The ITA released its latest team, singles, and doubles rankings today with the Wake Forest men and Florida women remaining in the top spots. In the men’s team rankings Stanford made the biggest jump inside the top 25 with the Cardinal coming up four spots to No. 15 after defeating USC last week. Notre Dame made the biggest overall leap in the top 50 with the Irish rising 11 spots after winning at Florida State. 

In the women’s top 25, Mississippi State was the only team to move more than two spots with the Bulldogs falling four spots to No. 20 after losses to Florida and South Carolina. Arizona State, Oklahoma, and Wichita State each rose seven spots last week to No. 29, No. 34, and No. 43 respectively. 

These team rankings were comprised of each team’s nine best wins and all losses and it’ll stay at nine up through the selection of the NCAA field. If you want to get an early look at what next week’s rankings look like you can view my real-time rankings which are available to all College Tennis Today subscribers. If you enjoy the content that I put out and you’ve been thinking about subscribing now is the perfect time with the NCAA Tournament coming up next month. You can do a monthly option for $9.99 a month ($.33 a day) and there is no long term commitment. Subscribe for as long or as little as you want.  

In the men’s singles rankings Ohio State’s Mikael Torpegaard remains at No. 1 as does Wake Forest’s Christian Seraphim and Skander Mansouri in the men’s doubles rankings. To see the full list of the men’s singles and doubles rankings click here. 

In the women’s singles rankings Ohio State’s Francesca Di Lorenzo remains at No. 1 as does North Carolina’s Hayley Carter and Jessie Aney in the women’s doubles rankings. To see the full list of the women’s singles and doubles rankings click here.

Down below I have a list the highest ranked conference leaders inside the top 50 along with a list of teams that are in danger of falling below .500. If today’s rankings were used to determine the NCAA field the at-large cutoff would be an unbelievably high number of 47 on both the men’s and women’s sides. Of course all of this will change some over the next three weeks with teams below .500 trying to get to .500 while the mid-major conference leaders ranked in the high 30s and low 40s doing whatever they can to hold on to their spots. 

One thing I find interesting is the high number of teams that either have losing records or records on the verge of falling below the .500 mark. As of today there are two men’s teams (Vanderbilt & Texas Tech) that would get left out due to having a losing record while on the women’s side there are a staggering four teams that would miss (Alabama, Virginia, Miami FL, Clemson) with another (USC) that is right at the .500 mark. USC has four matches left and then the conference tournament so they’ll have to win a few or they’ll be out.  

I’ve never been a fan of the .500 rule because in my opinion if you have a high enough ranking to make the field you should get in regardless of your record. What I expect will happen in many, if not all, of these instances is the coach will start working his or her contacts to line up State U for a triple or quadruple-header to get their records to where they need to be. I feel for those players at State U because they’ll come in and get whipped multiple times over the course of a day just for the sake of the rule. I can’t blame the coaches for scheduling these matches either because if a bonus and/or job security depends on making the NCAAs then they’d be foolish not doing whatever it takes to get their record above .500. Just as an FYI, the .500 rule is not an ITA rule but rather a NCAA rule.