We just finished deconstructing what were the (mid-)major highlights within the newly released 2013 Ken Pomeroy preseason rankings. As we stated at the beginning of that piece, anyone who does college basketball analysis would be unwise to ignore the work that Pomeroy does every season.

His rankings should be considered the gold standard, at least in terms of completeness and stability, for now. Perhaps one day Dan Hanner's system will dethrone Pomeroy -- I have no such illusions about the MRI, which is good enough for my predictive purposes, but would need some major tweaks to reach this status -- but that day is still in the future with some adjustments still needed.

It is only fitting then that we link to Pomeroy's own introduction to his rankings. Here he dives into the methodology behind the list, and compares the preseason slate to the AP poll for its accuracy in predicting the future:

However, if we had 20 more years of data, we'd probably find that there's not much more predictive power in my system as compared to the AP poll. I'd even concede the AP might have a small edge. But I'd say the main benefit of the system is that it's an independent data point that isn't concerned if it gets called out for putting Wisconsin #5. (I personally care, though. Please spare my fragile feelings.)

We care too Ken.

Pomeroy is set to dive deeper into specific teams on Wednesday, and we can't wait to see if he says anything about the Ivy League, or the relatively strong showing by the mid-major teams.