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At this stage, I've pretty much moved on from college basketball for the season. Pitt's year has been finished for some time now and with the championship game this week, the only thing left were the final rankings before we move onto the NBA Draft.
The final USA Today/Coaches poll was released on Tuesday and the Panthers finished '34th', receiving ten points in the poll. The real news for me, though, were two rogue coaches who have apparently lost their minds ... or gave their ballots to interns - one or the other.
UConn, received 30 of the 32 first-place votes after they won the title. Somehow, Kentucky garnered a vote as did Wichita State. That's right - the same Kentucky who has a worse record and just lost to the Huskies were somehow voted as the top team in the nation by someone. Equally as embarrassing was the No. 1 vote given to the Shockers, who were bounced in the opening weekend.
Now, we don't yet know who the culprits are, but here's the list of voters (at the bottom of the poll), according to the USA Today website.
I get that voting for the champion as the top team isn't always popular. And truthfully, of course the Huskies aren't the best team in college basketball. If you play the tournament ten more times, there's a fighting chance that UConn doesn't even win it once. That's no knock to the Huskies, but you could play the tournament ten times and have ten different champions. The tournament is rarely not about the best team ... it's about the team playing the best at that given point. After all, few would take Connecticut in a seven-game series against the likes of Arizona or even Louisville (who beat them three times, including an 81-48 beatdown, by the way).
Still, to me you've got to have some extremely bizarre scenario not vote to the champion as the top team. And voting for a team that struggled much of the year or one that was largely untested and then bowed out early ain't it.
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