One AP voter doesn’t have Kentucky basketball at No. 1. He tells us why.
Sportswriter Dave Borges, the lone voter in the The Associated Press Top 25 poll not to put Kentucky at No. 1, said the lack of unanimity should not surprise.
“To me, the thing that is more surprising is 64 of 65 other voters all said Kentucky is No. 1,” said Borges, who voted Louisville as the No. 1 team. “Kentucky may be No. 1. I could be wrong. But I think it’s way too early to know. And I think for no one else to vote for Duke or even Louisville, that’s kind of surprising.
“It seems to be there’s almost a mentality where people are afraid of any kind of backlash. They vote the way they think they’re supposed to vote. I feel a lot of people do that, unfortunately.”
Borges, who has covered UConn for the New Haven (Conn.) Register for more than a decade, said he saw only one or two reactions on social media about his vote. One person said Kentucky should be No. 1.
“I haven’t even checked Twitter this afternoon since the poll came out,” he said. “I might have a backlog (of reactions) to check.”
Borges, who said he has voted in the AP’s top 25 poll for almost 10 years, put Kentucky at No. 4 on his ballot. His top three teams were 1. Louisville, 2. Duke and 3. North Carolina.
He said he used his preseason top-25 ballot as a guide. He had Michigan State at No. 1.
Of his preseason decision to put Louisville at No. 2, Borges said about eight or 10 other voters did likewise.
“I thought they looked impressive winning at Miami,” he said of the Cardinals. “And they won their second game fairly handily. And I think the team is really good. They gave me no reason not to jump them to No. 1 as far as I was concerned.”
As for Kentucky, Borges said he had UK somewhere around sixth to eighth on his preseason ballot. “Which might have been a little low,” he said. “I don’t know.”
Calling the victory over Michigan State eye-catching, Borges said, “I definitely considered putting them at No. 1. Then I said to myself, well, Louisville’s done nothing to deserve (not moving them up), and I had them at No. 2. So I put them at No. 1.”
Borges said he had “absolutely no personal bias toward Louisville or against Kentucky.”
He also said it was too early to make a definite judgment of teams.
“It’s surprising to me that it’s almost unanimous right now,” Borges said, “… because it just seems too early to uniformly say that.”
This story was originally published November 11, 2019 at 2:11 PM.
