4 AP voters put Arizona on their Top 25 ballot
Arizona received 11 points in this week AP Top 25 poll, ranking eighth among other teams receiving votes.
With a win Saturday night against Washington, perhaps the Cats can crack the rankings for the first time since being No. 23 on the week of Oct. 29, 2017, before losing to USC.
There are 62 media voters in the AP poll, and Arizona's 11 points come from four of those voters. None of the voters who put UA on their ballots are from the West, which is kind of strange.
The one with the most faith is Nate Mink of the Syracuse Media Group. He has the Wildcats ranked at No. 21, which is good for five points (25 points goes to the team picked No. 1, all the way to one point for the 25th-ranked team).
Next is Pat Dooley of the Gainesville (Fla.) Sun at No. 23, followed by Lauren Brownlow (No. 24) of WRAL-TV in Durham, N.C., and Joe Dubin (No. 25) of WSMY-TV in Nashville, Tenn.
As a former AP voter, I know that the toughest spots to fill each week are the ones at the bottom of the Top 25. There are usually 15 to 20 teams who have some kind of case for the last several spots on the ballot, and it's often a hard-to-compare mix of successful smaller-conference teams, flawed major-conference teams and teams that have a good record but haven't really played anybody.
In other words, it's ... um ... a bit of a guessing game.
Arizona is in that last group -- hasn't really played anybody yet.
I wouldn't rank the Wildcats right now, but maybe the four actual voters who do are simply ahead of the curve.