Women's Hoops Guru

By Mel Greenberg

Who would have believed that in the three years since the Guru started blogging in the late winter of 2005 that Tuesday's post attempting to explain how a fifth-place team in the Associated Press women's poll could get eight first-place votes would draw an all-time one-day Guru-post record number of hits (around 500), perhaps with a bounce off the site-links out there still ahead.

That's a little more than the Imus controversy, more than the Penn State coaching change, slightly more than the recent mock bracket coverage at NCAA headquarters, and several other events.

But after watching some of the reaction to the post -- and "hi" back to the Rutgers message board -- the Guru would like to clarify what was discussed in terms of the knowledge base.

Most seemed to understand the discussion, but a better analogy, since we've seen it used during the current presidential campaign season, is the sampling of 17 "experienced" voters the Guru used can be compared to the "super delegate" concept being tossed around in coverage of the Democratic race for the nomination.

Understand, this is not a bad voting board -- AP headquarters rarely has to chase votes down except when someone might get caught out of pocket in a travel situation.

And there are probably as many worthy reasons votes not used in the Guru's sample were cast the way they were.

The "super delegate" group individually tends to look at things nearly parallel to the NCAA committee, so a lot more attention is placed on strength of schedule, the season-to-date of one team in total body of work compared to another, and the head-to-head against ranked teams, as well as the not-successful efforts. Because we sort of get around, at least regionally, we're also usually on the phone talking to each other about the teams we've seen.

But also understand that from reading philsophies of voters in the men's poll, there are legitimate differences of opinion -- some go with the way a team is playing now and toss out early bad losses, some still use a bit of a punishment factor.

Each week in New York from AP headquarters, Doug Feinberg, who does not vote but counts the ballots and then interprets the result, sends out records and reports of the five teams who just missed the poll from the previous week to help create a pool of candidates beyond the regular "fared" report.

He also emails the how-they-fared so those away from access to the wire report in the home office can have that information in their hotel rooms. And every ten days or so, he and I look at ways to grow the knowledge base to make sure there's at least an awareness of what's out there as we get deeper in the season.

That said, there are other factors that have affected voting in this particular season.

On a given week, losses have not been plentiful in the lower portion of the poll to cause vacancies. And when vacancies occur, either six teams might each have a good case for selection -- thus blocking consensus for one -- or some weeks no one does. For example, as previously stated, it was tough to really jump teams into the top 10 this week because of losses from No. 11 through No. 16.

Another problem with the growth of the internet is a way needs to be found to streamline email information coming from the sports information directors.

Many keep all of us on one list forcing a lot of unecessary duplication besides choking our servers and preventing outbound replies until we can get on the publishing systems to store what we need in side folders.

Example, last week the NCAA warned us of the approaching deadline for Final Four credential applications. The NCAA also sent the note to the various conference media contacts, who in turn sent the note to their member schools, who all in turn sent the same note to us.

The Guru counted no less than 120 duplications in a four-hour period. The same thing happens with the various national awards. "Wooden" sends out the names on the watch list and then every school in the country sends out a national email if they have a candidate.

Then, there's the campaigning for rankings and postseason awards.

And if a particular league has a teleconference scheduled, their notification should be enough. Taking the "make-pretend-conference" (to keep real names out of this) as an example: if they send me an email, the only other email where duplication is understandable is those that come from my "local" team in that conference. And if that "local" team has me on a national list, that's understandable, although usually in this part of the world the SIDs are smart enough to put us on one or the other.

So, hopefully, this little discussion has enhanced the previous discussion. But keep the dialogue going. And, while there's been a lot of Rutgers topics here, understand, they are also one of my "local" teams besides being on my national watch list.

Ok, Voepel, wherever you are, it's your turn to explain what I just explained.

-- Mel
But we will find a way in this area to get to a common solution to make both sides happy.

And in a few days, the Guru is going to post a capsule list here of teams with decent records that may have been overlooked -- some with good reason, which is why the warts will be shown with the beauty marks in a capsule -- good loses, bad losses, rpi, strength of schedule, and a few other items.