By Mel Greenberg
From some 45-60 miles to the North, we could hear the howls from the Rutgers faithful when the Associated Press women's basketball poll for the week was announced Monday afternoon.
How could the Scarlet Knights look that impressive against George Washington Sunday night and not re-gain some upward movement, let alone drop another spot?
The question is well-merited but relax.
If you look at the point total, the spread between No. 5 North Carolina, through No. 6 Louisiana State by Maryland, and Rutgers is only 12 points.
Basically, forget the ranking, per se, it's a virtual tie for fifth place.
If you consider that No. 8 Georgia is about 100 points behind in the eighth slot indicates most of the votes for Rutgers fell into the 4-5-6 range.
To answer a question, we have seen, AP would like ballots in by midnight, Sunday, although some never make it until Monday morning because of voters who may be traveling.
Furthermore, in the media business, may voters are working on Sundays and, early in the season, when schedules are not uniform, there is a tendency at times to vote early, without regard to an 8 p.m. Eastern start time.
Furthermore, ESPNU is not readily available in all places voters happen to reside -- like here.
A week ago, Rutgers may have gotten the benefit in that the Stanford game wasn't taken into consideration. But word was out through either media reports or observation that controversial officiating aside, the squad didn't really play all that well and should have been able to avoid the last-second whistle by being enough ahead to make it a non-factor.
The performance against Creighton, Friday night, despite the win, didn't help, either.
So many went to the votingt both playing catch-up with those two events in the profile.
Over the years when we ran the coaches' vote, many times we would see a re-adjustment a week later based on events that had happened during late Sunday games.
However, Rutgers can quickly take care of its own business in the poll. A win over LSU at home Sunday, which will be played in mid-afternoon, should cause a rise. On the other hand, a setback will kind of leave the team right where they are or down a couple of notches.
One ranking we would question above is how the Tar Heels moved up, but considering the voting, it wouldn't take many ballots to push UNC ahead when figuring out the comparisons in that 5-6-7 range.
On the other hand, there could be other factors. And to get a clue there, the Guru doesn't have time to examine the individual votes as many of you do.
So here's the link now that it appears the new board for the 2007-08 has finally been updated at the AP women's voting site.
Time Out: There's one little problem. As we went to get the link, it appears that only the pre-season vote is in place, though if you see week 3, you'll know it's been updated.
But at least you have the link.
Moving on elsewhere in the voting, another problem caused by an in-ordinate non-uniform start, is who to insert when teams below start to lose.
A lot that occurred last week, so it was a dart toss per se.
But take the Guru's advice, enough power teams are playing each other that wait until Dec. 12 or so before taking things a little more seriously.
Hightower's Grand Night
Yes, we were on the desk Monday night and handled the La Salle-Albany game by remote from the Explorers' Tom Gola Arena.
But in the process of jump-starting the report off the box score, we were ahead of an important detail.
Senior Carlene Hightower had 22 points as La Salle beat Albany, 70-59, to even its record at 2-2. That we had. What we didn't have was that she became the 22nd member of La Salle's 1,00-point club during the game.
The all-time leader is Jen Cole with 1,875, followed by current assistant coach Chrissie (Donahue) Doogan at 1,818.
Earlier in the day, Hightower was also named the Atlantic Ten co-player of the week.
Three-Catch at Penn State
The first three recruits of the Coquese Washington era were announced by Penn State on Monday and two come from the Midwest she used to mine for Notre Dame as an associate head coach to Muffet McGraw.
Zhague Gray, a 5-8 guard is from Chicago, while 5-4 point guard Emily Phillips is from South Bend, Ind., right near the Notre Dame campus.
Renee Womack is from these parts in nearby Lansdale where she led Methacton High to a first-ever playoff win in history in Suburban One.
If this is your first stop on the internet today, just head to the Penn State site to get further details.
Clearing the (Schedule) Record
Those of you who have been grabbing the Guru's operation schedule on an exile file that Jonathan recently posted, please insert under Dec. 6 -- Rutgers at Duke (how could we miss that one??)
We accidentaly lost the line while trying to line up page breaks for the printed version the editors here receive.
Meanwhile, we have to run over to FedEx and get a recommendation sent on behalf of Acacia, who is contending for a Hearst fellowship.
We'll be back after Tuesday night's action.
--Mel
Philly.com discussions are intended to be civil, friendly conversations. Please treat other participants with respect and in a way that you would want to be treated. You are responsible for what you say. And please, stay on topic.
These boards are monitored by Philly.com staff. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us in our sole discretion and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. Personal attacks, especially on other board participants, are not permitted. We reserve the right to permanently block any user who violates these terms and conditions.