Guru Report: It’s Official - First Time in AP WBB Poll Voting Season That 1 and 2 Fall Same Day

By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

The research is finished and the Guru is pleased to report it’s official – history was made Saturday with the No. 8 Louisville upset of No. 1 Oregon and the No. 5 South Carolina upset of No. 2 Baylor making it the first time the top two teams in a current Associated Press women’s rankings were felled within a few hours of each other in a voting season that’s still alive.

The AP final poll is released just before the NCAA tournament women’s bracket is revealed each year, though the WBCA poll takes one more vote from coaches after the NCAA champion is determined.

In 2011, Connecticut, which finished No. 1, was upset by Notre Dame while No. 2 Stanford lost to eventual champion Texas A&M in the Women’s Final Four national semifinals.

Given that upsets occurred so close to the next vote, look for potential chaos to occur since this comes early enough in the season that the next-in-line for the team that did not lose philosophy need not be adhered to.

In fact, Louisville has a case off its win over Oregon for first in terms of achievement, and if the Cardinals get to the top jumping over the Cardinal of Stanford it would be the highest bolt to No. 1.

There are have been weeks in the past where the top two teams lost in the same voting period but never the same day. 

And most times, it occurred later, and there have even been times when later in the season the No. 1 team was beaten but held its position because either the No. 2 team also lost or voters didn’t think the next teams were good enough to be placed over the existing ruler.

Women’s basketball has a neat touch considering for this moment of history some of the individuals and teams involved in the event.

On the Baylor side in the coaching box is Kim Mulkey, who played on one of the all-time poll teams at Louisiana Tech and has had the Bears grow into a similar national presence.

South Carolina has Dawn Staley, the magician in the backcourt in her playing days out of Philadelphia and at Virginia who then switched careers after her retirement taking the reins at Temple near her childhood home and making the Owls a nationally respectable force before heading south to lead the Gamecocks to their first NCAA title in 2017.

Additionally, she’s now the USA National Team Coach for the next Olympics,

And imagine how tangled the debate would be today if Staley’s bunch had not been upset 48 hours earlier by Indiana, which gave Baylor an early scare before the Bears regained control.

Then there’s Jeff Walz of Louisville, who was a quality assistant before being brought aboard to run the program in Kentucky where he pulled this stunt once before, but in the NCAA tournament over Baylor, which ended up benefiting Connecticut on the start of its four-straight title run off the prediction of star player Breanna Stewart.

So with all that said, here’s how the Guru proceeded across the night with the research.

The first step was to take the database that  has all 772 polls from what is now 44 seasons and filter out to just let the top three teams each week appear.

That allowed a look at the swing from one voting period to the next to see where might multi changes at the top have occurred.

That produced 13 weeks of potential 1-2 same period losses because, remember, besides identifying the two in the same week, the purpose was to zero in to see if in any period a same-day event occurred.

What the Guru did, and you will see in the sheet cut-and-pasted in below at the bottom of this, is on each line, write the start date and who the top two teams were and then at the end of the line the next date and who were in those slots.

Then thanks to today’s technology and not even having to tap SIDs on the shoulders, though originally the Guru was going to email requests until realizing he need not bother, he zipped into the year-by-year pages in the media guides online to find the weeks where losses might have occurred.

That brought one reveal – in some cases, the No. 2 team did not lose, thus the need to strike those weeks from the record, which brought it down to eight.

So, what happened? 

Well, some lower teams in the previous poll knocked off the top team and then jumped into either the No. 1 or No. 2 slot, thus bumping the previous No. 2 team back down a rung or two.

One of the weeks, Louisiana Tech from its preseason ranking of second, did not start play for several weeks, but then Connecticut had an impressive win to climb a spot into second past the Techsters.

Remember, too, when the vote comes Monday, some voters will make floor Eye test evaluations.

 With Stanford having a less-than-healthy squad, the issue is do the Cardinal deserve to get a jump just because they are the first of the previous teams at the top to escape unscathed even though opponents did challenge them.

Your Guru doesn’t have a vote but discussing the dynamic with the AP’s Doug Feinberg, who doesn’t vote either, at one point, freely admitting the vote here would be for Louisville, I commented, ‘Well, I’ll compromise and give Stanford the two, but then said, no I can’t do that, when for now I still think Oregon is slightly better and if wrong, Stanford can prove it when PAC-12 play rolls around in a few weeks.

Even colleague Graham Hayes reaction for ESPN said, for now Oregon is still the team to beat. 

Remember, not only did this happen Saturday, but over the holiday, we saw two unranked but mighty mid-majors in Florida Gulf Coast and South Dakota State each take down Notre Dame and No. 21 South Florida, before playing each other down to the final seconds before FGC emerged the winner.

Surely, both deserved to be given slots in the next result, considering some teams are likely to drop out.

Anyhow, so once all the results from all the years were checked, and no dates collided, it made Saturday’s action history.

One other caveat, which is why in the end it is a good thing the Guru continued, some of the defeat days appeared out of synch with the polling period until the Guru remembered during the poll’s stone age era, the games played deadline closed several days before the poll was given its release date.

But, again, in looking at the two-week swing and the school results pages, the losses listed would be the ones affecting the two-week period.

 So as a treat before heading back to Saint Joseph’s for the second day of the Hawk Classic, though the Guru will be available here in Philadelphia, here’s the play by play of the Guru’s worksheet. 

Feel free to comment on facebook or probably better on the twitter @womhoopsguru account.

As for today’s local action, La Salle, with what is now a five-game win streak, meets host Navy in Annapolis, Md., in the title of the Midshipwomen’s event, while in a predetermined game at the Hawk Classic, Drexel and Saint Joseph’s will use the 2 p.m. slot to play what would have otherwise been their normal seasonal non-conference meeting.

And Princeton, in a single game, will host St. Francis of Brooklyn at 1 p.m. in Jadwin Gym.

Here’s the Guru work notes:

Poll Changes Thru 1-2 Same Week Losses

Jan. 11 1978 Wayland/Tennessee Jan. 18 1978 LSU/NC State

Feb. 8 1978 LSU/NC State Feb. 15 1978 Tennessee/LSU lsu lost ten feb; 6; 

Dec. 31 1990 Va/NC State/Purdue Jan. 7 1991 Penn St/Virginia/NC State

Jan. 12 1992 Virginia/Tennessee Jan. 19 1992 Maryland/Virginia

Mar. 2 1993 Tennessee/Iowa Mar. 9 1993 Vanderbilt/Tennessee

Jan. 18 1994 Tennessee/Iowa Jan. 25 1994 Penn State/Tennessee

Nov. 6 1998 Tennessee/La Tech (Pre) Nov. 16 1998 Purdue/Connecticut

x-Jan. 15 2001 Connecticut/Tennessee Jan. 22 2001 Notre Dame/Connecticut (ten bumped)

Feb. 2 2004 Tennessee/Duke Feb. 9 2004 Texas/Connecticut

Jan. 23 2006 Tennessee/Duke Jan. 30 2006 North Carolina/Duke (loss or jumped)

Jan. 8 2007 Maryland/North Carolina Jan. 15 2007 Duke/North Carolina (loss or jumped)

Nov. 12 2012 Baylor/Connecticut Nov. 19 2012 Stanford/Connecticut (loss or jumped)

Nov. 25 2019 Oregon/Baylor – 11/30/2019 Ore and Baylor lose

Now By Team

1Wayland: Jan. 11-78

X8Tenn: Jan. 11-78; Dec. 12-92; Mar. 2-93; Jan. 18-94; Nov. 6-98 (Pre); bump Jan. 15-01; Feb. 2-04; Jan. 23-06;

X?J978L-LSU; D1492LStfovt; M693LGA; J1794LRut; N1598LPur; J1501?BP; F504LCt; J2306LDu;J2606LKy

XX1LSU: Feb. 8-78 – Feb.6 lost to Tennessee

2NCST: Feb. 8-78; Dec. 31-90

X1Pur: Dec. 31-90 (third) J590LAub

X1Virginia; Jan. 12-92 – J1592LMd

X2Iowa; Mar. 2-93; Jan . 18-94 M593LPSU; J2194LInd;J2594LUNI

X1La. Tech: Nov. 6-98 (Pre) N19firstgame N3098LTenn Connbump

XOUT2Conn: Jan. 15-01; Dec. 12-07 (lose or were jumped) J1501LND; D1207WasJumped

X2Duke: Feb. 2-04; Jan. 23-06 (lose or were jumped) Feb404LFlaSt; J2906LUNC

X1Maryland: Jan. 8-07 J1307LDuke

XOUT1North Carolina; Jan. 8-07 (lose or were jumped) No loss – Duke Jumped

X1Baylor: Dec. 12-07 D1607LStanford

Nov. 30, 2019 – No. 1 Oregon lost to No. 8 Louisville; No. 2 Baylor lost to No. 5 South Carolina.

 And that’s the report.