1st MDIA Div. A Poll (2/23/05) is out

by **Sonny** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 5:09 pm

Read all about it...

HERE:
http://www.uslia.com/news.php?action=fullnews&id=32

**Sponsor**

by **culax** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 5:29 pm

i'm a little surprised to see texas a&m ranked ahead of texas tech. they each lost to colorado state. maybe the difference was texas a&m's win over florida.

by **Danny Hogan** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 5:40 pm

probably that and the fact that tech started unranked?

by **CATLAX MAN** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 5:52 pm

culax wrote:i'm a little surprised to see texas a&m ranked ahead of texas tech. they each lost to colorado state. maybe the difference was texas a&m's win over florida.

Shouldn't be. Tech beat A & M; they should be above them. That appears to be a reputation vote.

by **Bluevelvet** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 5:52 pm

Biggest moves up:
UCSD 6 spots (24-18 )
Utah 6 spots (26-20)
Texas Tech to #23

Biggest move down:
Missouri 9 spots (19-28 )
Texas AM 6 spots (13-19)
Texas 4 spots (20-24)

UCSD (24-18 ) and GaTech (17-15) and Utah (26-20) moved up after losing to top 6 teams. It looks like aggressive scheduling will help a team so long as the team is competitive despite losing. But if the game is not competitive, look out! eg. MO, TX, TAMU. The one exception to this rule was Texas Tech who moved up on the strength of their win over TAMU, despite their 21-7 slaughter at the hands of CSU.

by **onpoint** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 5:55 pm

And the fact that it appears many voters voted "off" the preseason poll. That really shouldn't be a reference point, nor should this poll when doing the next one. I think voters need to rank teams based on how good they think they ARE, not how good they are in relation to the last poll. That's one of my pet peeves with preseason polls in general.

by **the lax** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 5:57 pm

what happened to poor Mizzoou.

I can understand A&M being ranked higher. It's not on reputation. That's a cop out.

by **Danny Hogan** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 6:07 pm

onpoint wrote:And the fact that it appears many voters voted "off" the preseason poll. That really shouldn't be a reference point, nor should this poll when doing the next one. I think voters need to rank teams based on how good they think they ARE, not how good they are in relation to the last poll. That's one of my pet peeves with preseason polls in general.

i agree, voters should keep their own private poll and move the teams around based on that, not start fresh from what everyone else thought last week.

by **LaxC21** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 6:09 pm

I'm not really surprised to see A&M at 19 and Tech behind them...it all goes back to preseason rankings. I would be hesitant to make the argument that a team should be ranked ahead of another team because they beat them head to head...not that, that isn't right...but it rarely happens when a team is ranked several spots higher (i.e. - Cal Poly & A&M last year...the extra spots cost A&M and several other teams in similar situations an at large bid). At least in the Tech vs. A&M case it will be settled in the playoffs.

I would have to agree with Bluevelvet's assessment on the rankings so far. You loose big it’s going to hurt, but if you loose by a couple you only suffer a minor set back. I'm a little surprised that Florida is also ranked ahead of Tech and Utah is behind A&M. I also think there are several teams that are a little over rated and ranked to high for not have played any games yet…but I will wait to see how they do over the next couple of weeks.

Oh well…things will start to be more accurate as the season plays out…I hope.

by **culax** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 6:09 pm

call me old fashioned, but if you beat somebody and you have not lost any games, you should be ranked higher than the team you beat. this is regardless of where you started in the preseason rankins.

by **Timbalaned** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 6:09 pm

was looking around, but couldn't find it, maybe I didn't look hard enough, but how do the "points" for the votes get broken down.

by **Bluevelvet** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 6:13 pm

culax wrote:call me old fashioned, but if you beat somebody and you have not lost any games, you should be ranked higher than the team you beat. this is regardless of where you started in the preseason rankins.

I hope you are not attempting to describe Texas Tech. They have not lost any of their games except for the 21-7 loss to CSU. Tech moved way up in the polls and TAMU moved pretty far down as a result of the Tech win over TAMU. I would have thought that Tech's 21-7 loss to CSU would have had more of an effect on their ranking.
More importantly, we should be focused on the moves by UCSD and Utah to the edge of contention. A few more polls and we could see some new blood in MN.

by **CATLAX MAN** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 7:11 pm

Based upon the current poll, the cutoff for Blaine would be #14. Anything below that misses the cut. Obviously a lot will happen between now and then, but you can see that just being in the Top 16 won't be enough to make it to the Tourney again this year.

I can understand A&M being ranked higher. It's not on reputation. That's a cop out.

Maybe you can explain it to me then how you understand on what basis A&M should be ranked higher than Tech. I certainly don't get it. If you are going to make a statement, perhaps it would be nice to explain your logic, otherwise it looks like you expect people to think, "OK, The Lax thinks so, so it must be right.".

by **CATLAX MAN** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 7:20 pm

Timbalaned wrote:was looking around, but couldn't find it, maybe I didn't look hard enough, but how do the "points" for the votes get broken down.

I think it works that a 1st place vote is worth 25 points, 2nd place is worth 24 points, etc. down to 1 point for a 25th place vote.

by **TheLoo** on Wed Feb 23, 2005 8:34 pm

Some one please tell me how Missouri can start 0-5 and still have 20 votes, putting them ahead of Illinois and Lindenwood. Illinois has lost to. Only Lindenwood is undefeated in the GRLC with two big blowouts and they have been disrespected with third place in the GRLC in voting.