A Confused Doug Gottlieb Ranks Ohio St. Over UK

I've always been pretty neutral towards Doug Gottlieb. He's by no means my favorite on-air personality, but he's tolerable enough most of the time. That is until the unquestionably insane comments he made yesterday, which you can watch over at ESPN. Gottlieb claims that after Syracuse's loss on Saturday, Ohio State should be the new number one team in the country. That's right, over Kentucky. There are a vast number of reasons that such a belief makes absolutely no sense, and we're going to discuss a few of them.

First off, just take a look at the most recent Top 25 polls, in which Kentucky is a clear leader over Ohio State in both instances. Virtually nothing changed for either team in the past week, since neither lost. It's almost guaranteed that the votes will scale up accordingly. No one on earth (other than Gottlieb) would award first place votes to Ohio State. They didn't get any last week, why would they suddenly get them now. I don't think a win over Nebraska is quite enough to bump them up that far.

On another note, just look at the losses each team has suffered. Kentucky has one loss, and it's to Indiana. Ohio State lost to Indiana on the road as well. That makes them pretty even. But Ohio State has a total of three losses, one of which is to a Kansas team that Kentucky beat. And the other of which is to an admittedly solid Illinois team, yet still a loss. Kentucky has a greater will to win and their record shows it so far.

Gottlieb's argument against Kentucky was on four points. First, that Teague isn't up to par yet. Fair point. Secondly, that Kentucky needs a good win on the road. I can understand that too. His last two arguments are where things get flimsy, suggesting that Ohio State had to deal with exceptional performances from opponents in their losses (aren't exceptional performances born out of poor defense?), and that Ohio State is just "better". Half of Kentucky's starters already beat a superior Ohio State team last year.

What Gottlieb is overlooking, is that the results speak for the quality behind them. He's trying to look beyond outcomes into the inherent qualities of each team, but keeps forgetting that the best measure of those qualities is how they are enacted on the court. Kentucky doesn't lose, and regardless of any "eye-test" that Gottlieb sees as a superior instrument to measure a team's value, winning speaks volumes.

Kentucky will be number one on Monday.

Comments

[Dave Ball]

hahahahahaha...hold on...had to change my pants...laughed too hard...made piddle...hahahahaahahaha...oh...stop please..you're killing me...3 losses for Ohio State...(including one to the team which beat UK...at Bloomington....by one...on a buzzer beater 3 pointer...hmm)...yeah, Ohio State is a good team, but admittedly, not a number one team with 3 losses, while UK has one, Syracuse has one, Missouri has...one...no...OSU climbs to 3-4 range...Cuse falls to 2...UK takes #1... and Gottlieb can crawl back to his radio show and shower us with inane comments