Florida Women, UCLA Men Take Over No. 1 Spots in ITA Division I Rankings
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| The 2011 & 2012 NCAA Champions are back at No. 1 this week |
The NCAA Sweet 16 in Champaign, Illinois is just over three weeks away, and after a long stretch the North Carolina women and the Virginia men at the top, there are two new teams atop this week's ITA rankings.
After two top 10 wins last week--an exceedingly close battle with Pepperdine and a relatively easy victory over USC--the UCLA men have replaced the Cavaliers at No. 1. Both UCLA and Virginia have conference tournaments to play this weekend, with UCLA looking at a fourth dual match with No. 5 USC this season should they both advance to the final in Ojai. Virginia's probable opponent in the final is No. 9 Duke, whom the Cavaliers have beaten twice this year.
Because the next rankings will not be released until Thursday, May 2, two days after the NCAA selections are announced, we'll know the seeds (and hosts for regionals) before we'll know where those teams are ranked. But in the interest of trying to project the 16 teams who might be hosting, here are the Top 20 in today's rankings:
MEN:
1. UCLA
2. Virginia
3. Georgia
4. Ohio State
5. USC
6. Tennessee
7. Ole Miss
8. Kentucky
9. Duke
10. Pepperdine
11. Texas A&M
12. Mississippi St.
13. Baylor
14. Oklahoma
15. Florida
16. Vanderbilt
17. South Carolina
18. Cal
19. Texas
20. LSU
Notably absent from the regional contenders for hosting is NCAA Sweet 16 host Illinois, now ranked 29th.
WOMEN:
1. Florida
2. North Carolina
3. Georgia
4. Texas A&M
5. USC
6. Michigan
7. Cal
8. UCLA
9. Alabama
10. Miami
11. Clemson
12. Stanford
13. Virginia
14. Duke
15. Northwestern
16. Nebraska
17. Texas Tech
18. Vanderbilt
19. Baylor
20. Rice
Again, NCAA Sweet 16 host Illinois is way down the list, currently ranked 43 going into the Big Ten conference championships.
The complete ITA women's team rankings are here and the men's are here.
Granger Huntress of the Texas College Tennis blog has been producing his own set of team rankings this season, and they differ substantially from those of the ITA. Granger still has Virginia at No. 1 in the men's rankings, with UCLA 2, USC 3, Ohio State 4 and Georgia 5. Two-time defending champion Florida also tops his women's list, but Georgia is No. 2, followed by Texas A&M, UNC and USC. I guess I'm the only one who thinks USC is better than their ranking right now. I do agree that the Baylor men, who Granger has at No. 8, are currently much more dangerous that their No. 13 ITA ranking might suggest and that Pepperdine looks like a Top 8 team. His rankings page is available here.
In the individual rankings, Alex Domijan took his No. 1 spot back from teammate Jarmere Jenkins, who fell to No. 3, with Tennessee's Mikelis Libietis at No. 2 now. Anthony Rossi of Kentucky makes a Top 10 appearance at No. 5.
1. Alex Domijan, Virginia
2. Mikelis Libietis, Tennessee
3. Jarmere Jenkins, Virginia
4. Emilio Gomez, USC
5. Anthony Rossi, Kentucky
6. Henrique Cunha, Duke
7. KU Singh, Georgia
8. Sebastian Fanselow, Pepperdine
9. Peter Kobelt, Ohio State
10. Romain Bogaerts, Mississippi St.
The women's Top 10 showed very little movement, with Florida's Lauren Embree continuing at No. 1.
1. Lauren Embree, Florida
2. Sabrina Santamaria, USC
3. Robin Anderson, UCLA
4. Cristina Sanchez-Quintanar, Texas A&M
5. Zsofi Susanyi, Cal
6. Lauren Herring, Georgia
7. Gina Suarez-Malaguti, North Carolina
8. Anett Schutting, Cal
9. Danielle Lao, USC
10. Ema Burgic, Baylor
There is a new team at the top of the men's doubles rankings, with Libietis and Hunter Reese of Tennessee taking over from Jenkins and Mac Styslinger of Tennessee. Kate Fuller and Silvia Garcia of Georgia remain No. 1 in the women's doubles rankings.
The complete women's singles rankings are here. The complete men's singles rankings are here.
The ITA's release, including the upsets of the week and the top freshmen in the rankings, is here.
8 comments:
The Top16 for men are pretty much set unless Cal pulls off some upsets this weekend. Vandy has a pretty solid lead over South Carolina and both are done with their seasons. Texas is really the only other team that is still playing, but they are pretty far behind Vandy in points.
The Top5 are also pretty much figured out since there is a big gap between USC at 5 and Tennessee at 6. Curious if UVA can catch UCLA. I also dont know if USC or OSU can catch UGA for 3rd, fairly decent point gap.
Will be curious to see if the NCAA allows 8 SEC Men's Team to host Regional or spread out some more for travel concerns.
Scratching head how UVA who has not lost this year can fall from #1.
Has anyone found live scoring for Pac12? This is real bad if they dont, it's 2013. I can't find it anywhere.
One thing about UCLA overtaking UVA in the rankings. The Bruins only loss was a 4-3 loss to USC at Indoors. They have UVA based on strength of schedule. I might even rather be the #2 seed since I think USC/OSU are better than UGA anyway.
AR Hacked off,
Here’s how UVA fell/UCLA rose. This is my post from thesabre.com on Monday. http://www.thesabre.com/message_board/tennis/2013/April/22/77758.php
Since it was addressed to UVa fans originally, the “we’s/ours” mean UVa.
“We had 76.9 points last week (April 16). We didn't have any
noteworthy wins this past weekend (FSU was #30) and, among our 9
best wins, those teams didn't change much in last week's ranking.
We went from 76.9 points to approximately 77.33.
We had 81.08 points on April 9. Our average dropped between April 9
and April 16 (76.9) because the computer increased countable matches
from 8 to 9. Our 9th best win is over a team ranked in the mid #20s.
Beating Duke in the ACCs will give us a boost, and it will also help by
dropping this "lowest counting" win.
UCLA had 73.16 points on April 9. When the extra 9th win was counted
last week, they dropped to 71.19 on April 16.
This past week UCLA beat 2 top 10 teams, including an away win. The
computer does not consider the score of a match. Their away win over
#8 Pepperdine counts almost the same number of points as our win over
#5 OSU (using Apr. 16 rankings).
Not only did UCLA register two good wins, they also got to drop two
"very low points" wins over Washington #31 and San Diego #38. That's
a huge bump. Plus, UCLA got help from Georgia and Tennessee moving
up in the rankings.
Last week, we had earned 692.1 points with a divisor of 9 for 76.9 points.
This week, we have roughly 696 points, same divisor.
UCLA's numerator (i.e. points earned) increased nearly 100 points this
week. Their divisor is 9.1, only a minor difference from ours.
If I haven't completely bored you already and you're still interested, here
is what the computer is looking at (for this week) regarding each team's
5 best wins.
For us,
#4 USC (94 pts), #5 OSU (91 pts), @#12 A&M (80.3 pts), #10 Duke (77
pts twice)
For UCLA,
@#4 USC (103.4 pts), #2 UGA (102 pts), #4 USC (94 pts), @#8
Pepperdine (90.2 pts), #7 Tennessee (85 pts)
It's currently a bit skewed for UCLA because of their away wins and
because UGA and Tennessee are probably ranked higher than they
should be.
UGA will fall this week, which will affect UCLA the following week.
OSU will move up some, which will then help us the following week.
Through no fault of our own, we are adversely affected by Duke's
inconsistency.
Duke has beaten Tennessee and Pepperdine. We all know how good
they are when they play to their ability.
However, Duke's ranking gets dragged down by two stinkers. Their loss
to #31 Illinois is the equivalent of losing 7 times to Top 5 ranked teams
or roughly 4 losses against top 10 teams.
Then, you add in their loss to #18 Cal (the equivalent of four top 5 losses
or two losses against #6-10 teams) and they are really underrated by the
computer.”
Austin,
If UCLA wins the Pac 12 tourney, they will be a clear #1 in the computer. Assuming no upsets, it will be UCLA, UVa, UGA, then USC/OSU in some order.
Even if UCLA loses, there's a decent chance they could stay as ITA #1. It will be close, but UVa likely (though not definitely) won't get enough help from beating Duke. A potential USC win doesn't really hurt UCLA. Their divisor only goes from 9.1 to 9.2 for a loss to a Top 5 team. If USC moves up in the rankings, UCLA still gets to count two wins over USC (including the important "away" win), while UVa only has 1 USC win.
If USC wins this weekend, it will be a close race for 3d between the Trojans and UGA.
It will be interesting to see what the NCAA committee going to do with UGA. Yes, they have a good computer ranking, but they don’t have any noteworthy (top 20) out of conference wins, while all the other top teams do. Plus, they lost to OSU and UCLA. In fact, each of the other top 5 teams has at least one win over another top 5 team. Georgia does not. As far as I can tell, the only Top 10 victory by any SEC school against an out of conference team was A&M over OSU in early February. One could argue that win has a bit of an asterisk since it’s always difficult for anyone playing their first outdoor match after extended indoor play.
OSU doesn’t have the opportunity to move much with their conference tourney.
If UCLA wins out, OSU/USC will likely remain close at 4/5 and there will be a gap between those two and UGA.
Austin,
Stanford's and USC's live scoring is tied in to their live streaming of matches. Ucla's is hard to find, but it's available. Cal? I gave up on them.
anyone know what happened after the young / bogomolov match? i was watching live streaming but couldn't tell as umpire had to tell them to be quiet
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