Last week’s ballot was admittedly a tough one, with teams around the country refusing to play consistent basketball. As a result, we submitted rankings which we weren’t exactly proud of, but ones which best reflected the muddied state of college hoops this year.

It’s painfully clear now that there is a very thin upper crust in the NCAA this season, and a lot of other mediocre teams filling up the middle. But even amidst that thin upper crust, there’s not much differentiation, as it’s a season in which no one is the clear frontrunner for the national title.

This week’s vote was a little easier, as only ten teams which we ranked were victims of a loss over the last seven days. Below is our ballot from this week, followed by superfluous explanation. If you’re enjoying the new “change” data in the third column, you might also be interested in our previous ballot, from February 23rd.

Rank	Team	Change
1	Connecticut	1
2	Memphis	2
3	Pittsburgh	2
4	Oklahoma	1
5	North Carolina	—
6	Louisville	—
7	Duke	—
8	Wake Forest	1
9	Michigan St.	1
10	Kansas	5
11	Missouri	3
12	Villanova	1
13	Marquette	1
14	Gonzaga	2
15	Clemson	2
16	Washington	4
17	Arizona St.	3
18	UCLA	1
19	Louisiana St.	2
20	Illinois	2
21	Purdue	4
22	Xavier	1
23	Florida St.	1
24	Brigham Young	2
25	Syracuse	1

At first glance, some readers may be confused by the very minor slides from Pitt and Oklahoma. At this point, we feel that a team should be valued more on their overall body of work than simply the results from the last seven days. The recent games certainly must be taken into account, but even Pitt’s road loss to unranked Providence isn’t enough to overshadow the fact that the Panthers have many more quality wins than the Tar Heels. As for the Sooners, they get some leniency when you consider that they lost to a Kansas team which we’ve moved into the Top Ten, and that they did so without superstar Blake Griffin.

Those Jayhawks are our biggest movers of the week, shooting up from No. 15 to tenth in this week’s ballot. Kansas finished the week with an absolute mudholing of Missouri in Allen Fieldhouse yesterday, and they were also aided by the fact that Marquette, Clemson, and Arizona State all lost a pair of games during the last week.

The other portion of our ballot that is worthy of discussion this week is, as always, the troubling bottom five spots. As we mentioned in the introduction, there’s really not any consistency or exceptional quality once you get past the initial contenders, and losses this week by West Virginia and Texas muddied things up at the bottom once again. You may notice that even though Florida State lost on the road against Boston College, they actually climbed a rung in our rankings this week. That’s an anomaly explained by both the Seminoles’ huge win against Clemson on Saturday, and the fact that once again there was a dearth of teams wanting to crack the rankings.

Some bloggers have been ranking Butler, which actually resulted in the Bulldogs checking in at 24th in our consensus poll last week. Considering that they won their pair of games this week, they likely will even climb when the consensus poll is released this afternoon. But the simple fact of the matter is that Butler lost at home to Loyola-Chicago and on the road to Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Wisconsin-Green Bay. Do you honestly think the Bulldogs would be sitting at 25-4 if they played in a conference that was worth a damn?

As we’ve mentioned, the consensus blogpoll will be up later this afternoon. Fast Break will be here for your late afternoon enjoyment, including new bracket projections, bubble watches, and the real polls from the AP and coaches. The Baylor game preview will follow in the late afternoon.

After a week’s absence in the blogpoll, we’re back in the mix with today’s ballot. Here are our votes, with the official compilation poll to come later today:

Rank	Team
1	Pittsburgh
2	Connecticut
3	Oklahoma
4	Memphis
5	North Carolina
6	Louisville
7	Duke
8	Missouri
9	Wake Forest
10	Michigan St.
11	Villanova
12	Marquette
13	Clemson
14	Arizona St.
15	Kansas
16	Gonzaga
17	Purdue
18	Illinois
19	UCLA
20	Washington
21	Louisiana St.
22	West Virginia
23	Xavier
24	Florida St.
25	Texas

It was an interesting week with losses by half of the top ten teams from the last poll. Only Wake Forest and UConn suffered their defeats at the hands of other top ten teams, while North Carolina, Michigan State, and Oklahoma all lost on the road to unranked opponents. As a result, it was a little easier to ignore the instinct to slide teams up and down based on the most recent results and instead reshuffle everyone based on their complete body of work this season.

The middle of the pack all held their own by winning their games this week, but our votes differed slightly from the consensus of last week’s blogpoll, when we didn’t submit a ballot. We chose to slot Marquette ahead of Clemson based on a more robust list of quality wins, although they could quickly take a nosedive with an absolute nightmare of a schedule awaiting them over the final two weeks. The Golden Eagles have to face UConn and Louisville this week before closing the season with a road trip to Pitt and a home game against Syracuse.

After that quality in the middle of the poll, things were a bit dicier with the lower rankings. Five of the bottom seven teams lost a game this week, and practically every other team that could have been considered for the 24th or 25th slot dropped at least one game as well. LSU slides up two spots to No. 21 in our ballot, but it’s more a reflection on the lack of other candidates than a rousing endorsement of the Tigers. They are playing in an incredibly weak SEC, leaving a home win over Washington State as their only remarkable victory this year.

The full compilation ballot will be released later this afternoon.

#4 Pittsburgh Panthers 70, West Virginia Mountaineers 59
DeJuan Blair played only 16 minutes thanks to foul trouble, but Pitt was still able to cruise to victory behind Sam Young’s 20 point performance. Pitt had yet another dominating night on the glass, outrebounding West Virginia by a 39-23 count. The loss dropped the ‘Neers below the .500 mark in conference play, and was their third defeat in the four games. Pitt, meanwhile, moved to 9-2 in the Big East and stayed within striking distance of the three-way log jam of one-loss teams atop the league.

#17 Missouri Tigers 62, #16 Kansas Jayhawks 60
In a game that is destined to be replayed on ESPN Classic for years to come, Zaire Taylor hit the game-winning jumper with just 1.3 seconds left to give Mizzou a narrow win in the heated Border War rivalry. Down by fourteen and having scored only 16 points at the half, the Tigers looked to be dead in the water against their hated conference foes. But 26 Jayhawk turnovers kept Missouri in the contest and allowed a frantic comeback that was capped by Taylor’s second game-winning shot in just six days.

The win does more than just stir the pot for the rivalry re-match scheduled for March 1st in Lawrence. It also loudly announces Missouri’s intentions of making the Big 12 race a three-team affair, and even sets them up to control their own destiny should the undefeated Sooners stumble in any of their five games prior to visiting Columbia on March 4th. The league may be incredibly stratified this season, but it’s certainly going to be an exciting battle for the championship.

#4 Pittsburgh Panthers 78, #8 Syracuse Orange 60 – Pitt bounced back from their first loss of the season in convincing fashion, blasting the visiting Orange at the Pete on ESPN’s Big Monday. The Panthers were able to overcome Andy Rautin‘s five three-pointers by dominating on the glass, outrebounding their opponents by a 37-24 margin. DeJuan Blair was an unstoppable force, posting 20 and 12, while Sam Young came alive in the second half to lead the team with 22 points.

Kansas Jayhawks 73, Texas A&M Aggies 53 – The Aggies were the last visiting team to win in Allen Fieldhouse, all the way back in February of 2007. But Texas A&M stole that game behind the heroics of Acie Law, who they sorely missed in last night’s contest. The Jayhawks owned this rematch from start to finish, thoroughly dominating the contest much more than the 20-point margin would indicate. The Kansas D forced 20 turnovers on the night and held every single Aggie player to eight points or less.