I agree with you that the proper way to analyze the polls is by individual voter.rjsuperfly66 wrote:I don't think that's true, you just have to remember how the polls work... Week 3, Seton Hall was ranked by all but 4 pollsters and had 32 pollsters who ranked them in their Top 20. In fact, they had 4 pollsters rank them in the Top 15. This week factoring a drop on some of those brackets, Seton Hall still has 4 pollsters who list them inside their Top 20. Doug Haller, for example, dropped Seton Hall from #11 last week to #19 this week. But for some, the drop was much smaller, and ultimately there were still 25 pollsters who listed Seton Hall in their Top 25 from last week. It's not as simple as one team beat the other...URI2006_Andy wrote:I think beating Seton Hall without EC and Langevine made the win less credible in the eyes of the AP voters. Based on their voting (SH 26, URI 37), the win was viewed more as a fluke instead of URI’s short handed team is better than Seton Hall. Maybe if we had beat them full strength, voters wouldve just accepted that URI is a better team and voted accordingly.
Doug Haller, since you brought him up, is a perfect example of my point. He had URI ranked 25 to start the season, the next week he had them at 23. So he considered URI a top 25 team for the first 2 weeks of the season. Then, URI lost at Nevada and EC was announced out for 4-6 weeks. Understandably, Haller dropped URI out of the rankings. Then URI comes back and beats Haller’s #11 team in the country on a neutral floor. But yet, URI does not come back into Haller’s top 25.
So in some manner, Haller either disregarded his thinking in the first 2 polls and never really thought URI was a top 25 team, full strength or not, or he considered URI’s win over Seton Hall to be something of a fluke. Probably a combination of the two. Only Haller, in his infinite wisdom, can answer.