Bracketology and the Schuylkill 16

Although rankings don't directly impact college basketball in the way they do college football, nothing quite compares to the burgeoning past time of "bracketology." Created by former Saint Joesph's SID Joe Lunardi, the practice of creating mock brackets throughout the season has become quite popular. In fact, Lunardi's bracketology updates can get 10 million hits in February and March.

So without further ado, here is the first Bracketology of the 2008 season. From now on, every time one comes out, I'll post it here and explain how the Ivy and Big 5 teams are doing.

Currently, Cornell is the conference rep, and this probably won't change until the Ivy League season gets under way.

Meanwhile, two Big Five teams have berths. (Saint Joseph's is the seventh team "left out.") Villanova, in one of Lunardi's more head-scratching decisions, is a six seed facing Kent State. Yet they're playing in Dayton, Ohio, which is about 3 hours and 30 minutes from the Golden Flashes' campus.

But even craizer is Temple, which as an 11 seed is playing Arizona St. in.... PHILADELPHIA! So much for preventing lower-seeded teams from having a distinct home court advantage.

But in addition to bracketology, which obviously has a national focus, there's a brand-new ranking out that is definitively local in flavor. DP alum Jonathan Tannenwald, of Soft Pretzel Logic fame, recently started "The Schuykill 16" which is a poll of the 16 D-I teams that play closest to Philadelphia, more or less.

The poll is comprised of voters of different backgrounds and slants. This includes MSM writers, bloggers and even the president of the DAC Pack. And no less than three people have connections to The DP, including myself.

Just like with Bracketology, I'll post the results for this poll each week when they come out, as well as my own ballot. (You can see this week's after the jump.)

1. Villanova

2. St. Joe's

3. Temple

4. Penn State

5. Rider

6. La Salle

7. Bucknell

8. Drexel

9. Rutgers

10. Penn

11. Delaware

12. Lafayatte

13. Lehigh

14. Princeton

15. Monmouth

16. Delaware St.

Too be honest, I'm not a fan of preseason polls. I prefer to rank teams based on what they've actually done, rather than what they're supposed to do. In fact, for this one, I just ranked them strictly according to their Sagarin ratings.