Poll Dancing: TBI's College Basketball Top 25 (Nov. 17 Edition)

We're only three days into the 2014-15 college basketball season, so why the hell not throw together a brand new Top 25 full of snap judgments and overreactions?

None of my Top 25 lost on the opening weekend, thank Buddha, but one did look very shaky against a motivated opponent at home on national TV. Of course, that team was ranked No. 25, so it's been replaced for now, but expect it to be back.

All in all, there's not much change, and I won't bother explaining the ones that stayed stable. After all, most of these teams were gobbling cupcakes over the weekend. However, I will share the rationale behind the few moves that were made, starting with our inaugural Faceplant of the new season.

All that after the jump.

College Basketball's NBA Draft Early Entry Winners and Losers

Now that all the relevant NBA draft deadlines have passed, college basketball coaches can finally have some semblance of roster continuity, barring the occasional homesick/minute-starved transfer.

The players who bailed are off to get (officially) paid for play, so they leave our sphere of discussion. Our examination centers on what they left behind. Is Phil Pressey's alma mater still fielding a solid team next season, or is Frank Haith stitching a lineup together with chicken wire and Duck tape?

Several other coaches are enjoying some surprisingly good news, while still others are headed back to the drawing board. Who's who?

Read on.

TBI vs. AP vs. ESPN: Poll Dancing Week 2

We all have our various perspectives on how useful the polls are in college basketball since, unlike the sport that decides how everything in college athletics plays out, hoop actually makes teams play for a championship instead of awarding it to whichever SEC team is most popular that year.

Those who take some interest in the polls may also take some delight in savaging others for their opinions. Gary Parrish at CBS loves to take aim at people with his Poll Attacks, which is a not-even-thinly-veiled game of "I'm A Million Times Smarter Than You And I Can Prove It." (Usually, he can't.)

Poll Dancing is so much less violent than Poll Attacks, and it's merely an assessment of TBI's Top 25 side-by-side with the AP and ESPN, examining the three for differences.

There may be some pointing at outliers, thanks to the good folks at Pollspeak.com, but I don't really need the ego stroke that Parrish appears to.

We'll dig into the ballots post-jump.

2012 Bilas Invitational Tournament: West Region Rounds 1 & 2

In the previous post, you saw the BIT get started with results both expected (Kentucky stomping through two rounds) and unexpected (Duke tanking, Belmont and UNLV reaching the Sweet 16). Now, the tournament moves to the West Region, which will be paired against the East in the Final Four.

In case you don't care to refresh by looking at the prior post, each of these games is simulated seven times at WhatIf Sports, two on each team's "home court" and three on "neutral sites." Depth chart changes, such as Fab Melo's ineligibility for Syracuse, are accounted for.

Once again, the full S-Curve is here, and the up-to-date bracket is here. Let's see if West top seed Ohio State survives.