Georgia moves up one spot to No. 6 after picking up road wins at Texas A&M and LSU while Wake Forest drops one spot to No. 7 despite winning on the road over Virginia Tech and No. 1 North Carolina. I know what everyone is thinking – how can you beat the No. 1 team and drop? Correction: Wake will stay at 6 with 58.41 and UGA 7 – my sheet didn’t count the road bonus from Wake’s win at UNC.
This set of rankings used each team’s eight best wins and while the win over UNC was great there were still four teams with better wins than Wake (see chart below rankings). The reason Wake is behind both Ohio State and Georgia is because of its four losses, two of which were to teams ranked outside the top 20 (#21 Texas and #42 NC State). The NC State loss came during the weekend when both Skander Mansouri and Petros Chrysochos were out of the country playing Davis Cup so that loss is the anchor that’s keeping them from floating to the top.
USC moves up one spot to No. 8 after beating Cal and Stanford while Oklahoma surges up nine spots to No. 9 after winning at No. 17 South Florida and No. 22 Florida State. Texas A&M holds on to the No. 10 spot by the slimmest of margins over Texas Tech.
I also listed what the top 10 would look like if they just went strictly off each team’s eight best wins with losses removed from the equation.
Cal remains No. 1 on the women’s side while North Carolina jumps up to No. 2 with Ohio State dropping down to No. 3. UNC’s win over Duke last Tuesday was enough to push them past the Buckeyes.
Georgia, Vanderbilt, Florida, and Miami remain at 4, 5, 6, and 7 while Duke and South Carolina swap spots at No. 8 and No. 10 after Duke won at Virginia after South Carolina got beat by Texas A&M. Pepperdine remains at No. 9 after beating St. Mary’s and Pacific over the weekend.
Texas A&M made a nice jump from No. 25 to No. 18 after picking up a road win at South Carolina and TCU should move up roughly 8 spots from No. 35 to No. 27 after picking up two ranked wins last week over Kansas and Louisiana Tech.
Each of the projected top 18 teams had all eight countable wins over ranked opponents. Schools that have an * beside the school name have less than eight ranked wins so I had to do some guesswork on where the unranked wins fall in the rankings.
| Rank | School | Points | Previous |
| 1 | North Carolina | 73.43 | 1 |
| 2 | TCU | 69.05 | 2 |
| 3 | Virginia | 68.45 | 3 |
| 4 | UCLA | 67.84 | 5 |
| 5 | Ohio State | 65.41 | 4 |
| 6 | Wake Forest | 58.41 | 6 |
| 7 | Georgia | 58.07 | 7 |
| 8 | USC | 54.52 | 9 |
| 9 | Oklahoma | 51.78 | 18 |
| 10 | Texas A&M | 50.54 | 10 |
| 11 | Texas Tech | 50.38 | 12 |
| 12 | Oklahoma State | 50.28 | 8 |
| 13 | Northwestern | 49.23 | 13 |
| 14 | Florida | 48.83 | 11 |
| 15 | Illinois | 44.27 | 15 |
| 16 | Arkansas | 44.05 | 14 |
| 17 | Texas | 40.33 | 21 |
| 18 | Tulsa* | 39.77 | 24 |
| 19 | California* | 38.29 | 16 |
| 20 | Kentucky | 37.71 | 19 |
| 21 | Michigan | 37.04 | 20 |
| 22 | South Florida | 36.34 | 17 |
| 23 | Florida State* | 34.61 | 22 |
| 24 | Mississippi State | 32.93 | 25 |
| 25 | Columbia | 32.06 | 28 |
| 26 | SMU* | 32.03 | 27 |
| 27 | Tulane* | 28.87 | 23 |
| 28 | Rice* | 27.51 | 26 |
| 29 | San Diego | 25.77 | 32 |
| 30 | Washington* | 24.59 | 30 |
| 31 | Georgia Tech | 23.64 | 31 |
| 32 | Alabama | 23.51 | 41 |
| 33 | Penn State* | 22.90 | 33 |
| 34 | Memphis* | 22.85 | 34 |
| 35 | Ole Miss* | 22.70 | 37 |
| 36 | Oregon* | 20.09 | 39 |
| 37 | Princeton* | 19.44 | 34 |
| 38 | NC State* | 19.41 | 42 |
| 39 | Virginia Tech* | 19.35 | 45 |
| 40 | Dartmouth* | 19.29 | 38 |
| 41 | Stanford* | 19.25 | 36 |
| 42 | LSU* | 19.18 | 44 |
| 43 | Vanderbilt* | 18.87 | 43 |
| 44 | Wisconsin* | 18.69 | 30 |
| 45 | Baylor* | 16.91 | 38 |
* indicates at least one win over an opponent ranked outside the top 75
Rankings Chart That Excludes All Losses
| Rank | School | 8 Best Wins |
| 1 | North Carolina | 638.80 |
| 2 | TCU | 586.90 |
| 3 | Virginia | 581.80 |
| 4 | UCLA | 556.30 |
| 5 | Wake Forest | 550.20 |
| 6 | Ohio State | 542.90 |
| 7 | Georgia | 493.60 |
| 8 | USC | 490.70 |
| 9 | Texas A&M | 490.20 |
| 10 | Oklahoma | 476.40 |
| Rank | School | Points | Previous |
| 1 | Cal | 79.23 | 1 |
| 2 | North Carolina | 70.48 | 3 |
| 3 | Ohio State | 67.49 | 2 |
| 4 | Georgia | 66.21 | 4 |
| 5 | Vanderbilt | 64.00 | 5 |
| 6 | Florida | 63.13 | 6 |
| 7 | Miami | 59.47 | 7 |
| 8 | Duke | 54.12 | 10 |
| 9 | Pepperdine | 53.48 | 9 |
| 10 | South Carolina | 52.65 | 8 |
| 11 | Michigan | 47.11 | 11 |
| 12 | Texas Tech |
7 CommentsSubmit a Comment |
The 2 road wins over USF and FSU were the equivalent of beating #13 and #16 so that helped a lot plus its losses to Wake and Arkansas didn't count as much after Wake went from 13 to 6 and Arky from 21 to 14. <br /><br />Several of the teams ahead of it fell back or stayed the same after losses – Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Arkansas, Cal, and South Florida. <br /><br />The addition of an eighth win hurt some more teams because Illinois's 8th best win was over #53 Purdue, Texas Tech's 8th best was over #46 Drake, Northwestern's 8th best win was over #47 Harvard. OU's 8th best win was over #41 Alabama. <br /><br />You add it all up and there's a 9 point jump.
What caused the Oklahoma jump. They had a couple solid but not spectacular wins.
As it stands right now it appears on the women's side only one Pac 12 team will host a regional. On the other hand the SEC will host 5 or 6 and the ACC will host 3 or 4. Go figure.
Does anyone else believe that Stanford will be seeded 16th or 17th so that they meet Cal in the 3rd round of the NCAAs. This will make it 4 years in a row.
Thanks for taking the time to do this. I know alot of us anxiously await these pre-official rankings!
It's just another way of explaining how the rankings are put together – shows the gaps between the teams. Losses definitely count in the grand scheme of things
whats the point of the excluding losses rankings? Surely losses have to count