Weather forecasters are having a better winter than sportswriters who cast a ballot in the Associated Press Top 25 poll.
The Mountain State is blanketed by snow, and meteorologists warned this was imminent all week. A massive snowstorm will come, they said, and that it did.
Sportswriters? We keep telling college basketball fans who the No. 1 team is each week, and that team promptly goes out and proves us wrong.
This week's No. 1 team, Oklahoma, was unanimous choice for the top spot in the national rankings when the AP poll was released Monday afternoon. Hours later, the Sooners lost.
OU had replaced Big 12 roommate Kansas, which had lost at West Virginia the week before. The Sooners are the fifth different No. 1 in 11 weeks of polls. North Carolina opened as the preseason favorite, and Kentucky and Michigan State also held the title this season.
This is in extreme contrast to the 2014-15 season, one in which Kentucky was No. 1 for all 19 editions of the Top 25, from the preseason rankings in late October to the final poll in advance of the NCAA tournament. UK lost in the Final Four, and there isn't a post-tournament poll.
Here's evidence of the grip Kentucky had on last year's rankings:
There are 65 sportswriters who vote in the AP poll, and John Calipari's Wildcats received all first-place votes in 12 of the 19 polls. The only other teams who received a first-place vote last season were Arizona, Wisconsin, Duke and Virginia. Combine all the first-place votes those teams received for the season, and it totals 39.
Kentucky received more than that in last season's preseason poll alone (52), and accounted for 1,196 of a possible 1,235 first-place votes for the entire season. That comes out to 96.8 percent.
The choice was as clear as a summer's day. Now it's like we're evaluating the landscape through a snow squall.
Not only has this season churned out five different No. 1s, but seven programs have already received first-place votes. In addition to the aforementioned top-ranked teams, Maryland and Virginia have garnered votes for the title of best in the land.
Only one team, Oklahoma's only week atop the poll, has convinced all voters to rank it No. 1.
The uncertainty of college basketball isn't isolated to the top of the rankings. Compare this week's Top 25 with the preseason list and you'll find 11 teams who were on the outside looking in before the games started.
Southern Cal, with coach Andy Enfield of Florida Gulf Coast's Dunk City fame, didn't receive a single vote in the preseason poll, but is now ranked ahead of preseason No. 2 Kentucky, which has plummeted 21 spots and nearly out of the poll.
Iowa, which appeared on one of the 65 ballots in the preseason, was unranked when it defeated then-No. 1 Michigan State on Dec. 29. Now the Hawkeyes are in the top 10. Iowa, Xavier, West Virginia, Southern Methodist and Texas A&M represent half of the top 10, and none of those teams were in the top 25 when all the records were 0-0.
The upheaval has intensified in January, too. There was a four-day stretch of Top 25 games last week in which ranked teams - including games involving head-to-head Top 25 action - compiled an underwhelming 15-12 record. Top 25 teams had lost 43 games in January entering Saturday's slate.
Obviously, there isn't a dominant team. That parity doesn't necessarily mean the quality of college basketball is down, as some pundits have opined. It just means the quest for the national championship is wide open, which is good for programs that have steadily climbed the rankings. Teams like Iowa, Xavier and, yes, West Virginia.
At this point, only this much is clear about college basketball: Ranked teams are not safe.