Don’t worry. Seth Davis gives MSU more than enough love. Even after the loss, he had them ranked #4 in his poll, above Michigan.
Just read on another site that CBS Bracketology has us as the overall #1 right now. I don’t agree with that, but I’m not sure how a three loss MSU team can be rated above us at this point. Especially after being DOMINATED by the Boilers for much of yesterday’s game. Yes, Cassius put the team on his back and almost willed them to an amazing comeback that fell short but that made the score seem respectable. I guess it’s just Seth Davis. I guess like kturnup says, “typical writer fluff.” Of course I WAS telling my wife just yesterday that at this time rankings don’t matter that much.
It will all sort itself out in the end. Solely for entertainment purposes, I would love to see a split of the two regular season games, with the B1G Tourney Championship game deciding who gets a 1 seed.
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Have any of these polls or ranking sites ever published their criteria? It seems like there is none. The voters can use whatever reasoning they choose. Therefore, you can look at records and pick one loss Michigan or you can say “who is playing better right now and has a very good record” and pick MSU. The only thing polls do is spark conversation.
Having said all of that, I think I would prefer MSU to be ranked above us until we meet up.
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Do you think if the Sparties are ranked ahead of us when they come to Ann Arbor and we beat them that our fans will storm the floor?!? Ha! 
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“Rankings” can mean a bunch of different things…
- Predictive Rankings (i.e. KenPom/Torvik/etc.) - These are based primarily on scoring margin on a per possession basis and are meant to be used as tools to predict future performance.
- AP/USA Today Polls – These are meaningless and used by media outlets to generate publicity for certain games, etc. No criteria, just people voting.
- NET Rankings – These are a mix of predictive and resume metrics that are used to rate teams for the NCAA Tournament process. It is expected that they’ll be used like the RPI where an individual team’s NET ranking doesn’t matter that much, but the NET Rankings of its opponents are used to evaluate the resume (i.e. Q1, Q2, etc.)
- Bracketology/seed list rankings – From up above, “No. 1 overall seed” is something that someone would have put together (in this case Jerry Palm) to be his best estimation of how Michigan’s NCAA tournament resume would be evaluated (as it stands right now).
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In that case right now I like number 4! 
You forgot #5:
- Moving Screen Podcast Rankings - Our source of truth!
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I wouldn’t get too excited about bracket rankings put forth by Palm. He’s generally below average when it comes to this exercise (although in his defense the selection committee has made some real head-scratching decisions the past few years).
There are statistical rankings and there are voter rankings .
It also doesn’t make a lot of sense to worry about the brackets all that much when there are 10-11 league games.
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Those are #1 and 2 on the list I posted, yes. Although you can have a statistical ranking that isn’t predictive (i.e. the RPI).
Most B1G teams are not yet half way through the conference schedule. How many teams have a realistic shot for at least a tie for the championship? Looks like 5 to me. It is probably a 3 team race, but Maryland and Wisconsin are statistically alive.
Iggy named B1G Freshman of the Week for the fourth time! Most in program history. I was hoping it would happen, expecting it would happen, but I hadn’t researched the other freshmen for the week so wasn’t sure it would happen. Good for him. Hopefully he has now busted through the “freshman wall!” If he has, good for us!
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I know they have a solid argument to be there (good defense, good offense, solid losses), but it still bothers me seeing MSU as the highest ranked multiple loss team year after year. We have a nice points lead, but if Michigan had one more loss, I wonder who’d be ranked higher?
Edit: I really should just stop caring about the polls…
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I’m not sure why that stat has been going around. Trey won Big Ten Freshman of the Week seven times (https://mgoblue.com/roster.aspx?rp_id=702)
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They are all quoting it from the press release, which apparently is just wrong.
Sorry, my mistake. I didn’t do my due diligence! Nevertheless, a great accomplishment. And, you know what we’ve got enough weeks left that he just might break Trey’s record! No pressure, though! 
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Didn’t realize it was in the press release. Seems like almost everybody made the same mistake.
No, seriously, I should have checked it out more thoroughly. I was just hoping that he’d get it again this past week. And he did, and I just went on from there! Thanks for pointing it out. And, again, Iggy LOVES to have goals like breaking a Trey Burke record, so who knows!