Big East Basketball Power Rankings Week 10

Welcome back to the 2010-2011 Big East Power Rankings. The rules are simple, we've invited the SB Nation (or friend of SB Nation) blog for each team to cast a vote. They rank the teams from one to 16 and then we bring you the results. Enjoy.

The rankings are a day late this week. My schedule got messed up with the holiday and with yesterday's Big Easttacular lineup of basketball it seemed smarter to wait 24 hours rather than have people try and bend their voting around the big Villanova-UConn and Syracuse-Pittsburgh matchups. And oh what matchups they were. every year I happily endure the endless taunting the Big East receives during football season because I know that come January we can have a double-header that features four top-10 teams that all just happen to hate each other. Oh, and this was supposed to be a "down year" for the conference.

Of course, when four of the top teams in a conference play that means two have to lose. If this were the AP poll and our voters were a bunch of chuckleheads that would almost certainly mean Villanova and Syracuse would take a decent hit in the polls. Not here though where our crackerjack collection of bloggers kept all four teams on top of the polls. Pittsburgh had the first perfect week of the year, collecting all 10 first-place votes. Syracuse followed them despite the loss (a sign of well-deserved respect), while UConn edged out Villanova for the third spot thanks to their win yesterday.

Louisville and St. John's each stepped up a spot in the polls (the Cardinals are having a hell of a season by the way, I feel like they're never mentioned). West Virginia and Marquette both stepped up too. You can't say that for Notre Dame though, who fell from No. 4 to No. 7 after a pair of 15+ point losses and Georgetown who continues to struggle.

The bottom of the conference is, well, the bottom of the conference. The less said about it the better, but props to South Florida for holding out long enough for everyone to realize that Providence just might be DePaul-level bad.

We had 10 voters this week, meaning there were 50 votes cast for the 1-5 spots in the poll. Forty-nine of those fifty went to Pittsburgh, Syracuse, UConn, Villanova and Louisville? The 50th? Well that went to Georgetown courtesy of our Homer of the Week Casual Hoya. Last week Casual Hoya had Georgetown sixth, then they got slapped around by Pittsburgh, which led to one contributor writing this:

The first five games of this Big East season have been like the five stages of grief.  Against Notre Dame, I was in denial.  "Oh no, we just had a bad shooting night, we're fine, white people suck."  Against Depaul, I was angry. Against St. John's, I was bargaining. "How could we possibly not box out on the last possession?"  After the loss to West Virginia, I was depressed.  Tonight, I am just accepting.

Of course, Georgetown did beat Rutgers by nine, so either I'm terribly underestimating Rutgers, or Casual Hoya is terribly overrating Georgetown. On Sunday St. John's spanked Notre Dame by 18, handing the Irish their second big loss of the week. Therefore, our Hater of the Week goes to anyone who ranked the Irish higher than the Red Storm. I'm looking at you Cardiac Hill, Casual Hoya and On The Banks.

1. Pittsburgh (10) (18-1, 6-0): 160 points  -- Last Week: 2

2. Syracuse (18-1, 5-1): 147 points -- Last Week: 1

3. UConn (15-2, 4-2): 139 points -- Last Week: 5 

4. Villanova (16-2, 4-1): 134 points -- Last Week: 3 

5. Louisville (14-3, 3-1): 118 points -- Last Week: 6 

6. St. John's (11-5, 4-2): 98 points -- Last Week: 7

7. Notre Dame (14-4, 3-3): 89 points -- Last Week: 4 

8. Marquette (12-6, 3-2): 88 points -- Last Week: 10 

9. West Virginia (12-4, 3-2): 84 points -- Last Week: 11 

10. Cincinnati (16-2, 3-2): 81 points -- Last Week: 8

11. Georgetown (13-5, 2-4): 72 points -- Last Week: 9

12. Seton Hall (8-10, 2-4): 45 point -- Last Week: 14 

13. Rutgers (10-7, 1-4): 43 points -- Last Week: 12 

14. South Florida (7-12, 1-5): 29 points -- Last Week: 15

15. Providence (11-8, 0-6): 22 points -- Last Week: 13 

16. DePaul (6-11, 0-5): 11 points -- Last Week: 16

Past rankings: Week 1 | Week 3 | Week 5 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9

Individual ballots after the jump.