Rankings Release – 2/15 ITA Women’s Team Rankings & USTA Mens & Womens Top 25

Wednesday was ranking release day with the USTA releasing its second top 25 while the ITA released just the women’s team rankings (no men’s team rankings this week due to the NTIs). I’ll start with the ITA rankings which kept Florida at No. 1 after the Gators won their first National Team Indoor Championship since 1999. North Carolina stayed at No. 2 after a runner-up finish at the NTIs while the two semifinalists, Georgia and Ohio State, each moved up three spots to No. 3 and No. 4 respectively. Texas Tech made the biggest jump going from No. 12 to No. 7 after the Red Raiders defeated Vanderbilt and Pepperdine. Michigan and Auburn each moved up three spots to No. 10 and No. 11 after the Wolverines defeated Vanderbilt and Texas A&M while the Tigers defeated Georgia Tech and Yale.

Pepperdine and Duke each fell five spots with the Waves falling to No. 8 after dropping matches to Georgia and Texas Tech while the Blue Devils fell to No. 15 after losing to Georgia, Texas A&M, and Vanderbilt. Miami, which didn’t participate in the NTIs after losing to Texas A&M in its KOW regional final, dropped four spots to No. 21 after losing at Texas. Vanderbilt dropped three spots to No. 12 after losing to Texas Tech and Michigan. No teams dropped out of this week’s rankings.  

The USTA released both a men’s and women’s top 25 with no change at the top two spots. Florida and North Carolina were a unanimous No. 1 and No. 2 in the women’s poll while Virginia missed being a unanimous No. 1 in the men’s poll by two votes. The only men’s team to move more than two spots was Mississippi State which fell three spots to No. 19 after losing at South Florida last Sunday. Tulane and South Carolina entered the men’s top 25 while SMU and Old Dominion dropped out. South Carolina defeated Old Dominion last week while Tulane picked up notable wins over Auburn and North Florida. Old Dominion did pick up a road win at Clemson but the loss to South Carolina was enough to drop them out. SMU was supposed to play at Dartmouth last week but that match got snowed out and with Tulane picking up two wins that was enough to elevate them in the voters minds. 

There was a lot of movement on the women’s side with Texas Tech (+7) and Texas (+6) making the biggest leap while Pepperdine (-6), Duke (-6), Vanderbilt (-4), and Miami (-4) made the biggest fall. Baylor was the only newcomer to the rankings this week after the Bears ran their record to 5-0 with a 4-2 win over Rice. Mississippi State fell out despite winning its only match of the week 7-0 over Louisiana-Lafayette.

USTA Poll Information: there are eight college tennis “experts” on the voting panel, including yours truly, and each of us ranked 25 teams from numbers 1 to 25, with the first-place team receiving 25 points and the last-place team receiving one. When voting we were to consider strength of schedule, Top 25 wins/losses, road wins/losses and personnel adjustments for each program while also basing our vote on performance, not reputation or preseason speculation. For control, the highest and lowest outlying ranking for each team on the ballot was removed. Therefore, the maximum number of points a team can receive is 150. First-place votes were not tallied. 

For those interested in how I voted you can see my ballot here with the full panel vote beside it. 

Below is a side-by-side comparison of the ITA and USTA polls with a column to the right that shows voter variance. The USTA poll liked Arizona State, Ole Miss, UCLA, and USC three spots more than the ITA did while it didn’t like Texas A&M (-5) nearly as much as the ITA poll. The USTA panel had both Vanderbilt and LSU ranked while the ITA panel did not. The ITA panel had Kentucky and Mississippi State ranked while the USTA panel did not. 

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