Basketblog Poll Week 2

Update:  Explanations now available for those who click through

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Connecticut
2	Oklahoma
3	North Carolina
4	Pittsburgh	3
5	Louisville	1
6	Memphis	7
7	Michigan St.	7
8	Kansas	10
9	Missouri
10	Illinois	5
11	Duke	7
12	Marquette	3
13	Arizona St.	11
14	Clemson	6
15	Wake Forest	10
16	Syracuse	9
17	Butler	6
18	UCLA	6
19	Xavier	9
20	Purdue
21	Ohio St.
22	Utah St.	1
23	Miami FL	3
24	Washington	2
25	Notre Dame
Last week's ballot

The top 5 are pretty self explanatory, although Uconn's hold on number one is going to be short-lived with Dyson's injury.  The Pitt/Uconn matchup will clear that up; even without Dyson Uconn is still pretty awesome.  Despite their beatdown at the hands of Notre Dame (to be discussed later), Louisville remains in the top 5, but in the cursory "to be determined" roll that Wake Forest found themselves in last week.

Speaking of Wake, they find themselves punished harshly as a combination of me overrating them in the first ballot and then failing to live up to my own lofty expectations.  I still maintain that the best team I've seen all year was the Wake team that beat Duke in late January.  They're just waaay to young to perform at that level with any consistency.

As for a team that did live up to my expectations, last week I had this to say about UCLA:

count me as thoroughly unimpressed with UCLA

Winner.  Beauford.  They're only ranked where they are because they do have the potential to be much better. 

The fastest riser in this poll is Kansas, who all of the sudden looks like a team that might hang around late into March.  I really like the way their playing right now, and really wouldn't want to face them come tourney time.  Last year saw the destruction of the Kansas Corollary (if Kansas is a number 1 seed, they will lose to Bucknell or a like team), and with that monkey off their back the team is set for a deep run.

Notre Dame is a flub on my part.  I was teetering between West Virginia or Villenova, and somehow in that moment before I hit submit, my brain said "what about Notre Dame - they just beat Louisville, right?"  Bad brain.  Just hovering on the outside are the aforementioned WVU and 'Nova as well as Washington, USC, and Arizona.