"The college basketball rankings every Feb. 1 are a weirdly accurate predictor of NCAA champions"

Sorry, Kentucky. Apologies to Michigan State and Maryland, too.

None of those teams will be in the top 12 in the Associated Press rankings on Saturday, Feb. 1. And that should matter. How? Well, history says it does. History says they can forget about One Shining Moment. History has been known to lie, but in this case, not often.

The AP poll was born in 1949. In the 71 years since, care to guess how often the eventual national champion was ranked in the top 12 on the morning of Feb. 1? That’d be 62 times, or 87 percent. Recently, the trend is even more striking. The winner has come from the top-12 in 29 of the past 31 years — the only exceptions unranked Connecticut in 2014 and No. 24 Syracuse in 2003.

Those on the outside — No. 13 Kentucky, No. 14 Michigan State and No. 15 Maryland, for example — would consider all that enough poppycock to fill an ocean tanker, and they could well be right. A poll on Feb. 1 might not be any more reliable of a tournament predictor than a rodent on Feb. 2 — Groundhog Day — is about the weather.

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:It's not February 1st yet is it Nigel?

Watch Out Pylon! wrote:

NigelUno wrote:

No. Let me know if the AP rankings change at midnight.

Thanks in advance.

Should I wait up?

I'm just going off of what you said. February 1st is the indicator and it's not February 1st. Sorry about using your own words.