It's the end of October. You're sick of pumpkin spice lattes. You're enjoying sweater weather and dreading the winter. You're kicking yourself for waiting until today to figure out your Halloween costume, because you don't have time to make anything and all of the good costumes at the pop-up shop are picked clean.

And, yes, you're scanning the Associated Press preseason college hoops poll.

The AP released its first poll of the 2014-15 season on Friday, and the results are ... well, they're exactly what you'd expect. Kentucky and its band of nine McDonald's All-Americans lead the way at No. 1, followed by Arizona, Wisconsin, Duke and Kansas. That's the same top five, in the same order, as ESPN's own preseason power rankings, the sign of a strong general consensus about the best teams in the country.

The differences between our rankngs and the AP poll are minimal throughout. There are some changes to the order here and there. But every team you saw ranked earlier this week was also included by the Associated Press voters, with one exception: Kansas State. Instead, the AP chose Utah and Harvard, which tied for the 25th spot with 98 points. It's hard to argue with that: Both teams are top 25 quality, and both could be better than Kansas State, and also it's the 25th spot in a preseason poll, and why would you argue about that anyway? You have a Halloween costume to figure out. You don't have time for this.

Still, if you think the preseason poll is worthless, think again. Beyond a poll's unique ability to provide casual fans with a quick view of the college hoops landscape, it also retains some strong predictive power. More than the polls that follow, anyway. As soon as the season begins, voting becomes tainted by random results and short-term performance fluctuations -- we can't help but overreact. But before the season, when everyone is just sitting at their computer trying to figure out how good teams seem to be? That's when the wisdom of the crowd truly shines.

The preseason poll isn't perfect. But as a predictive measure of the season to come, it's far from pointless, either.