Where are you, Gary Parrish, now that we need you?
Actually, Parrish is easy to find. He’s still a columnist and college basketball analyst for CBSSports.com. It’s just his old weekly feature, titled “Poll Attacks,” that has gone MIA.
He stopped doing the column a few years ago. And man, is it sorely missed.
To refresh the memory of those who don’t recall or are only casual observers of the college game, Parrish would scour through the ballots of every voter on the Associated Press Poll each week to see if there were any glaring anomalies in their selections.
If a blue blood was ranked too high or a mid-major too low (or not at all), he’d call the voter out on it.
He didn’t do it to be confrontational or to embarrass anyone. The intent was simply to make the polling process as transparent as possible and to hold voters accountable for their picks.
Judging from the newest Top-25 that came out on Monday, Parrish would be a busy man if “Poll Attacks” was still a thing. Because while most of the teams in the top half of the rankings are no-brainers, some of those near the bottom make you wonder if voters are actually watching games or if they’re simply making their picks based on the NCAA’s flawed NET metric.
According to CollegePollTracker.com, Clemson was listed on 32 of the 62 ballots cast this week, with Brice Cherry of the Waco (Texas) Tribune-Herald slotting it as high as No. 8. But that means 30 other voters left the Tigers off completely.
Since Parrish isn’t in a position to ask anymore, I’ll do it for him.
How in the world did you not rank Clemson?
The Tigers are now in their second week inside the Coaches’ poll, moving up 4 spots from No. 25 to No. 21 after double-digit road wins at Virginia Tech and NC State. But at 18-4, on a 6-game winning streak that’s just 1 off the school record, they’re still on the outside looking in on the AP Top-25.
They didn’t miss by much. Two more points and they would have tied Ole Miss for the 25th and final spot. But truth be told, it shouldn’t have even been that close a call.
Nor should Louisville’s drop out of the poll after being at No. 21 last week because of a road loss at Georgia Tech, its first setback since Dec. 14. Eleven games ago.
Yes, I’m aware of the whole “everyone in the ACC other than Duke is garbage” narrative. And I know Clemson has played only 1 team that was ranked at the time they met and is still languishing at No. 30 in the NET (and only slightly higher at No. 27, according to KenPom).
But didn’t you voters learn anything from football?
While conference affiliation and strength of schedule are factors that should be considered, they’re not the be-all and end-all of evaluation tools. Contrary to what Kirk Herbstreit tried to sell us in December, the object of the game is still winning.
So teams should be rewarded for winning their games, regardless of who they’re against, as much, if not more, than teams losing to “good” opponents.
And it’s not as if Clemson has been playing a junior varsity schedule.
The Tigers are 2-2 in Quad 1 games and 6-2 against Quad 2. They beat Kentucky, which is currently ranked 14th, and Penn State while half of their 4 losses have come in overtime. One of which was to No. 17 Memphis.
While No. 25 Ole Miss has dropped 4 of its past 5 to fall to 16-6 and No. 23 Illinois is 15-7 after going 3-4 in its previous 7, Brad Brownell’s team was 7-1 in January, the first time since 1951 that it went through an entire month with only a single setback.
Though Clemson isn’t the brand name in basketball that it is in football, the Tigers did make it to the Elite Eight a year ago. Most of the core from that team is back, including point guard Chase Hunter and Swiss Army Knife forward Ian Schieffelin. And the Tigers have put together a solid resume. One that might already have them in the poll if they played in any other power conference (or the Big East) other than the ACC.
This is not to suggest that there’s an organized bias toward the conference on the part of the voters. It’s been a historically bad year for the ACC, with half of its 18 members at .500 or below as the season’s final full month begins. But that doesn’t mean Clemson and to a lesser extent Louisville deserve to be devalued because of the perception of their conference.
The Tigers were in the polls for 2 weeks earlier this season after beating Kentucky and they stand a good chance at making it back next week thanks to a date against Duke at home on Saturday. A win against Cooper Flagg and his No. 2-ranked Blue Devils should certainly earn them a spot on all 62 ballots.
If it doesn’t, we might have to enlist Gary Parrish to resurrect his “Poll Attacks” column to find out why.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
