gonzaga
Dropped out: Texas A&M
The next few weeks will be relatively quiet as teams navigate final exams and holiday breaks. Every year, some top teams aim for easier schedules around this time to minimize the burden on players at the end of the semester. (There are exceptions: next week’s polls will take into account the result of Saturday’s Baylor-Stanford game, and women’s basketball fans will get an early Christmas present on December 18 with two games between top-25 teams.) But don’t make the mistake of thinking that the next few weeks of basketball are unimportant. Call it basketball “midterm exams”: these final non-conference games can tell us a lot about where teams are roughly halfway through the season and what their ceilings might be by March. Are teams winning the games that they should? Are they consistently playing at a high level? Are they using the time between games to shore up their weaknesses and solidify their strengths? Are they getting healthier? And are they continuing to improve team chemistry, an intangible that can be just as crucial for making deep postseason runs as more tangible stats?
Here at Her Hoop Stats, we’ll be watching for, tweeting about, and analyzing the answers to these questions for the rest of this month and all season long. Make sure to follow us on social media and check the Hoopfeed website every week for the STI/Hoopfeed top 25 rankings.
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