Little Danny;733945 wrote:UCONN was ranked in the top 25 before the BCS bowl game last year. Had they beaten Oklahoma, I am sure the voters would have given them a huge jump in the final polls into the top 10. UC was a top 10 team prior to the BCS Bowl Games the year before and after their losses still was ranked 12th or so.
The body of work argument does not work for me. Sure OSU looked great throughout the regular season and even their own conference tournament, but the fact of the matter there are a bunch of other teams who could say the same thing (Kansas, Duke, Pitt, San Diego State, etc.)
This really all depends on your opinion of how one should vote in a poll. Does the poll reflect how good a team at the time the votes are cast? If it is simply evaluated on a week-to-week basis, with no consideration to the previous weeks, then you should vote based on a team's tournament finish. If you are voting based on the entire body of work, from November through April, then you can make a reasonable argument that at least OSU and Kansas both deserve to be ranked higher in the final poll than UConn. UConn finished better, but their entire body of work isn't as strong. If you vote based on the entire body of work you can't make any reasonable argument for putting Butler ahead of OSU or Kansas.
Now, each voter gets to vote on their own criteria, which is part of the problem with a poll. Some eight recent results more heavily than earlier game results. Some look at the entire body of work. When you look at the poll, at least up until the tournament, it is clear that the order is determined looking at the entire body of work, with some extra weight given to recent contests. The last poll clearly reflects very heavily on the tournament and not on the entire body of work.
