Guru's Notes for Quotes and the AP Voting Link

By Mel Greenberg

PHILADELPHIA _ Hi All. Here is the AP voting link to get to this week's individual member balloting. Also, be sure to drop by the item below your Guru's report in which Acacia filed her most recent report from Balogna, Italy. If we can solve the technology, some photos of her travels will appear soon.

There's some interesting notes from the ongoing data base of AP polling history.

K.B. initials become magic: Did you notice that if you were a coach with the initials K.B., as in Wis.-Green Bay's Kevin Borseth and James Madison's Kenny Brooks, you were able to get your teams into this week's list.

The Big Cheeses: The appearance of Green Bay and Marquette marks the first time that two teams from Wisconsin have appeared in the rankings at the same time. One other team from the Badger State -- Wisconsin -- has also appeared previously.

It's Points - Not Votes: One of the Guru's pet peeves in viewing message boards, releases, etc., is the way the also-rans are tracked.

For the 1,000th-time repeat after me, class: "Points and votes are not the same." Points are derived from the ranking in each voter's list. The points are equal in reverse to the ballot, thus a No. 1 vote is worth 25 points, etc., all the way down to No. 25 at 1 point.

In fact, some teams will have more support with less points. Example: Three people vote for Team A and rank it 20th. That gives the team a total of 18 points. Six people vote for Team B and rank it 24. That gives that team a total 12 points. Notice, team B had more support.

Believe It or Not. On Tuesday night No. 19 Louisville will be in the neighborhood at Villanova for a Big East game that we'll be covering for print. Oddly, in the update just completed by your Guru, Louisville's Tom Collen has just moved ahead of Villanova's Harry Perretta on the active list of coaches' appearances in the poll. Collen, who also had a ranked team at Colorado State , is 40th with 45 appearance. Perretta, all with the Wildcats, is 41st with 44.

Incidentally, Rutgers' return, precisely at the time your Guru predicted back when all those Scarlet Knight fans were jumping off the bandwagon, also marks coach C. Vivian Stringer's 350th appearance, which is fourth behind Tennessee's Pat Summitt (516), Georgia's Andy Landers (408), and Texas' Jody Conradt (395), whose Longhorns dropped out this week.

Stringer is also one of eight coaches and the leader in that category with three different teams in the rankings, including Cheyney and Iowa. Ohio State's Jim Foster, is second on the three-team list with 268 out of St. Joseph's, Vanderbilt, and Ohio State. He is also 10th on the all-time active list, behind, get this, Connecticut's Geno Auriemma, his one-time protege, who has 292.

Stanford's Tara VanDerveer just went ahead of North Carolina State's Kay Yow at seventh on the overall list at 324, just one behind former Louisiana Tech coach Leon Barmore, which doesn't count his combined associate-head coach totals with Sonja Hogg.

VanDerveer is sixth on the active list, behind Penn State's Rene Portland at 336.

And, speaking of Kay Yow, it is great to see her back on the sidelines again with the Wolfpack.

CAA Props. James Madison, which returned to the poll for the first time in 18 seasons, is one of only two teams from the Colonial Athletic Association to appear in the poll. Old Dominion, however, back in the national title glory era, also spent time as a member of the Sun Belt Conference, as an independent, and also in the AIAW days as a school from Region 2.

That's It For Now.

-- Mel