I think they did a good job. Hard to punish Cruz too much for the GAC loss after beating Bates. Hard to reward GAC too much for the Cruz win with the Tyler loss. Congratulations to Earlham for their national ranking! These will chance quite a bit in the coming weeks as more results pour in, but comments are always welcome.
Ever consider ranking the top 100 teams?
These rankings are based off of the fall rankings. It’s as simple as that. The committee isn’t going to blow everything up and start over every ranking period. Teams move up and down based on results. It’s foolish to look only at 1 or 2 teams and say team A should be above B because they have an indirect or a direct, but it’s not that simple. You have to look big picture as well as small picture. At this point in the season, it is silly to say that GAC, Tyler, or anyone should be above anyone else with so little in terms of results. NCW dropped, GAC and Tyler jumped. As the season goes on, it will continue to shape. GAC has a good win, a bunch of losses. Tyler has 1 win, over the #25 team. NCW has a win over the then #21 team with some losses. It’s amusing how righteous and sure of themselves people can be.
Other teams made pretty big jumps or falls with relatively little in terms of results. Just want some consistency.
Gustavus beat #8 from the fall. NCW beat #21 from the fall. NCW also has a bunch of losses (same number as Gustavus, 4). Including one to another common opponent Johns Hopkins (3-6 NCW, 4-5 Gustavus).
Keeping Santa Cruz above Gustavus is somewhat understandable, but keeping them behind NCW is not. Big picture is not ranking criteria.
Consistency depends upon which way that you look at it. Rankings are rarely black and white. NCW was ranked highly and lost to #s 8, 7, 2, and 17. That 17 also put together an incredible resume that included beating the #4 so it can’t be looked at as that bad a loss. To say that NCW should fall that far after the first ranking period for those losses doesn’t make sense. It isn’t about GAC being higher than NCW. It’s about NCW moving down to where they should after the ranking period that passed based on the info out there. Same goes with GAC or anyone. GAC should move up, but how high? They beat Cruz, but lost to Hopkins, Emory, Trinity, Tyler. Tyler was unranked, and is certainly way better. But, they haven’t played the same DIII schedule that Case has to solidify moving up more. Thus, that prevents GAC from moving up more than they did. Cruz still beat Bates and NCW, so they can’t move too far down either. You can certainly disagree with the rankings all you want, as it is a human process, but to assume that because you disagree, it’s wrong, is misguided.
Rankings always reveal hidden stories. The next DIII matches of #4 CMS are against #’s 10, 15, 8, 7, 1 (assuming #1 beats #24 and the Stags beat #7 in the first round of the Stag-Hen Invitational), either 25 or 2 in the Stag-Hen (again making a big assumption of Stags victories to get there), 13, unranked, 14, 3, 16, 21, 6, and 17. The Stags are pressed in the classroom and on the courts. Is this the pathway to excellence or burn-out? Really, I’m worn out mentally and physically just looking at that schedule, and Cruz, SCIAC’s, and the first rounds of NCAA’s are still to come. Are the Stags flat-lining by the time they roll into Nationals? Just a comment; I’m not sure I even believe it.
Cal Lu’s Schedule:
Indoors (9,1,8) 23,8,24,17,vassar, Amherst 19(not really),3,26,16,4,27, oxi,11. Sciac, Ojai, Regional. Who gets the better recruits? Pretty even if you ask me.
Team A beats Team B beats Team C
You think you would rank them in that order, no?
Tyler beats Gustavus beats Santa Cruz
You talk about the Tyler loss like it is a bad one worth being penalized over. Tyler beat a D2 team that beat Trinity this spring. I don’t know if full lineups were involved or what not or second matches of the day type thing, etc.
There is no reason that Tyler and Gustavus should be behind a team they have beaten, unless we are going to hold it against Tyler and Gustavus that their teams last year weren’t particularly strong. This is a new year, teams made up of new players, let’s go with straight up results since you have them and not where teams started in the rankings or how strong they have been in the past. I think those things are great tiebreakers when you don’t have head to head. But how the committee just ignores such direct head to head results is beyond me. An argument might be that the ranking committee is trying to preserve regional ranking orders and that is why Tyler has to be behind Pomona who lost to Bates to Cruz. Well then why is Amherst #19 and ranked outside of their regional order? The lack of consistency is maddening. Pick and choose where you want to apply criteria I guess.
NC Wesleyan finishes 8th at indoors, #15. Gustavus finishes 6th beating a team that beat NC Wesleyan, #21.
Really great points, but I think that last year’s rankings do take some effect on this years rankings. Cruz really hasn’t done much to lose their top 10 ranking – beating Bates and NCW, especially since Bates beat PP. So you would have to put GAC and Tyler in the top 10, which isn’t feasible. GAC already has losses to Hopkins, Emory, Tyler, and Trinity. Tyler only has a win over GAC, considering DII wins don’t count.
Having watched GAC play against Tyler and Cruz I can tell you that Tyler would have a routine duel win if they were to play Cruz. I only see a few spots were Cruz could possibly get points but overall routine.
I definitely don’t disagree with you. Tyler is going to be a very good team. However there is no justification to put them that high at this moment, other than our speculation, which obviously wouldn’t make for good rankings.
Speculation meaning speculating a team should still be ranked high/low because they were ranked high/low last year (with often different players)?
How is NC Wesleyan ahead of GAC? I would love to hear any argument for that one. NC Wesleyan has almost an entirely new team from last year.
I agree on using last year’s rankings ONLY when there are no on-court results from current year to show otherwise. Why speculate between NC Wesleyan and GAC when they clearly have a common opponent?
If you have to shake up the rankings to follow what has actually happened, so be it.
Ok. i will grant that ncw should probably be behind both gac and tyler, but they should both be around 20, not both around 15
I dont know about “routine”. Tyler would probably be up 2-1 after the doubles with wins at 1 and 2 and probably get trounced at 3 dubs (assuming singer shows up to play, hes very up and down). Then in the singles I’d give the edge to Tyler at 1, 2 is a toss up because we havent seen much of brown but we all know what Halabi did last year at Ojai, 3 is another toss up, Bryce is playing well. Four I’d give the edge to Cruz, you cant bet against Sammy Rodgers hes a rock. 5 is another toss up because like I said it depends which Singer shows up and 6 is to Cruz no matter who they put it. The six guy from Tyler is weak.
So all that makes it 3-3 with toss ups at 2,3 and 5. Again, this is only speculation but routine win? Come on. Tyler is better but Cruz is full of warriors.
You can’t move into the top 10 with one win. I’m sorry. Quit your belly-aching and “let your racquets do the talking” in a couple weeks against Cruz, Whitman, and P-P. No doubt the Pats are for real this year, but come on. You haven’t done anything yet. Dennis, welcome back from North Korea