The Last Time We Were in a Conference With a Ranked Team

[EvanJ]

Does anybody know the last time we hosted a team ranked in the AP Poll? We do not host Charleston, so it will not happen this season. I am excluding playing Villanova at Nassau Coliseum, and excluding George Mason in 2006 who was only ranked in the Coaches Poll. Did we host St. John's while they were ranked?

[Wags]

The pool does not include Duke, Kentucky, Michigan State, or North Carolina for only the second time since the poll was released on February 20, 1960. The only other time that happened was for a few weeks in 2021, when teams' schedules were drastically and widely reduced due to Covid.

I love knowing things like that.

Me too, and you provide way more of them than I do.

(of course, I meant poll, not pool - I must be missing summer).

[EvanJ]

The Play Index for NCAA Men's Basketball is free. You can go to https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/play-index/ and see what you can do. I pay $160 per year for Play Indexes for pro leagues. For some things for us I use https://static.caasports.com/custompage ... M#team.ind and related pages for 2005-2006 (the first season it has) through 2021-2022. This season the CAA changed statistics so there is a separate PDF after every day with games, and unfortunately there is no longer a page that updates so it can be bookmarked.

It would be interesting for rarely ranked teams to count how many weeks they are ranked above normally top teams (counting any ranked team as above any unranked teasm).

Charleston will probably get their 20th win tonight. I wonder when the last time the first team to 20 wins was not in the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC, Houston, Gonzaga, or Murray State. I include Murray State because they started 23-0 in 2011-2012. Their second loss was in the NCAA Tournament Second Round.

[Wags]

Charleston will probably get their 20th win tonight. I wonder when the last time the first team to 20 wins was not in the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, SEC, Houston, Gonzaga, or Murray State. I include Murray State because they started 23-0 in 2011-2012. Their second loss was in the NCAA Tournament Second Round.

I would guess 2013-14 Wichita State (with three NBA players: Fred Van Vleet, Cleanthony Early, and Ron Baker). They started 35-0 before losing their second NCAA tourney game in a 1/8 matchup to Kentucky.

[EvanJ]

Thank you. They got their 20th win on January 22. I checked the other teams that won at least 30 that season, and the next earliest was by Arizona, who started 20-0 with their 20th win on January 26. No other teams won at least 30 and reached 20 wins in January.

[Wags]

Charleston remains at No. 18 this week.

Florida Atlantic is up three spots, to #21.

[EvanJ]

We have consecutive games against teams with Division I winning percentages of .000 and .952. Charleston has off on Thursday, so we know their winning percentage going into Saturday. I wonder when the last time (if ever) a team played consecutive games this late in the season against teams with Division I winning percentages that far apart.

Charleston got 7 of 31 first place votes in the Mid-Major Poll. Gonzaga was unaimously Number 1 until their loss hosting Loyola Marymount, who is 14-7 and entered at Number 21.

[EvanJ]

I looked for the last time we had a conference game at a ranked team. https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/sc ... edule.html says that in 1970-1971 we went 2-3 in the Middle Atlantic Conference, including a 79-62 loss at Number 14 La Salle on January 30, 1971. Our media guide does not name a conference for that season. Should I count that as a conference game, or should I consider us an Independent for seasons in which the media guide does not name a conference? If we were an Independent, Charleston will be the first time we go to a ranked team in our conference.

[Wags]

We have consecutive games against teams with Division I winning percentages of .000 and .952. Charleston has off on Thursday, so we know their winning percentage going into Saturday. I wonder when the last time (if ever) a team played consecutive games this late in the season against teams with Division I winning percentages that far apart.

Did you mean .100 for Elon (they're 2-18 overall)? But this is an interesting stat for this late in the season, to go from .100 to (now) .955 (21-1 for Charleston). As you said, might be an HU record for the disparity in opponent records from one game to the next for a certain minimum number of games.

[EvanJ]

I meant .000 against Division I. Their only wins are non-Division I.

[Wags]

Hofstra has knocked Charleston out of the Top 25 in the AP and coaches polls. The Cougars are now 27 in each.

Would actually have preferred that they stayed in the AP poll because it would implied HU being more highly thought of as a team. Charleston going from 18 to 27 implies that the pollsters think that was a bad loss rather than a more acceptable one. However, just keep winning, especially in DC, and force people to think better of HU when it counts.