Wednesday, March 5, 2008

New ITA Team Rankings Released

New ITA Team Rankings were released today...

1.Gustavus Adolphus
2.UC Santa Cruz
3.Washington Univ. (MO)
4.Emory
5.Claremont-Mudd-Scripps
6.Middlebury
7.Trinity (TX)
8.Mary Washington
9.Williams
10.DePauw
11.Bowdoin
12.Kenyon
13.Amherst
14.Johns Hopkins
15.Redlands
16.Whitman
17.Carnegie Mellon
18. Univ. of Chicago
19.Kalamazoo
20.Christopher Newport
21.Tufts
22.Pacific Lutheran
23.Trinity (CT)
24.Rhodes
25.The College of New Jersey
26.Wisconsin Whitewater
27.Washington and Lee
28.Hardin Simmons
29.Univ. of the South (TN)
30.Pomona Pitzer


Several notes that I'd like to make, and I also welcome your opinions...

There are no truly significant differences between my team rankings and the ITA's list. It is tough not to give Gustavus the #1 ranking right now because they just won Indoors, but everyone, including them, knows that their homecourt is such a massive advantage. They are more realistically the 4th or 5th best team in the country in my opinion.

Santa Cruz then would move up to #1...but where is Pybas? Is he injured? Does anyone know?

Emory really hasn't proved a lot yet. It is still tough to say exactly how good they are. They will see DePauw and Amherst in a few weeks.

We will find out how good CMS is in the next 10 days.

It seems Williams was penalized, but they haven't started their season yet. They will be tested early.

I think Kenyon and Bowdoin are both stronger than DePauw, who is weak in comparison to other years. Both Kenyon and Bowdoin will be at StagHen and we could see a potential matchup for 3rd and 4th place between these two teams to decide who rounds out the top 10.

Whitman is over-ranked, there is no way they should be ahead of Carnegie and Chicago and even CNU for that matter. Their ranking is still riding on graduated seniors from last year.

Denison is the only team in my rankings not in the ITAs, they play W&L in 10 days and they played a tough 6-3 with a good Chicago team.

Whitewater will most likely be moving out of the rankings after their recent 7-2 loss to Coe.



My next rankings are set for March 13th/14th and it will include Team/Singles/Doubles.