South Carolina Basketball: Gamecocks Disrespected by AP Poll Voter

The South Carolina basketball team is the best team in all of women’s college basketball. Everyone knows this…well…everyone except one Associated Press Poll voter.

Mitchell Northam, an Icelandic women’s basketball writer with a vote in the AP Poll, selected the Indiana Hoosiers as the top team in the land and moved the Gamecocks down to number-2 in his poll. Dawn Staley’s team had been the unanimously top-ranked team for weeks until Northam punished the Gamecocks for beating a 20-win Ole Miss team on the road in overtime. Indiana, by the way, has a loss on the season. The Hoosiers lost to unranked Michigan State, who has a .500 record and is 5-10 in conference play.

Ironically enough, Northam’s rationale is that the Gamecocks have faced a worse schedule than the Hoosiers. The strength of schedule for each team is very comparable, but South Carolina certainly has played against more top-end talent as they have beaten the numbers 3, 4, and 5 teams in the current AP Poll. Indiana has beaten none of the teams in the AP top-5 and has lost to a team that wouldn’t be ranked in the AP top-100 if that poll existed.

Perhaps Northam simply forgot that the Gamecocks are undefeated. Or maybe he forgot about the absolute beatdown that South Carolina put on the currently fifth-ranked LSU Tigers last weekend and the way their defense completely shut down their National Player of the Year candidate. Or it could be that he forgot that Dawn Staley’s squad went on the road and beat Stanford and UConn.

Northam probably doesn’t believe that Indiana is better than South Carolina. But, just in case he does, the Gamecocks will make sure to remind Mitchell and everyone else who are the rightful queens of college basketball.

The Gamecocks will take on the Tennessee Lady Vols in Knoxville on Thursday.