Basketblogpoll #6

The tournament bracket will be released in a few hours. Be sure to sign up for our NCAA tournament challenge.

Here is our last regular season basketblogpoll for your approval. Let the madness begin!

Rank	Team	Record	Delta
1	North Carolina	28-4	1
2	Louisville	28-5	1
3	Pittsburgh	28-4	2
4	Memphis	31-3
5	Connecticut	27-4
6	Duke	27-6	5
7	Oklahoma	27-5
8	Michigan St.	26-6	1
9	Missouri	28-6	4
10	Villanova	26-7
11	Wake Forest	24-6	5
12	Kansas	25-7	4
13	Washington	25-8	2
14	Florida St.	25-8	3
15	Gonzaga	26-5	3
16	Syracuse	26-9	2
17	Butler	26-5	3
18	Purdue	24-9	8
19	Oklahoma St.	22-11	4
20	Utah	24-9	6
21	Arizona St.	24-9	5
22	West Virginia	23-11	2
23	Illinois	24-9	3
24	Clemson	23-8	3
25	Xavier	25-7	6

For your reference, here is last week's ballot.

Dropped Out: UCLA (#16), Brigham Young (#20), Marquette (#22), Northern Iowa (#25).

Welcome (Back)! Purdue (#18), Utah (#20), Arizona St. (#21), Illinois (#23)

Waiting Room: UCLA, Brigham Young, Marquette, Tennessee(?)

By Conference: Big East 6, Atlantic Coast 5, Big XII 4, Big Ten 3, Pac 10 2, Conference USA 1, Atlantic 10 1, Horizon 1, West Coast 1, Mountain West 1

Bullets:

• Overall, we tried to reward teams who had a good conference tournament but not be too punishing to those in our poll last week who bowed out of their respective conference tournaments early. It is easy to overreact to the results of the conference tournaments, especially in multi-bid leagues like the ACC, Big East, Big XII and Pac 10.
  
• We think North Carolina is the best team in the country, despite their semifinals loss to Florida State. With Lawson back for the NCAAs, they should represent the ACC in the tournament well.
• We bump Duke up 5 spots for their strong showing in the ACC tournament so far, and as of this post they are already spanking FSU 29-14 in the first half of the ACC Tournament Championship. (Ahh, what could have been for BC!)
  
• I know Syracuse had an outstanding Big East tournament, but let's not overreact and push them all the way into the Top 10, blogpollers. This is still a team that lost to Villanova (twice), Louisville (twice), Connecticut, Pittsburgh, Providence, Georgetown ... and Cleveland State (albeit, Cleveland St. is tournament bound). Syracuse should definitely be on everyone's ballot this week, but by our calculations they aren't in the top 4 of the Big East and should be outside of the top 10 this week.
• Xavier is down 6 slots this week and barely holds on to our final blogpoll ballot slot after bowing out early in the Atlantic 10 tournament.
  
• Purdue and Illinois are back in this week for their relatively strong showing in the Big Ten tournament. Hoping the committee doesn't overreact and put 8 teams from the Big Ten into the dance.
  
• From the Mountain West, Utah is back in and Brigham Young is out as the Utes celebrate their first Mountain West Tournament Championship since 2004.
• And finally, the SEC tournament lived up to its billing. While it was fun to watch Mississippi State’s Jarvis Varnado block 7 shots in yesterday's SEC semifinal, this conference has been terrible this year. I, personally, am rooting for Tennessee in the SEC Championship - currently in progress - because this conference doesn't deserve more than two tournament bids this season. Tennessee and LSU are most likely in, with Florida, South Carolina, Auburn and Mississippi St. all on the outside looking in.
  

Leave your thoughts, comments and beefs with our ballot in the comments section below.

Good luck to the Eagles tonight with the tournament selection process.