Jesse Newell is used to getting feedback from fans of teams who don’t agree with where he slotted them in his weekly AP poll ballot.
It comes with the territory of being one of 61 voters tasked with putting together a list of top-25 teams, week in and week out throughout the course of a season. Still, Newell — the Kansas beat reporter for the Kansas City Star — was a bit surprised to see just how much blowback he was receiving in his Twitter mentions Monday after the Week 11 poll was released.
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“This one takes the cake,” Newell told AL.com.
Newell’s mentions were flooded with Auburn fans, similar to how the team’s fanbase has bombarded opposing teams’ Twitter accounts after wins throughout the year — ratioing them with a deluge of memes and photoshops. Newell was one of seven AP poll voters who did not have Auburn in the top-two on their ballot this week; he placed the Tigers at No. 9, which was three slots below the next-lowest voter (Jon Wilner, who had Auburn ranked sixth this week).
Newell’s outlier vote ultimately proved to be the difference between Auburn’s current No. 2 ranking and the team earning it’s first-ever No. 1 ranking in the AP poll in the program’s 116-year history. Auburn checked in at No. 2 in the poll, just behind new No. 1 Gonzaga, despite receiving 11 more first-place votes than the Zags. The vote-point differential between the two programs was even narrower, with just four points separating them for the top spot.
So, given the context and what was at stake, Newell understands the outrage from Auburn fans.
“Fans are passionate, and that’s the reason college basketball fans are great,” Newell said. “I get the reaction, and I can try to explain myself, but at the end of the day, people are going to feel how they feel.”
AL.com provided Newell with the opportunity to explain his vote, and he took the time to detail his voting process and why it had Auburn ranked several spots lower than his peers slotted Bruce Pearl’s team this week.
“You start with what we’re trying to do with the AP poll,” Newell said. “I think we all could have different answers, and reasonable minds could disagree about what we’re doing here, you know what I mean? To me, it goes down to two basic trains of thought: Are you trying to rank the best teams or are you trying to rank the most deserving teams?”
Newell’s approach has always been to try to rank the best teams. To him, that has meant relying on more datapoints and advanced metrics to sort through all the teams and come up with his top-25. He leans on the metrics from KenPom.com, T-Rank, Sagarin, Team Rankings and BPI to come up with his ballot each week. Those algorithms take into consideration how a team looks possession by possession over the course of a game.
This week, those metrics have Auburn ninth, seventh, 10th, ninth and 12th, respectively. All five of those metrics also have Gonzaga as the No. 1 team in the country.
Of course, Newell understands his voting philosophy isn’t shared by everyone. While he aims to try to determine the best teams — and try to answer the question of who would be favored, head-to-head, on a neutral court — others often try to determine the most deserving team when compiling their ballot.
To that end, he says, Auburn should absolutely be No. 1. The Tigers are 16-1 on the season, 5-0 in SEC play and have a combined 8-1 record in Quadrant 1 and Quadrant 2 games this season. Their Wins Above Bubble (5.1) — another advanced metric that measures a team’s NCAA Tournament resume — are far and away the most in the nation.
“They have the best resume in the country,” Newell said. “Nobody should be denying that, and I absolutely believe that they have the best resume in the country…. but right now, there are probably eight teams in the country that, on a neutral court, they would not be favored against. So, that’s how I do my poll. It doesn’t change. It stays the same week to week. That’s sort of the process as I go through it. As I said, I’m consistent with it.”
Newell isn’t trying to discredit what Auburn has accomplished this season; it’s just that his voting philosophy doesn’t have the Tigers as high as others. Still, he was a bit surprised by just how much of an anomaly his placement of Auburn was compared to his fellow voters—especially since he wasn’t the lowest on Auburn the week prior, when he had the Tigers eighth on his ballot.
In the Week 10 poll, when Auburn was ranked fourth in the nation, seven voters had the Tigers ninth on their ballot, five had them ranked 10th, three had them at No. 11 and one each had Pearl’s team at No. 12 and No. 13.
After a week in which previously top-ranked Baylor dropped back-to-back games and third-ranked UCLA fell to an unranked Oregon team at home, more attention was shifted to Auburn. The Tigers picked up tough road wins against Alabama and Ole Miss, and they share the nation’s longest active win streak with Davidson, at 13 games. Many voters felt Auburn was deserving of the top spot, or at least a considerably boost in the rankings.
“I think a lot of AP poll voters, you know, they read the news,” Newell said. “They hear the people talking, they know where the narrative is headed, and there’s pressure to not get the kind of feedback that I’m getting right now. There’s pressure to make things a little bit simpler on yourself in your everyday life. I kind of got to a point where, if I’m not going to rank the teams based on how I think they should be ranked and what the best teams are 1-25, I probably should turn my poll in anyway.
“That’s just sort of how I’ve gone. I would say I’m a little bit surprised but also not surprised because I think, overall, the AP poll shifts or favors people voting based off resume — and that’s fine. If that’s the case, then Auburn should be No. 1. I don’t want to act or sit here and act like I don’t understand why people would vote Auburn No. 1. I get it. I absolutely get it.”
Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.
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