It’s Hump Day folks. That means Power Rankings, and that means debate. I have to leave work in about 10 minutes so I am going to go microwave style for this introduction. Lots of good stuff happened last weekend in the UAA and the NESCAC and some other nice results trickled in too. Shoutout to Whittier for slowly but surely making it back into our vision. You’re not in the top 40 yet, but soon! Also, shout-out to D3West for not ranking a last team. That’s dedication. Power Rankings below.
Notable Moves
Wash U, up 3 spots to #7 – D3West knew this one was coming. Wash U got Haugen back and went to town on the Case Spartans, who just had beaten Chicago. Interesting to see that Wash U is back in the top 10 with just win. It’s like the beginning of the season didn’t even happen!
Skidmore, up 6 spots to #22 – Commenters just hate Stevens and Skidmore now proves them right by beating the Ducks. That only moves the Ducks down 3 spots, but Skidmore gets the benefit of the “blogger love” for the pests from Hoboken. Skidmore is a quiet team that simply gets the job done when they need to. Congrats Skidmore, top 22.
Mary Wash, up 6 spots to #28 – 9-0 over CNU. The Eagles are trying to show us that they are not going to lose their conference, especially not without a fight. 9-0. Like, shutout style.
CNU, down 10 spots to #29 – 0-9 vs. Mary Washington. At least we cleared the air that David Reed is actually injured. I expected better out of the Generals especially after they went to town on Twitter against me for speculating about the Reed injury. Let the rackets do the talking.
Coe, up 4 spots to #37 – You get your wish commenter! Coe is back into the top 40 with a close loss to Case Western minus Krimbill. However, you lost to Depauw meaning we can’t put you above 33. #37 seems about right.
Okay, time to leave work. ASouth, OUT.
how does Redlands stay in front of Whitman after the 7-2 beatdown? Tufts, Bowdoin and CMS are reasonable losses – L&C happened with line-up diminished due to sickness…what up? Did you forget Whitman beat L&C 9-0 earlier in the season? And cheers for L&C btw – good day for a good program!
The rankings committee apparently agrees with us, so I’ll just make our arguments.
1. You can’t just pretend a result didn’t happen because a team was missing one player. For example, L&C could be complaining about not being ahead of Whitman because they were missing their top two players for that 9-0 loss. For another example, Redlands was missing their #3 singles player and they still beat Tufts (something Whitman was unable to do). For another example, Bowdoin’s lineup was decimated by illness (enough that they defaulted the #6 singles position), which didn’t stop them from beating Whitman 8-1. You have to win with the team you have.
2. Redlands’ resume is just more impressive. They have at least 6 top 30 wins that I can think of off the top of my head and 0 losses to teams ranked outside the top 20. When ranking teams, you have to look at their resume’s as a whole, and I believe that every team ranked ahead of Whitman has a better resume. In ITA rankings, bad losses tend to be punished more than good wins are rewarded.
Thanks for your comment. Whitman did indeed beatdown Redlands, but as a whole, Redlands’ resume is much better. They’ll have a chance to build on their resume this weekend