Big Lead Sports Bar

2/23/2009

UPDATED: PITT RETURNS TO THE TOP SPOT



As expected, Pitt vaulted back into the nation's #1 slot following a dominant week coupled with losses to the previous week's top three teams. But the bigger question I had was to find out who the one person was that actually voted for UConn ahead of Pitt in this week's poll. Were they watching Two and a Half Men instead of the Pitt-UConn game on Big Monday last week? And even better is Oklahoma, who ranked #3, getting two first-place votes despite an injury to Blake Griffin. I was perplexed, and being a Pittsburgher, I was naturally disgusted that any national media member would slight us in the least.

Well, I found out that there's a site called Pollspeak that reports on how writers voted, so here's the answer to my questions:

--UConn's #1 vote was from George Geise of the Great Falls Tribune in the basketball mecca of Great Falls, Montana.

--Oklahoma's #1 votes came from Ron Morris of The State in Columbia, South Carolina, and Seth Davis of Sports Illustrated and CBS fame. I'd expect a little more out of him.

--John Feinstein of NPR is the writer who voted for Robert Morris in the polls earlier this season, and he apparently champions a smaller school for his 25th spot each week. What a humanitarian. This week, he even threw a bone to Penn State at #24.

So there you have it. Some guy from Montana is the only thing sitting between Pitt and the unanimous #1 love that it deserves. Of course, no one's opinion, not even George Geise's, matters once the field of 65 is set. But still, it's nothing but a positive for the Pitt program to be at or around the top spot. Hopefully the results will be a little better this time around.

Pitt rises again as coaches' No. 1 [ESPN]
Pollstalker [Pollspeak]
Poll Dancing: Who's that guy ranking Robert Morris every week? [The Dagger]

Update:

To answer the question someone posed in the comments section, a media member informed me that Jim Boeheim has the Big East vote in the coaches poll (one coach votes in each of the 31 conferences) and they won’t release individual ballots until the final poll when it’s a no-brainer. He also points out that the great George Geise of Montana got slammed in a "The Poll Attacks" column on CBS Sports' website for this week's vote.

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8 comments:

HotDog_Zanzabar said...

I figured Montana was a state that was douchebag free. Goes to show how much I know.

Anonymous said...

The guy who voted UConn #1 after last Monday's game is a fool.

Hail to Pitt, baby!!!

Ryan said...

That's pretty bizarre. I initially figured some New Englander would've voted for UConn. Is there any way to find out which coaches have votes in that poll? UConn having a vote in there was awfully suspicious, and while I know they don't typically reveal those ballots, I wonder if Jim Calhoun has a ballot.

DogZog22 said...

Feinstein obviously did not take in the Bobby Mo game last week vs Monmouth as I did. They better worry about the NEC tourney and not Feinstein's Top 25 vote.

BurressWithButterflywings said...

Is there really any question that Jim Calhoun was the coach who voted for UCONN?

Did you see his reaction to the game?

Louis Lipps is my homeboy said...

I don't think that Calhoun has a vote in the coach's poll this year, but I'm not positive.


Doesn't matter anyways, we are now officially a lame duck #1.

Is Adam gonna come in here and brag about PSU's 38-33 barnburner win?

BurressWithButterflywings said...

I am sure, he seemed very pround about winning a game by shooting less than 30% while their opponent didn't get 1 TRIP TO THE FREE THROW LINE THE ENTIRE NIGHT!

Is that even possible?

BurressWithButterflywings said...

Oh, and Pitt looked awful last night