NCAA Basketball Polls

There are two polls for NCAA basketball. Each of these polls rank the teams from one to twenty-five. The AP or Associated Press Poll is comprised of sports writers who vote for the best twenty-five teams in the country. Sports writers judge how the teams have performed over the course of the season and also how well they have played against strong or stronger opposition. The pre-season AP Poll takes the statistics of the previous season into account. If a team has lost a number of influential players because of graduation and is now relying on younger, more inexperienced players then they might not be ranked as high as they were last year.

Conversely, a young, promising team the previous year can jump up in the pre-season poll if the sports writers agree that they will perform better this year over the course of the season. The other poll that is used as a yardstick to judge the teams is the coaches’ poll. For this poll the teams’ rankings are decided by the coaches in the NCAA. The same factors that influence the sports writers are in play when the coaches vote as well, the number of games won in a season, the strength of a teams’ schedule, and any injuries incurred that could possibly affect a teams productivity. The AP Poll is probably considered to be the more important of the two and is the one that most spots analysts reference the most. However, for the top five teams there is little difference between the two polls. The polls are published in the sports sections of most major newspapers across the country and are also available on the Internet. Various websites such as Yahoo and ESPN will have each of the polls published. New polls are released at the beginning of the week after each team has played its game.

If an undefeated team loses, it will undoubtedly drop in the poll. The teams that are undefeated during the course of the season will stay in the top three of the poll. The end of the season poll is important because it will have an affect on the seedings for the NCAA tournament. The higher the seed a team is the better its chances are of proceeding to the next round. This is because it will most likely be matched up with a lower seed in its first game. However, the first round of the NCAA tourney is when many major upsets occur and this is what frustrates many people who are sure of their picks.