FanHouse Rankingtherankings

Ranking the rankings criticizes the critics when the polls come out.

Headlining: Pittsburgh took over first in the country after beating Connecticut two weeks ago. All it had to do was beat Providence and the Panthers would get to sit pretty at No. 1 overall, possibly cruising to a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Yet, they somehow lost. It's a testament to this year's college basketball season, not only in terms of parity and a lack of elite teams, but general confusion as well. Don't bother telling me you saw that coming.

Ranking the rankings criticizes the critics when the polls come out.

Headlining: Pittsburgh beat Connecticut to kick off the week, led by DeJuan Blair's ridiculous 22-point, 23-rebound effort. It seemed relatively unlikely at the time that the Panthers could manage to jump both North Carolina and Oklahoma, providing that either one of the two won out for the week.

But then Saturday rolled around. The Tar Heels fell to Maryland and Oklahoma, without Blake Griffin for most of the game, coughed one up to Texas.

Ranking the rankings criticizes the critics when the polls come out.

Headlining: The beauty of a Tuesday column, at least this season, is that whoever ends up No. 1 can do so with an asterisk based on Monday's games. (*In case you didn't know already, Pittsburgh beat Connecticut.) And it appears that next week, we'll likely have a new No. 1 team in the nation. That will likely be Blake Griffin and the Oklahoma Sooners. Which is fitting, considering Griffin dropped a rediculous 40-point, 23-rebound Valentine's Day stat line on Texas Tech Saturday night.

Ranking the rankings criticizes the critics when the polls come out.

Headlining: Connecticut tops the charts ... again. This isn't surprising, because they didn't lose. The fact that they didn't lose -- something that's happened to a lot of No. 1 teams -- is what's mildly shocking, especially considering they had a Monday headliner with Louisville, which they won easily behind the oh-so-strong play of Hasheem Thabeet. Good times, though, when we're not sure that anyone can really hold onto the top spot, no?

Ranking the rankings criticizes the critics when the polls come out.

Headlining: Connecticut became the fourth straight different No. 1 when they hopped to the first overall spot this week.

As Ray Holloman noted yesterday, there's a lot of parity in college basketball. The Huskies, however, look like a pretty good bet to make it two weeks in a row after paddling Louisville at Freedom Hall on Monday night.

Ranking the rankings criticizes the critics as soon as the polls come out.

Headlining: It's obvious, right? Duke tops both polls for the first time since the end of the 2005-06 regular season and we're all depressed ecstatic! I want to say that it's hard to like this Blue Devil team, but when is it easy to like Duke? (Answer: When you're a Duke fan. Or when the Blue Devils are playing Carolina.) That being said, the 2008-09 incarnation isn't nearly as hate-able as previous teams.

Ranking the rankings criticizes the critics as soon as the polls come out.

It shouldn't come as a tremendous surprise that the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, the nation's only remaining undefeated team, are the consensus number one team in the nation. Oh wait, what's that? They're not the consensus team? Interesting.

They are close though -- Duke garnered four AP first place votes and six votes in the coaches poll to lock up the second overall ranking in both polls, while Connecticut and Pittsburgh rounded out the top four. Perhaps Coach K's media scathing resonated with more than just the News & Observer.

This is, the first time that Wake has been No. 1 since Chris Paul graced the hardwood of Lawrence Joel, but it's an interesting change because this is a completely different Deacon team, and one that's dominated by a youthful demeanor.