Like a jockey trying to navigate his thoroughbred out of the starting gate, the mainstream media was in a rush late Monday night to disclose their wildly varied early rankings for the 2013-14 college basketball season. Instead of trying to assemble our own subjective, inconsistent rankings, we decided we’d simply piggyback off the work of others and put together a consensus of those rankings.
Below is an admittedly rudimentary conglomeration of 10 separate top-25 rankings for next season, which are not terribly consistent in expectations. Since the NCAA’s declaration deadline for the NBA draft has not yet arrived, there’s no consensus as to which players will be returning that haven’t yet decided. Thus, rankings are all over the place.
Nonetheless, we’ve taken those 10 polls and given 25 points for first place, 24 points for second and so on. Each team’s best and worst ranking has been thrown out to account, somewhat, for the wild fluctuation from poll-to-poll.
To no one’s surprise, Kentucky was the unanimous pick for the No. 1-team in the country. After that, there’s not a ton of consensus. Louisville comes out second, but Russ Smith has since thrown his hat in the NBA ring for next season, which means their spot is tenuous at best.
Behold, the way, way too early consensus top-25 for next season…
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Asjb5kvZz0PcdFJVaUJ1TW0xSS00WHN3TXluTjljTGc&usp=sharing