The Confidential

August Distraction: The AP Top 100

The Associated Press decided to take a look back at its 80 years of issuing polls to generate a “top 100.”  They used a formula that took into consideration appearances in polls, #1 rankings, and national championships.  The top five schools using that criteria turn out to be Ohio State, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, Alabama and Southern California.   But how did the ACC schools do?

• Notre Dame #3
• Florida State #9 (non-conference rival Florida was #10)
• Miami #13
• Clemson #22 (non-conference rival South Carolina was #48)
• Pittsburgh #23 (non-conference rival West Virginia was #33)
• Georgia Tech #26 (non-conference rival Georgia was #15)
• Virginia Tech #31
• North Carolina #38
• Syracuse #41
• Virginia #52
• Duke #53
• NC State #56
• Boston College #57
• Louisville #62 (non-conference rival Kentucky was #68)
• Wake Forest #80

Thus, all ACC teams made the top 100.  Which is nice.

Clemson is WAY above South Carolina.  In fact, of the schools with SEC rivals, only Georgia Tech failed to finished higher than its counterpart.

Syracuse finished at #41, despite not being ranked since 2001.  One can only wonder how much higher the Orange would have been if the list had been tallied back then.  Of course, if they had not hired Greg Robinson… nevermind.

And Wake Forest was not the lowest P5 school.  Iowa State, Rutgers, and Vanderbilt all earned that status.

In fact, do you want to know how pathetic Rutgers is?  Rutgers finished behind Holy Cross and Fordham.  And Big 10 fans think Rutgers is a NYC school!  Sadly, Rutgers is also a football school… certainly not known for their elite hoops.  Other schools to top Rutgers were Army, Penn, Rice, Tulane, Wyoming, Cornell, Toledo, and Santa Clara.

Big XII expansion candidates: BYU: #34, Houston: #49, Colorado State: #77, Cincinnati: #81, USF: #94.  UConn, Memphis, and Central Florida did not make the list.

In any event, even excluding Notre Dame, the ACC had 14 schools in the top 80– 17.5%, which is just under the 20% expected as one of 5 power conferences.  And with 8 of the top 41 teams (40 excluding Notre Dame), that works out to exactly 20%.  Naturally, including Notre Dame makes things look even better.