But I am sure there is something to whine and complain about.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/7345098/syracuse-orange-voted-unanimous-no-1-espn-usa-today-coaches-top-25-poll

OSU played Kansas in Lawrence. Syracuse played George Washington in the Dome. OSU was without their best player. But, to me, the mitigating factors don’t make up for margin of defeat. A double digit loss doesn’t earn you the top spot. I don’t care who you played or who did or didn’t suit up.

I honestly thought it more likely that UK would keep the top spot despite losing. Indiana may have been unranked, but they’re alot better than their non-ranking implies and UK lost by 1 at the buzzer. In some minds, a 1pt buzzer-beater loss against a good (if unranked at the time) opponent is better than handing the Colonials their @sses on a 35 point platter.

That it’s perfectly legitimate to rank OSU, or even UK, #1 depending on how you view the ranking process as a whole. For the most part I think voters treat the polls as a weekly ranking. A “who was the best team last week?” poll, as it were. That’s the basis we all use when saying Syracuse should be #1 after UK and OSU both lost. the conventional polling logic dictates that they team that wins jumps the team that loses.

But I don’t see anything wrong with taking the long view and ranking teams based an overall picture of a team, its past performance and it’s future potential. Yeah, OSU lost, but you’d be hard pressed to make a compelling case that a single L makes them less than the best team in the country. The same can be said fo UK. and the same can be said for Syracuse.

No one is going undefeated, so to rank teams strictly based on who won or lost the previous week is a little silly if you really look a it. So, while I tend to adhere to the narrower, weekly view of the polls, I’m not going to skewer this or that voter because they ranked another one of the handful of great teams #1.