mattcoldagelli
- Script Illinois Enthusiast
Jokes on you, man, these guys don't think deeply enough about any of these things to get to the level of "betrayal", certainly not in early December
Illinois unranked in AP Poll
- Status
Yes, but as has been noted, we are working the system with our scheduling. Beat cupcakes by 50, stay away from scheduling middle tier teams in non-conf, then what you do against top competition matters less (so long as you aren't getting absolutely killed) as the numbers remain inflated.
We are 1-2 against top 75 opponents, so being left out feels justifiable to me. Look at Arkansas' performances this season, nothing jumps off the page. They're still highly thought of, but they do not have a loss to a sub-50 team either.
So, all of that to say... I don't know lol
Battle89
- Cary-Grove, the better Trojan team
Nothing crackpot at all, I agree 100%. Not sure I felt much different watching that scoreboard sit on 46 for what seemed like an hour.
Maybe 'betrayed' is too strong, as others have said the voters are not really paying attention either. But whatever word you want, they see win vs Ark and say 'hey maybe this Illinois overseas thing is working' and then see the NU result and say 'nah'.
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I agree with this to an extent. These voters are just meat heads like the rest of us who want to be proven right and say, "I told you so". Houston or UConn will be given every chance and then some to hang around in the top 25 because dropping them out would make the voters look bad to have misevaluated them so badly. Teams like Illinois or Wisconsin have a much shorter leash because voters want to confirm their preseason belief that they aren't top 25 material.
The Sprouting Divot
Invisible and Bulletproof
- Miracle Mile
Counterpoint: also makes you wonder if every single one of them happened to watch the Northwestern game.
Ratings that matter.
Nah, we’re 1-2 against P5 teams. Only quibble I have is that Arkansas is also 1-2 against P5 schools with one of those losses to Illini, and we have 40 fewer points.
Play better, coach better, and we'll be ranked higher soon enough. That is all.
lstewart53x3
- Scottsdale, Arizona
It’s wild that had the score at the end of regulation been 1 point more in our favor, we would’ve been ranked 15. Instead we’re 35.
One of the problems with a whole (almost) new roster is that there’s no appreciation for the school’s heritage. There should be classes in the history of the university and Illinois athletics for the athletes…including rivalries. The fans know these things. The players should too.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
It's not like we've been playing scrubs. Using current rankings, we lost to the #7 team on a "neutral" floor that was a semi-home game for them, and we manhandled #31 on a true neutral floor. Then, we lost a road game in overtime to a 7-3 team that is a miracle buzzer beater away from being 8-2. Let's not pretend like we have some clearly weaker resume than most of the teams. The fact is, when you lose and teams just behind you win, the AP Poll punishes you. THAT is why we dropped, not because the voters took a look at our Power Five resume (which, again, is not bad).
Let's settle any doubt and win two this week!
That's always been the divergence between analytics-based measurements and traditional rankings. Imagine a team that loses every single game by just 1 point. Analytics will tell you that's a team that's in the middle of the pack. People who look at their records will conclude, "that's the worst team in the country." And if just one missed basket a game had gone in? They'd be ranked #1 in the AP poll, but roughly the same in KenPom as in the winless scenario.
So do wins matter? Well yeah, otherwise what are we even doing here? Is win/loss a good metric for predicting future results? Not at all - analytics are better. Rankings are more the traditional method of doing things, and we have analytics like KenPom and Torvik at the other end of the spectrum. It's a good thing we have a variety of ways of judging teams. Everything has its place.
Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
Also Northwestern has not been consistently good over the years in basketball (ok, entire history), so most voters will just simply assume losing to Northwestern is a "bad loss". Collins is slowly changing that perception, but you mix in the loss (and the way it happened), then it is easy to see why voters dropped Illinois.
All correct, but some people are acting like we have some stellar resume that should have protected us even with the loss, and we don’t. At least not yet. My response was to someone posting that we shouldn’t have dropped out of top 25 because we had a close loss to a team that even after it beat us still has not garnered one vote in poll.It's not like we've been playing scrubs. Using current rankings, we lost to the #7 team on a "neutral" floor that was a semi-home game for them, and we manhandled #31 on a true neutral floor. Then, we lost a road game in overtime to a 7-3 team that is a miracle buzzer beater away from being 8-2. Let's not pretend like we have some clearly weaker resume than most of the teams. The fact is, when you lose and teams just behind you win, the AP Poll punishes you. THAT is why we dropped, not because the voters took a look at our Power Five resume (which, again, is not bad).
Let's settle any doubt and win two this week!
I’m still very bullish on this team. Are we one of the top 25 teams in the country? When we play well, absolutely. But currently our resume doesn’t support that. Hopefully that changes soon.
Fighter of the Nightman
- Chicago, IL
Yeah, I think we mostly agree and are just arguing semantics. Almost no one would deny we had a "top 25 resume" before the Northwestern game, especially compared to how few teams out there either (A) don't have a neutral court win vs. a team as good as Arkansas or (B) have a bad loss. So, the real debate is what does a loss at Northwestern in OT do to our resume? There is an argument it shouldn't dampen it too much, and there is an argument it pushes the needle to us no longer having one of the 25 best resumes.
But like we said ... tonight is a golden opportunity, and Saturday is a TRULY golden one!
If you’re 9-2 in P5 games with a couple of wins over top 25 teams, might not drop out. But when you only have one win against a P5 team and a 1-2 record against the same, no matter how you want to dress up those 2 losses I think falling out is very reasonable if not expected.
It's a small sample size issue. With a small sample size, any new information has a larger effect.
Pre Northwestern loss, we had a bunch of wins against cupcakes, a loss against Bama, and a win against Arkansas. The loss against Bama didn't hurt us much, and the win against Arkansas helped us. The other games were largely irrelevant in that we did what we were supposed to, but that kind of thing isn't really going to impress people all that much.
After the Northwestern loss, we have a loss against Bama (still not hurting us), a win against an Arkansas team that also fell out of the rankings (so helping, but not as much as it had previously), and a loss against Northwestern.
In a vacuum, I wouldn't say that the resume screams "one of the 25 best teams in the country." The best argument for being one of the 25 best teams is probably that we were already ranked before the loss to Northwestern and it was so close a loss it was essentially a tie, and on the road. But that's exactly the kind of rankings inertia people on here rage about when it benefits other teams. And it's a tougher proposition when all the teams that jumped ahead of us won their games. And being pretty much equal to a team nobody put in their top 25 isn't really a point in our favor either.
NCAA College Basketball Rankings: AP Top 25 Basketball Poll
The official page for the AP Top 25 men's college basketball poll. Keep up to date and view the latest NCAA men's basketball ranking updates each week for the 2025-26 season.
apnews.com
Just to confirm... sooo, Oregon drops zero spots for losing to (*then) unranked UCLA at home? Zero? And we drop from #19 at #34 for losing @NW?
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The AP poll is a joke. It’s made up of a bunch of random journalists - some who follow basketball and some who don’t. I remember a few years ago we were ranked fourth in the country but a journalist from Hawaii didn’t even have us ranked. He said he forgot about us. System is broke.NCAA College Basketball Rankings: AP Top 25 Basketball Poll
The official page for the AP Top 25 men's college basketball poll. Keep up to date and view the latest NCAA men's basketball ranking updates each week for the 2025-26 season.
Just to confirm... sooo, Oregon drops zero spots for losing to (*then) unranked UCLA at home? Zero? And we drop from #19 at #34 for losing @NW?
The computer metrics are way more meaningful.
Yes.NCAA College Basketball Rankings: AP Top 25 Basketball Poll
The official page for the AP Top 25 men's college basketball poll. Keep up to date and view the latest NCAA men's basketball ranking updates each week for the 2025-26 season.
Just to confirm... sooo, Oregon drops zero spots for losing to (*then) unranked UCLA at home? Zero? And we drop from #19 at #34 for losing @NW?
As I said in previous post, if the loss had occurred in say late January when Illini had 10 P5 games under its belt, assuming a good record in those games, loss would have not had same impact. As it were though the loss to a team that hasn’t at least yet even sniffed the polls moved our P5 record to 1-2. That will drop you. If one doesn’t understand that, he or she hasn’t paid much attention to polls before.
Oregon going into the UCLA game had. P6 record of 3-0 with wins over ranked Alabama (remember them?), ranked Texas A&M and USC. They also had wins over mid-majors Oregons State (on the road) and San Diego St (unranked at the time but ranked week 5 and #23 now). Yes, UCLA loss was at home, but the margin of victory for UCLA was a banked in 3 with 0.4 seconds left. And UCLA unlike NW was receiving votes in week 5 and is now ranked.
To recap. Illini — 5-0 against cupcakes, 1-1 against ranked teams (at the time or currently) loses on the road to a team that isn’t sniffing the polls — falls. Oregon — 4-0 against cupcakes, 1-0 against mid-major, 1-0 against unranked P5 opponent, and 3-0 against ranked teams (at the time or currently) loses at home (for its only loss) against a team that had received votes in poll and is currently ranked in the manner that it did — doesn’t fall in ranking but does lose points in poll. I really don’t see how anyone could be surprised with that or have an issue with it, especially if they didn’t know the identity of the two teams. But team-colored glasses will do that to a college basketball fan.
True. I remember last year about halfway through season when Illini were ranked #10 all the posters not caring we were that high cuz the AP poll is a joke. It’s funny how the higher a team is ranked, the less of a joke the AP becomes to its fans.
For the record, this early in season I don’t really pay much attention to either polls or things like KenPom unless “forced” to.
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