State AP #23, Coaches #25; RPI #5

12-13 Basketball NCS Basketball15

State moved up to #23 in the AP (ESPN) and remained at #25 in the USA Today/Coaches (Yahoo!) polls. Apparently, the Stanford win didn’t impress the coaches much.

The big move this week was up to fifth in RPI (CBSSports.com), behind only Duke, Kansas, Michigan and Colorado. State’s strength of schedule is fourth, behind Georgetown, Duke and Kansas.

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12-13 Basketball NCS Basketball

15 Responses to State AP #23, Coaches #25; RPI #5

  1. blpack 12/24/2012 at 1:38 PM #

    This team is well positioned to get hot and make some noise. The ACC again looks weak and this may be a down year for the Holes too. Someone needs to step up; might as well be State. Love the RPI. Merry Christmas!

  2. Packfan28 12/24/2012 at 2:25 PM #

    Actually we had dropped out of the coaches poll last week, so we moved up a notch. Don’t understand how a 3 loss Kentucky team stays in the coaches poll. At least they aren’t in the AP poll. Best of all, Carolina has disappeared from both.

  3. PackerInRussia 12/24/2012 at 2:28 PM #

    Is there a greater disparity between RPI and ranking for any other team (in the sense of RPI being that much higher than ranking; not the other way around)?

  4. Prowling Woofie 12/24/2012 at 2:46 PM #

    Only State could have an RPI of 5, a SOS of 4, and be ranked 23/25.

    Merry Christmas !!!

  5. sequoyah 12/24/2012 at 3:19 PM #

    Going into the New Year under-ranked @ 23rd/25th is fine by me…gives the team a reason to stay intense & prove folks wrong..

    Merry Christmas to y’all

  6. WolftownVA81 12/24/2012 at 3:22 PM #

    ^ Agree. We need to have something to work for. A little chip on the shoulder can serve well to motivate. We’ll be fine come tournament time. I’m just glad we are being talked about as a relevant program again.

  7. ADVENTUROO 12/24/2012 at 8:58 PM #

    I was a little miffed at the polls, but hey, Kentucky is supposedly playing better now that Cal and Ryan Harrow have made up.

    It is a bit cuious as to how KY moved up….but I guess that you have to look at the credentials of the coach, regardless of what the team is doing.

    Based on the RPI site that I looked at…..
    Duke – #1

    NCSU – #5

    Miami – #10

    MD – #46

    UNC – #50

    KY – #51

    So, the RPI and the polls ain’t exactly statistically correlated…..to say the very least.

    We just need to keep playing hard and winning…..and then the polls will adjust.

    GO PACK!

  8. nav 12/25/2012 at 12:34 AM #

    Right now we are probably 15-20 best team in the country. If we can tighten our D then we can be a top 10 team.

  9. wolfonthehill 12/25/2012 at 7:24 AM #

    ADVENTUROO – So the over-ranked teams are, shockingly, UK & unc-ch?

  10. JeremyH 12/25/2012 at 12:38 PM #

    The voters have their expectations of us on a tight leash. They’re right. We have not demonstrated any consistent regular season success since Jules roamed the brickyard. We’re apparently a better story in a Cinderella gown anyways…But we haven’t played any ACC games yet so plenty of those to bring us up and down. Are we a top 5 team? Beat the Duke Blue Floopers. I think we should be able to split, and sweep if we play more fundamentally sound (limit turnovers/fouls, rebound, hit free throws).

  11. sholtzma 12/25/2012 at 1:09 PM #

    Where we should be ranked at this point is debatable. THAT we should be ranked at this point is obvious. Yet, you have a half dozen AP writers who didn’t vote for us to be ranked at all. That’s either biased or bizarre, take your pick. With the teams we’ve beaten, teams we’ve lost to (and where and when), record, schedule, SOS, RPI, talent, etc, there is no cause to keep us out of the top 25. Perhaps those who get a vote should have to justify their choices publicly each week….

  12. wilmwolf80 12/25/2012 at 6:00 PM #

    I believe that the perception by many of the pollsters was that we were over-ranked in the preseason, and they were waiting eagerly for us to lose so that could drop us down. Also, despite our pre-season hype, we still do not garner Sportscenter/front page press coverage. Many of the the voters in both polls simply don’t pay attention to the results of the games like they should.

    I personally feel we were over-ranked at the beginning of the year, and that we are under-ranked now. I don’t buy into the idea of “wanting” the team to be under-ranked or un-ranked, simply because we haven’t performed great in the past. Until we change that losing culture, we will remain what we have been. I want to be ranked. I want to be the frontrunner, and I want kids and staff that can handle those expectations.

  13. wufpup76 12/25/2012 at 8:11 PM #

    Hope everyone is having a great Christmas and is being safe … I am sick as a dog. Or wolf. Take your pick.

    Wanted to highlight this quote:

    “Until we change that losing culture, we will remain what we have been. I want to be ranked. I want to be the frontrunner, and I want kids and staff that can handle those expectations.”

    ^I completely agree with this quote. While the polls themselves are quite useless, people – including our kids/players – do pay attention to them.

    Being ranked (learning to win) and staying ranked (continuing to win) is a learned process for a program. I hope this season is a continuation of the culture change introduced last season by the new staff.

    The only misgiving I have about the polls this season is that as a program/whole, we weren’t ready for a Top 10 ranking to start the season. Like it or not, those kids feel the burden of living up to that expectation. In that sense, the whipping from Ok State was not such a bad thing.

    Good things about the loss? It happened early. It happened dramatically – as in there was no doubt about what happened during the game. That loss provided valuable lessons for our team – mental and physical – about what it takes to actually be ‘#6’.

    The team has recovered. We still have a long ways to go in many aspects, but the good thing is that you can tell the team knows they have a long ways to go. That sentiment, to me, is more valuable than anything else.

    We may look back at the Ok State game as the cauldron that cooked us into something great.

  14. jbpackfan 12/26/2012 at 8:54 AM #

    State should be about #15. Should have started the season there, should have stayed there after the close Michigan loss. State is getting punished for the Ok St loss a little too much b/c of perception. (See UK & UNC who got hammered a couple times and weren’t dropped as much or as quickly)

  15. JSRy2k 12/26/2012 at 7:11 PM #

    Wufpup, extremely well said.

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