2/27/08 Lax World MCLA Division 1 Top 25 poll is out!

by **jgratson** on Wed Feb 27, 2008 7:17 pm

I like how this poll is done differently that other college sports. This poll seems to reflect who people think is the best team, not necessarily who had the best season so far. Its so early to say that one team or another has had a good or bad year. Many teams don't even have common opponents yet, so its difficult to say how good anyone is.

However, this poll is pretty much meaningless until you get further into the season. There is still so much lacrosse to be played, the picture will be much clearer in a month or two.

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by **Ravaging Beast** on Wed Feb 27, 2008 8:22 pm

DTwizzie wrote:The sound thumping that Poly took from UCSB did not help their case, but they will be able to negate that loss with a win at Sonoma this weekend.

In Cal Poly's defense, they were late to the UCSB game and didn't get a proper warm-up. I was at the game, and it definitely showed. They got off to a very slow start. They are better than they seemed in that game. But being late was their fault.

by **DRich17** on Wed Feb 27, 2008 9:45 pm

StrykerFSU wrote:Not to bring hate on the boys from Provo but didn't they lose that game to Chapman? How can they be voted #1 by 20 voters? You have to drop them and then let them earn the spot back by their play through the rest of the season. This is a pretty egregious example of the inertia in the polls created by ranking teams in the preseason.

Completely agree. I can't say that I could do them all, but how does BYU hold the #1 seed? Just seems like a 'you scratch my back, i'll scratch your' type of poll vote. I disagree with BYU being #1 still, top 5 sure, but 1?

by **Big D** on Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:59 am

I agree with the point that BYU shouldn't be #1. Take an example from college football polls. If the underdog beats the favorite in the national championship game they are claimed the national champion even though most people think that the loser of that game was actually the better team and would win if they played again. I know this is only the first poll and things always work themselves out, but the logic behind this vote doesn't make sense. It will be interesting to see how things shake out over the course of the season.

by **Tyler Baumann** on Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:18 am

Chapman is the real deal, they should be Number 1 and beating the number 1 team and going undefeated since than proves that, but it doesn't matter until dallas so I guess it gives us something to talk about.

by **lax23** on Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:02 am

jgratson wrote:I like how this poll is done differently that other college sports. This poll seems to reflect who people think is the best team, not necessarily who had the best season so far. Its so early to say that one team or another has had a good or bad year. Many teams don't even have common opponents yet, so its difficult to say how good anyone is.

However, this poll is pretty much meaningless until you get further into the season. There is still so much lacrosse to be played, the picture will be much clearer in a month or two.

I think this is completely false. This poll is done differently than other college sport because there is no scouting or stats on other teams. These polls are based solely on people's perception on how teams SHOULD be. These polls are complete speculation and are backed with litle to no real factual evidence. Look at the #1 team. Look at how GT got whooped by two teams this weekend, and still received more votes than either of those teams. We have to take these polls with a grain of salt. There is no coverage of other teams and practically no coverage in season of what happens in the games. No SportsCenter or newspaper. The most consistent news updates on these games are the opinions given on this forum.

by **Ravaging Beast** on Thu Feb 28, 2008 11:41 am

Now this is my theory on how BYU got the #1 spot in the poll. Hopefully it makes some sense. It has a lot to do with having no general consensus on who else should be #1. BYU got half of the #1 votes (20). If another team, let say Chapman as an example, got the other half of those #1 votes (20), they still wouldn't have been #1. But this wasn't the case. 5 of the top 6 teams received a #1 vote. It's sort of like Nader stealing votes from the Democrats in 2000. If he wasn't there, there would have only been one option for Democrats.

BYU had an average of 23.9 points per voter. That would mean that the other half of the voters ranked them around #3 (probably some #2's as well). Chapman averaged 22.4 points per voter. If half of the #1 votes went to Chapman, they would have received an average vote of 23.5 points per voter. That is still lower than BYU. So along with getting twenty #1 votes, BYU was still getting #2 and #3 votes while the other teams were getting shuffled around in those top 6 spots. So voters realized that BYU was a top 3 team, but weren't sure where to put the other 5 teams.

I think only one person has mentioned how many teams got #1 votes. That is very unusual and shows the confusion among the voters. But this should clear up as the top teams start to play each other.

by **DRich17** on Thu Feb 28, 2008 2:54 pm

Now I'm going out on a limb here, but I give one of the undefeateds a chance at the top spot. It's still early in the season, so thats a hard argument to make, but If you haven't been beaten, then you haven't been beaten, and if you've been beaten, you're no number 1. BYU has an awesome team, don't get me wrong, but this poll seems to have a screwy top.

by **Mark Brown** on Thu Feb 28, 2008 9:50 pm

As a voter for the D2 last year provides a good example. Montana was #1 to start but lost some games and dropped all the way to #10. I still believed that they were the best D2 team in the Nation but could not vote them #1 based on their losses. In the end they proved to be the #1 team, but they had to prove it.

by **Laxfan87** on Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:40 pm

well, no need to worry anymore with BYU's loss to Michigan.

by **DRich17** on Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:46 pm

Ravaging Beast wrote: It's sort of like Nader stealing votes from the Democrats in 2000. If he wasn't there, there would have only been one option for Democrats.

ah, yep you lost me....

by **DRich17** on Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:47 pm

Who votes for these polls? and how is the scoring? You vote #1 and they get 25 points, #2 gets 24 points, #3 gets 23 points and so on down to #25. With every voter doing the same?

by **CATLAX MAN** on Sun Mar 02, 2008 1:49 am

DRich17 wrote:Who votes for these polls? and how is the scoring? You vote #1 and they get 25 points, #2 gets 24 points, #3 gets 23 points and so on down to #25. With every voter doing the same?

The very first topic in this section has this information.

http://www.collegelax.us/pollinfo.php

It's also listed at the bottom of every individual poll web page.

by **DRich17** on Sun Mar 02, 2008 2:01 am

why were the listed teams diqualified from play. I mean what can disqualify a team from being able to play in nationals

by **Gvlax** on Sun Mar 02, 2008 2:03 am

DRich17 wrote:why were the listed teams diqualified from play. I mean what can disqualify a team from being able to play in nationals

you have a lot of archived threads to catch up on, i suggest getting some redbull.

2/27/08 Lax World MCLA Division 1 Top 25 poll is out!

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