2008 - 2009 preseason Blogpoll

Here is the official consensus top 25 Blogpoll -

1) North Carolina
2) UCLA
3) Connecticut
4) Louisville
5) Pittsburgh
6) Michigan State
7) Notre Dame
8) Texas
9) Tennessee
10) Gonzaga
11) Oklahoma
12) Memphis
13) Duke
14) Purdue
15) Arizona State
16) Davidson
17) Miami (FL)
18) Marquette
19) Wake Forest
20) Georgetown
21) Florida
22) Wisconsin
23) USC
24) Baylor
25) Villanova

Everyone's vote can be found here.

UNC was the consensus #1 pick (no duh). We got criticized for not having Duke ranked on our ballot. We've defended our view on Duke before, but we'll summarize again:

Duke for the past 5 years have come in strong and loaded and has consistently underperformed. First round and second round exits galore. We take tournament performance into consideration when ranking teams. Really, does Duke deserve a #5 AP ranking or a #13 Blogpoll ranking when they can't get out of the second round of March Madness (or gets beat up in their conference tournament)? Of course once the season starts and they start winning games we will rank them. But not a second before. So...

Duke = meh

That is all.