Vegas Watch

First off- Luke Winn incorporated the home/road splits into a post for his Tourney Blog. His take on it is definitely worth a read. I swear, I have nothing against Vanderbilt- it just so happens that Siena was great on the road, and quite poor at home.

On to the Midwest preview. In the table below, the second column is the chance I think each team has of winning the region. This was done partially by taking Pomeroy's numbers into account, but mostly by my own judgments. The next column is what the odds should be. The third column is the best odds I've found, followed by their location.

Portland St. is 51:1 just to beat Kansas. Why anyone would bet on them to win the entire region is entirely beyond me.

The odds of everyone outside of the top four are really, really bad. USC is a good team. But to get to the Final Four, their four opponents could potentially be Kansas St., Wisconsin, Georgetown, and Kansas. The idea that they have a 1 in 13 chance of beating those four teams is absurd.

I'm a Wisconsin believer. They're 29-4, and have won 23 of their last 25 (both losses coming to Purdue). They are fourth in Pomeroy's ratings. That's probably a little excessive, but I still think 10:1 is quite good. The Sportsbook line is also an outlier- they're no better than 6:1 anywhere else.

I'm higher on Kansas than most. I think they are the best team in the nation- some others agree, but most do not. I would not bet on them at even money to win the region, since I think you could probably get better odds betting on each individual game. But that's not a bad line.

I have it as 90% that Kansas, Georgetown, or Wisconsin emerge from the Midwest. I think that's fair. This is partially because they're really good, but also a product of seeding. They just have it easier than the other than the other teams- that's a privilege they've earned, but a significant advantage nonetheless.

There's no doubt that USC-Kansas St. is a compelling first round matchup. But I would advise against picking either team to beat Wisconsin. First, the Badgers may not have the pro prospects, but they're better than either of those teams. But the main reason is each team's first round matchup. Who's going to win the USC-KSU game? I have no idea. It's about a toss up (USC is favored by 2.5). I'm much more confident that Wisconsin (-11) will take care of CS Fullerton. That's an important thing to keep in mind when filling out your bracket- not just the chance that USC beats Wisconsin, but the relative chances either team has of getting that far.

If Kansas, Clemson, Wisconsin, and Georgetown do end up reaching Detroit, the second weekend will be quite something.

Pick: Kansas
Upset (has to be at least a 6 point underdog): Siena, obviously
Scary team (four seed or lower): Clemson

Related: Bracket Winners and Losers [Basketball Prospectus]

Throughout the conference tournament previews, I mentioned how terrible the odds for the longshots were. If any of those teams made a run, you could make a lot more money betting on the money lines in each individual game than you would if you bet on the futures odds at the beginning of the tournament. Conversely, there seemed to be significantly more value in the the odds for the top three or so teams in each tournament.

Over the last few days, I tracked the money lines for each conference tournament game. Using this information, we can determine the "true odds" for each team that reached their conference tournament final- that is, the odds you could've gotten if you bet on their money line each game, rolling the winnings over to the next game. The table below shows these "true odds" for each team, and compares them to the best odds you could've gotten on that team at the beginning of the tourney.

Georgia's run was quite improbable. If you had bet $10 on them to beat Mississippi at +175 in round 1, and rolled that money over all the way to betting on them at +310 to beat Arkansas this afternoon, you would've turned that $10 into $1,725.10. A little better than ending up with $510 if you'd bet on them at 50:1, I'd say. The fact that they had to play three games in two days factors into this discrepancy somewhat, but it's also true that they didn't even have to play the conference's beat team, Tennessee.

The same is true for Pitt; their game-by-game odds were almost twice as good as the pre-tournament 12:1 odds. And there is no disclaimer here- they had the insane task of having to beat Louisville, Marquette, and Georgetown on three consecutive days. At least they were rewarded by being placed in the same pod as Michigan St.

The Illinois lines look strange, since their pre-tournament odds were actually better. This can be explained pretty simply- they ended up being favored in the semifinals, since they played Minnesota after the Golden Gophers upset Indiana. If the Illini had faced the Hoosiers in the semis, that +1888 would've become +2891.

Each of the other teams to reach the final were in the top 3 in their conference. UNC's "true" odds probably would've been closer to EV had they faced Duke in the finals.

As expected, Wisconsin at +200 was excellent. They did benefit slightly from facing Illinois in the final, but they would've been significant favorites against any opponent.

SITE NEWS: I think there will be a live-blog on Thursday. I see no reason not to. The first games tip at noon ET. Stay tuned.

Only one table for this one; you can find the full Pomeroy odds here. This tournament starts on Thursday; Joe Sheehan claims that the first round matchups (Iowa-Michigan, Penn St.-Illinois, Minnesota-Northwestern) "may end basketball as a pastime on Earth." That would be quite unfortunate, but I do sympathize with this position.

This comes down to whether you believe in the Badgers or not. Pomeroy has them as #4 in the country. They did finish 16-2 in the conference, and easily had the best scoring margin. They are not slated to face Purdue until the finals, but Pomeroy only has Purdue getting that far 37% of the time. Wisconsin +200 is almost definitely a good wager, but I really don't know what the fair line would be.

The Pac-10 is my favorite conference. This is extremely odd, because it is so far away, and I don't get FSN at school, so I can't watch too many Pac-10 games. But I think part of it is that I really like their travel schedule. If UCLA plays Arizona on Thursday, I know they will be playing ASU that weekend. It's easy to keep track of.

The best part of this is that it's a complete round robin. Every team plays every other team, home and away. They are the only "power conference" (apparently people get mad when I say "BCS") that does this. This is partially because they are the smallest of these conferences. But they also play 18 games; the Big East and the Big "Ten" are the only other conferences to play that many.

Because of this symmetry, you can take the regular season record of a Pac-10 team at face value. If UCLA goes 15-3, and Stanford is 13-5, you can be confident that UCLA's mark is more impressive.

This is not true in the other five conferences, with their unbalanced schedules. I don't think this gets enough attention; people compare teams' records within the conference, and don't look at the context of these records. So I thought I'd look at the teams who have played the easiest and most difficult schedules, relative to the other teams in their conference.

Please note that this is not comparing schedules across conferences. If I say Tennessee has played a difficult schedule, that means their schedule has been challenging relative to the other teams in their conference. They play in the SEC; obviously their schedule isn't that difficult.

Virginia Tech
The Hokies are on the bubble, mostly on the strength of their 9-6 ACC record. Do not be fooled by this. With 12 teams and an a 16 game schedule, they have played two games against five of the other 11 ACC teams. As we all know, there are only three good teams in the ACC- Duke, UNC and Clemson. Virginia Tech has been lucky enough to play each of those teams only once. If the Hokies had doubled up against those teams instead of BC, Wake, and UVa, I doubt we'd be talking about them sneaking into the tourney.

Wisconsin
The Badgers' 14-2 Big Ten record is certainly impressive, and they will likely win their final two games against Penn St. and Northwestern. They have rolled through the conference, except for those pesky Boilermakers, who have beaten them twice. The B10 has four pretty terrible teams at the bottom, in Northwestern, Iowa, Penn St., Michigan. Wisky has had the good fortune to play each of these teams twice, while only playing Michigan St. and Ohio St. once each. Just something to keep in mind when you're filling out your bracket and considering all those conference wins.

West Virginia
Because of the size of the Big East, you only double up against three teams. The Mountaineers have only had to play Georgetown, Louisville, Marquette, Connecticut, and Notre Dame, the five best teams in the conference, once each. They have already played St. John's, and play them for a second time on Saturday. So that 11-7 BE mark (if they beat the Red Storm) should come with an asterisk.

NC State
This team is terrible, and obviously their schedule is not hindering their tournament chances, which are non-existent. But they sure have had it rough. As mentioned previously, in the ACC you double up against five teams. NC State is the anti-Va Tech; they've played Clemson, Duke and UNC twice each. This doesn't really effect anything, but it really sucks for them.

Illinois
Another bad team with an absolutely horrific schedule. In the B10 you play every team twice, except for two. Those two for Illinois? Northwestern and Iowa. That is rough. Obviously they don't, but if Illinois and Wisconsin had the same record, it's clear which one would be more impressive.

Last week's post about consistency was pretty complicated- my head starts to hurt if I think about that stuff for too long. Today's post is quite the opposite. This is simply how teams have fared against the spread in conference play- their average ATS, rather than the standard deviation of that average.

In some sense this shows how each team has done against expectations, but that's not entirely true. As the season progresses, those expectations are adjusted, and that influences the spread. To consistently cover, you have to improve with these expectations-it's not enough to just be better than people thought you were going to be, since they will catch on eventually.

This first table is the top 10 teams against the spread this year, measured by point margin. I have also included a column showing how much you would've won if you had bet $100 on that team in every game, at -110 juice. Through games of 3/3.


The Boilermakers are unmatched in both metrics, as they're an incredible 13-3 ATS in the Big Ten. This will happen when you're expected to go to the NIT, and end up with a protected seed in the NCAAs. In their first eight conference games, they were favored by an average of 1.8 points, and outscored their opponents by an average of 6.25 ppg. In the second half, those numbers were 2.9 and 9.5. That's a pretty good recipe for covering in 81% of your games. (Edit: Well, down to 76% after last night.)

It's kind of strange to see the Beasley-Walkers on this list. They absolutely destroyed expectations in their first five conference games, going 5-0 against the spread and covering by an average of 14.7 ppg. But after that fifth win, against Kansas, people started to pay attention. Since then, they're only 3-6 ATS, and their average is -0.9. They're not sneaking up on anybody anymore, for obvious reasons.

Louisville is better than people think? Really? I never would've guessed.

It really is amazing to see a team as widely respected as UCLA on this list. They've been favored by an average of 9.3 ppg in conference games, but won by an average of 12. They've been brilliant on the road, covering in seven of nine games.

Wisconsin's combination is a little odd. That is caused by losing ATS by a half point twice, and a single point once. Winning by 25 @Penn St. doesn't hurt either.

Now for the disappointments:

Ole Miss was 13-0 in non-conference play, ascending as high as 15th in the ESPN poll. But seven of those wins were by single digits, and they came against the 164th most difficult schedule in the country. Regardless, people thought they were good- they've been favored by an average of 3.0 ppg in SEC play. Unfortunately for them, they've been outscored by 3.1 ppg on their way to a 5-9 SEC record.

Incredibly, Texas A&M appears on this list despite beating Texas Tech by 44 last week (they were favored by 9). They've had an extremely strange year- a -14.9 average ATS in their first four games, +7.0 in their next five, then -9.4 in their final five. In fact, their updated consistency number is 17.7, which makes them easily the least consistent team among those in the power conferences.

It is difficult to go 4-11 ATS when you're getting an average of 13.9 ppg, but Oregon St. has managed to do just that. Although I guess it's not that difficult if you go winless in conference play and lose by an average of 18.9 ppg. The distribution of talent in the Pac-10 was truly amazing this year. Washington has the second worst RPI at 104; the Beavers are 257th. Or, if you prefer tempo-free stats, the difference between 1 and 9 is about the same as the difference between 9 and 10.

A week ago, Texas Tech wouldn't have been anywhere near this list- in fact, they would've been close to the overachievers list, at +2.21. But when you lose two games by a combined 102 points, well, things go south pretty quickly.

The ATS data for the teams that didn't make these lists can be found here.

Photo: Lafayette Online.

Sportsbook has posted Final Four odds for 25 teams (H/T: Rob). Before the brackets come out, it is very difficult to handicap this kind of thing, because a team's chances are so dependent on both their seed and their draw. That is not going to stop me from trying, obviously.

The first column is the team's projected seed. These are mostly just taken from Parrish, but I made a few slight adjustments. That is followed by the team name, and their odds at Sportsbook. The last two columns are what I think their true chance of making the F4 is, along with what their odds should be in that case.

Odds I consider to be very good wagers are in green. Good wagers are in blue, and terrible wagers are in red. The black odds range from neutral to poor. Here is the first half:

Memphis being +200 really surprised me. They are almost certainly going to be a 1 seed, meaning they have a pretty easy path to the S16 (giving them about an 80% chance of making it that far). They will then be significant favorites against the 4/5 seed they will likely play, and again favorites in the Elite 8. Clearly Sportsbook has UCLA, UNC and Kansas as the top 3 teams in the country, and I don't disagree with that assessment. But I don't think Memphis is that far behind, and they will likely have seeding on their side.

Seeding plays an very big role in this. I know they don't have the reputation of Duke or Texas, but Xavier is just as good as those teams, and they will likely all be 2 seeds- there should not be such a large discrepancy in their odds.

Stanford is in a similar situation, except it is likely that they will have a 3 seed rather than a 2. That makes them not quite as attractive as Xavier, but at +650, it's still worth considering.

No 3 seed should be +300. You know I must feel that way if I have Louisville at +344. The four games you have to win are just too difficult. Assuming you get past the 14, you still have to beat a 6, a 2, and a 1, in theory. Except for the elite teams in the nation, nobody has better than a 25% chance of doing that. And Georgetown does not fall under the category of "elite team" this year.

UConn, a likely 4/5 seed, at +400 is even worse. They will play a 4/5 in the second round, and then the top two seeds after that. A 20% chance of winning those three games? Not even close.

On to the longshots:

Most of these are terrible. The Arizona and Kansas St. odds are particularly brutal. These are teams that will likely end up in 8-9 games, where their chances are barely better than a toss-up. Then, in the second round, they face a top seed. Kansas St. should be about +800 to reach the Sweet 16, not the F4.

Wisconsin at +800 is intriguing. They are a 3 seed, and a legit one at that. Barring a huge upset, they are going to finish 16-2 in the Big Ten. I know the B10 isn't very good this year, but unless you think it is really atrocious, the conference's best team at 8:1 to reach the F4 seems pretty good.

The odds for Marquette and Purdue are probably about right, but stick out because the others are so bad. I do not think Sportsbook gave seeding enough weight in their analysis. It is completely unreasonable for an 8 seed to have better odds than a 3, unless that 8 seed is about 15 points better, which is certainly not the case with Arizona and Purdue. It is highly unlikely that the Boilermakers lose their first round game against a 14. Taking that into account, you are getting about 18:1 that they will beat a 6 seed that is probably equally talented, and then two teams that are better than them. It's unlikely, but +2200 is not bad for them.

P.S.- 15 of you have voted on the Indians' under? I hope you guys aren't betting on this stuff, because you *clearly* don't know what you are talking about.

A couple weeks ago I had two posts (linked below) examining the biggest discrepancies between the AP poll and the Pomeroy ratings. Today I'm going to go back and see how these teams have done since. First, those who were...

"Under the Radar"

Marquette
Then: AP #13, Pomeroy #3
Since: 3-3
Now: AP #16, Pomeroy #9

I was very wrong on this one. Marquette added two more ugly road losses to their resume, at the hands of Louisville and Connecticut. It looked like they might be turning around after they finally got a conference road win against Cincinnati on Saturday, but then they turned around and got blown out at home by Louisville tonight. Definitely not a top ten team, and both of their current rankings will fall after tonight's game is factored in.

Xavier
Then: AP #20, Pomeroy #9
Since: 4-1
Now: AP #13, Pomeroy #10

Xavier was definitely underranked at 20, and may still be at 13. They surprisingly lost @Temple by 19, but have been excellent since, beating a shorthanded Dayton team by 26 at home, and winning @UMass by 12. They have three of their next four on the road, so it might be tough to stay this high in the polls, but luckily that doesn't really matter. Lunardi currently has them as a 3 seed in the NCAAs- they will likely end up as a 3 or 4, and are certainly not a team I'd want to face.

Drake
Then: AP #26, Pomeroy #15
Since: 6-0
Now: AP #15, Pomeroy #25

This is interesting. Drake's win streak has reached 18, allowing them to move all the way up to 15th in the AP. Yet they've fallen ten spots on Pomeroy's ratings, since each of their last six wins have come by ten points our less. They also have a very difficult upcoming schedule, with visits to Illinois St., Southern Illinois and Northern Iowa in the next two weeks. I bet they'll lose one or two of those, and fall back under the radar until March. Lunardi currently has them as a 3- I'd be surprised if they stay that high, they'll probably end up at 4 or 5.

Wisconsin
Then: AP #17, Pomeroy #6
Since: 5-1
Now: AP #8, Pomeroy #5

The Badgers are the best team in the Big Ten. I don't see all that much room for debate at this point. Michigan St. has suffered borderline embarrassing losses against Iowa and Penn St. Indiana somehow lost to UConn at home, and then lost @Wisconsin by 13. Meanwhile the Badgers are 8-1, with their only loss coming at a surprisingly tough Purdue team. They do have five of their last nine on the road (although the last one is @Northwestern, which barely counts), but should be able to scure at least a 3 seed in March.

And the teams I was quite critical of:

"They're Not That Good"

Vanderbilt
Then: AP #16, Pomeroy #65
Since: 2-3
Now: AP #23, Pomeroy #75

Vandy is still ranked? Seriously? Let's look at their SEC road games:

1/12 Kentucky; lost 79-73 in OT
1/17 Tennessee; lost 80-60
1/27 Florida; lost 86-64
1/30 Mississippi; lost 74-58

They're 3-4 in a weak SEC because they've beaten South Carolina, LSU, and Auburn at home. I honestly have no idea how they are still 23rd in the AP, and 20th (!) in the ESPN poll.


Dayton
Then: AP #14, Pomeroy #44
Since: 1-4
Now: Zero AP votes, Pomeroy #69

Dayton has been really bad. They've lost to UMass, Xavier, Richmond and Rhode Island by an average of 16 points.

The Flyers do have a good excuse. They've been without freshman Chris Wright (broken ankle) for this entire stretch, and Charles Little (broken foot) missed the Xavier and Richmond games. Little is back now, but Wright won't return until March. Their schedule down the stretch isn't bad- they've gotten all their difficult road games out of the way- but they're down to a 10 seed in the latest Bracketology, and that 25-point win against Pitt seems like a distant memory.

Villanova
Then: AP #25, Pomeroy #73
Since: 2-5
Now: Zero AP votes, Pomeroy #89

This overrated post was pretty solid. Villanova has been the worst of the three- after getting demolished by St. Joe's on Monday night, they've now lost five straight. At 3-6 in the Big East, they won't make the tournament unless they catch fire down the stretch. They were certainly never one of the 25 best teams in the country, that was a product of going 10-1 against a weak (#216 in the country) non-conference schedule.

The full blogpoll is here, my ballot was as follows.

Kansas' dominance became too hard to ignore. They won their first five Big 12 games by an average of 23 points, with @Mizzou being the only one that was within 20. Now that I have them #1, they'll lose to Kansas State tonight (Edit: Yup.), but so it goes.

Five Pac-10 teams, which is a lot, but I think that's warranted. Four of the five are in Pomeroy's top 16, with USC at 23rd. It'll be interesting to see how things shake out down the stretch, and how many teams they end up putting in the tourney.

A couple very intriguing games tomorrow night, headlined by Indiana @ Wisconsin (9pm ET, ESPN). The Hoosiers are coming off a shocking home loss against UConn, and pretty desperately need a marquee win on their resume. Wisconsin will try to right the ship after losing @Purdue on Saturday. The Badgers have been very tough at the Kohl Center, with their only loss coming to Marquette back when the Golden Eagles were good.

The second game, which won't be nearly as high on the national radar, is Arizona @ USC (10:30pm ET, FSN). Two teams that are unranked in the ESPN poll, but in the top 20 of mine, and poised to make a run in the Pac-10. There's no sense in repeating what I went on about the other day, but Arizona has been very impressive since Bayless' return, and USC won @UCLA before sweeping their Oregon trip. Should be a good one.

If you've been reading this site for a long time (the odds are heavily stacked against this) you remember my VWI experiment, using Vegas lines to create MLB power rankings. While I was doing this I was thinking how much better it would work for college basketball. So now this is happening.

This system is similar to the RPI, which ranks teams based on what they've done and who they've done it against. The difference is that the "Vegas Power Rankings" (VPR, I guess) are not effected by the actual outcome of the game. For instance, these rankings include the lines for Wednesday's games, even though they haven't been played yet. The theory behind this is it's a good gauge of team strength, and the lines will adjust if teams are consistently over- or underperforming expectations.

The way it works is pretty simple- it's based on the average of how many points you're favored by (controlling for home/away games), and also considers the difficulty of your schedule, based on the average number of points your opponents have been favored by. It only takes conference games into account, because doing this with all the D1 teams would take way too long.

The whole thing is still kind of a work in progress, but I'll start today with the Big Ten rankings, because they're the furthest along in conference play.

There are clearly three teams that have separated themselves from the pack, but that's not news. I think Michigan State will probably fall back a little over the next few weeks, as they are 1-4 against the spread in conference, including pathetically losing to Iowa, 43-36, when they were favored by 10 points. They lines will correct for this, and they've already begun to, as the Spartans were only favored by one against Minnesota on Sunday.

The Big Ten has been criticized for being extremely weak at the bottom, and that's certainly true for the last three teams. Michigan, Iowa, and Northwestern are a combined 3-15 in conference, with two of those wins coming against each other. And with leading scorer Geary Claxton out for the year, it's possible Penn St. will fall, although they certainly won't reach the depths that Northwestern has.

In Joe Lunardi's most recently Bracketology, he has five of these teams making it- the top three, plus Ohio St. and Purdue. The top three aren't even worth discussing; they're in barring an epic collapse.

I think the Buckeyes will probably get in. Their non-conference resume isn't particularly exciting, but they did beat Syracuse at MSG, and Florida at home. They didn't lose to any bad teams, although losing to Texas A&M by 23 and Butler by 19 is pretty ugly. After tonight's win they're 4-2 in the Big Ten. Pomeroy has them finishing with 11 conference wins (actually, 11.7 after tonight's win); I think that would do it, as long as then win a game in the B10 tournament.

Is Purdue a tournament team? I'm not so sure about that. They beat Louisville in December, but the Cardinals were still without Padgett and Palacios at that point. They lost at Clemson and Purdue, which is respectable. They lost at home to Wofford. Wofford is 178th in RPI and 254th in Pomeroy's ratings; that is certainly not acceptable. A few days later they lost to Iowa St. To put that one in context, Kansas is favored by 25 against Iowa St. on Wednesday. So that's a problem.

The Boilermakers clearly have more work to do in conference than Ohio St. They have started 4-1 (including a home win against the Buckeyes), but two of those wins were against Michigan and Iowa, so let's not get too excited about them yet. Winning at Penn St. on Wednesday would be a big step in the right direction; Purdue is favored by two in that game, which should be very interesting.

Pomeroy has Purdue finishing with 10.2 Big Ten wins. Unless they do something ridiculous like win at Wisconsin or Indiana, I don't think that'll be enough (or at least it shouldn't be). 11 and a win in the conference tournament would probably do it, but I'm not particularly confident that they can pull that off.

The only other team I could see even being in the conversation is Minnesota. They did absolutely nothing out of conference, and they've started 2-3 in the B10. That's partially because they've already had to play MSU twice and Indiana once, but they certainly have their work cut out for them. Pomeroy has them finishing at 9-9, which would not be enough.

I thought it would be interesting to contrast the latest AP rankings with the current Pomeroy ratings (explained here) to see where the largest discrepancies lie. Today I'll look at teams that haven't gotten as much attention as they deserve; tomorrow, teams that aren't as good as their AP rankings might indicate.

Marquette; AP #13, Pomeroy #3

I was initially surprised to see Marquette this high in Pomeroy's rankings, but now I get it. They don't have any marquee wins, but their resume is impressive in more subtle ways. There are two main characteristics that cause teams to be underrated by the AP poll, and Marquette has both.

1. "Quality" losses

Marquette has lost two games. In November, Duke beat them by four in Hawaii. Then, a week ago, they lost at West Virginia by 15. Neither of these are bad losses; everybody knows about Duke, but West Virginia is very good as well. According to Pomeroy, Marquette has played the 23rd most difficult schedule in the country.

2. Destroying teams

The AP voters mostly look at whether you win or lose, rather than how much you win or lose by. When we're trying to predict a team's future performance, doing this is ignoring some important information. Three of Marquette's victories are good examples of this:

11/20 Oklahoma St. (N), 91-61
1/3 Providence (H), 96-67
1/12 Notre Dame (H), 92-66

Having beaten these three teams, none of which are ranked, isn't particularly impressive. But beating them by an average of 28 points bodes very well for Marquette as they continue Big East play.


Xavier; AP #20, Pomeroy #9

Xavier has lost at Miami (OH) and Arizona St., and at home against Tennessee. The fact that they lost to ASU by 22 is a concern, but the concern is lessened when you look at their final three non-conference games:

12/31 Kansas St. (H), W 103-77
1/3 Virginia (H), W 108-70
1/6 Auburn (A), W 80-57

To me, even more impressive than the average MOV of 29 points was how Vegas dealt with these games. They were favored by 9 against K State, 9.5 against UVA, and 9 @ Auburn. Each of these lines were higher than I would have expected. The books clearly didn't want a lot of money on Xavier in these games, and the results explained why. Dayton has gotten most of the attention, but Xavier is the best team in a very strong A-10.

Drake; AP #26, Pomeroy #15

The Bulldogs lost at St. Mary's in their second game of the season, which is understandable, as St. Mary's is undefeated at home this year. Drake has since run off 13 straight victories, and are getting dangerously close to the Top 25. Their two most impressive non-conference wins came in beating a very good Duquesne team by four, and beating Iowa St. by 35. But it's been their MVC games that have allowed them to rise in Pomeroy's rankings, as they've started off 5-0, winning each game by an average of 11.4 points.


Wisconsin; AP #17, Pomeroy #6

The main reason that Wisconsin is only #17 is they were 40th in the preseason poll. It would be difficult to move up higher than 23 spots while losing twice over the first couple months of the season. But what's important is that those were quality losses; @Duke, and against Marquette at home. Their win @Texas is very impressive; it's also their only win that has come by less than 10 points. They haven't had much trouble in their first three Big Ten games, easily beating Michigan, Iowa and Illinois.

North Carolina plays Ohio St. tonight, in Columbus. It'll be interesting to see how the Hansbrough-Koufos matchup plays out. Hansbrough rarely takes a shot from more than eight feet out, while Koufos is 5/11 from 3 so far this year.

If I had submitted this today rather than Monday night, Clemson would not be on the list. They looked terrible last night against Purdue. Same goes for Wisconsin, who lost to Duke by 24.

How about Texas? They shot 63.6% from the floor in beating Tennessee by 19. Abrams is averaging 23 ppg, Augustin is at 17 pts and 8 assists. And sophomore Damion James is chipping in with 9 pts and 8 boards. They visit UCLA on Sunday night. Good thing it's on FSN so I won't be able to watch it.

I have no idea if Pitt or Miami are actually good.