Good Morning, Illini Nation: AP Top 25 deep dive

Scott Richey, The News-Gazette, Champaign-Urbana, Ill.
·1 min read

Nov. 14—Welcome to "Good Morning, Illini Nation," your daily dose of college basketball news from Illini beat writer and AP Top 25 voter Scott Richey. He'll offer up insights every morning on Brad Underwood's team:

The first AP Top 25 poll of the regular season came out Monday. Let's take a closer look at how Illinois (and the rest) fared: — Illinois appeared on 42 of 62 ballots, which is 17 more voters including the Illini on their ballot than did for the preseason poll. — The Illini received votes at 10 different ballot positions, with WVLA-TV's Brian Holland still the highest on Brad Underwood's squad. He had Illinois ranked No. 14. — The majority of the voters who ranked Illinois had them at No. 22 (including me). — My ballot had three "extreme" picks with teams ranked five or more spots from their official place on the poll. Those three were Texas A&M at No. 9, North Carolina at No. 15 and UCLA at No. 24.

-The two ranked teams not on my ballot were James Madison and Colorado. — Miami is the highest-ranked team at No. 12 that was also left off at least one ballot. (Two of them, in fact, for the Hurricanes). The same is true for No. 13 Arkansas. — Memphis got one vote at No. 15, which was the highest single vote for a team that didn't make the top 25. The Tigers wound up 25 points behind Colorado for the 25th spot on the poll.