The top 4 stays the same this week with Oklahoma, Baylor, Illinois, and Virginia at 1, 2, 3, and 4 though the separation between the 4 changed a good bit. Oklahoma’s lead over #2 Baylor dropped slightly from 8.5 points to 7 points though it’ll likely change more this week when these 2 Big 12 heavyweights meet on Friday in Waco. Last week #2 Baylor and #3 Illinois were separated by just .17 points but the gap opened up significantly this week to 6.57 – I alluded to the change in the Illinois section of my Top 10 breakdown last week. The gap between #3 Illinois and #4 Virginia shrunk from 9.46 to 4.88 due to Virginia picking up a big win over Virginia Tech and Illinois’ 8th best win being outside the top 30.
This week’s rankings use each team’s top 8 best wins and then next week it’ll go up to 9 and stay there until the end of the regular season.
- USC is up 2 spots from 7 to 5 mainly due to Duke and Georgia losing.
- Texas A&M is up 1 spot from 8 to 7 due to its win over Florida and Georgia losing.
- North Carolina comes up 3 spots from 19 to 16 after knocking off Notre Dame.
- Columbia is up 6 spots from 28 to 22 after picking up road wins at Dartmouth and Harvard.
- Cal comes up 7 spots from 33 to 26 after winning on the road at Washington and Oregon.
- Oklahoma State comes up 5 spots from 30 to 25 despite not playing last week. The Cowboys actually have 10 ranked wins though several are on the lower end of the scale. Enough of those ranked wins came up in the rankings last week to cause the bump this week for OSU.
- Tulane rises 15 spots from 54 to 39 after the Green Wave went into Tulsa on Saturday and came out with a 4-3 win.
- Georgia drops 2 spots from 6 to 8 after losing to Mississippi State.
- Louisville drops 6 spots from 23 to 29 after losing to Virginia Tech and also due to several of its best wins dropping a few spots in the rankings last week. The Cardinals also have just 6 Top 75 wins so 2 of the counted wins are ranked below 75.
- A few teams dropped 2 to 3 spots due to a loss or due to other teams coming up a spot or two – too many to list each one.
- Originally when I did the top 10 yesterday I had Texas A&M 6 and Duke 7 but I realized I forgot to update the points on Duke’s losses and after doing so they jumped back up to 6.
4/7 ITA Rankings Projections (ones in bold moves at least 5 spots)
| Rank | School | Points | Previous |
| 1 | Oklahoma | 85.59 | 1 |
| 2 | Baylor | 78.57 | 2 |
| 3 | Illinois | 72.00 | 3 |
| 4 | Virginia | 67.12 | 4 |
| 5 | USC | 66.72 | 7 |
| 6 | Duke | 65.72 | 5 |
| 7 | Texas A&M | 65.16 | 8 |
| 8 | Georgia | 59.72 | 6 |
| 9 | Texas | 59.34 | 9 |
| 10 | TCU | 59.07 | 10 |
| 11 | Ohio State | 50.90 | 11 |
| 12 | Virginia Tech | 45.31 | 13 |
| 13 | Wake Forest | 44.75 | 12 |
| 14 | Ole Miss | 43.99 | 14 |
| 15 | UCLA | 40.63 | 15 |
| 16 | North Carolina* | 39.16 | 19 |
| 17 | Florida | 39.03 | 16 |
| 18 | San Diego | 38.14 | 17 |
| 19 | South Florida | 37.49 | 22 |
| 20 | Mississippi State | 37.16 | 26 |
| 21 | Vanderbilt | 34.72 | 18 |
| 22 | Columbia* | 33.97 | 28 |
| 23 | Texas Tech | 32.94 | 21 |
| 24 | LSU | 32.71 | 25 |
| 25 | Oklahoma State | 30.63 | 30 |
| 26 | California | 29.81 | 33 |
| 27 | Northwestern* | 29.78 | 24 |
| 28 | Tulsa* | 29.34 | 20 |
| 29 | Louisville* | 28.90 | 23 |
| 30 | Princeton | 28.44 | 27 |
| 31 | Drake | 28.02 | 31 |
| 32 | Minnesota | 26.99 | 29 |
| 33 | Florida State | 25.22 | 32 |
| 34 | NC State* | 23.96 | 34 |
| 35 | Harvard* | 21.57 | 36 |
| 36 | Stanford* | 20.96 | 38 |
| 37 | San Diego State* | 20.17 | 37 |
| 38 | Notre Dame* | 19.03 | 35 |
| 39 | Tulane* | 18.78 | 54 |
| 40 | Pepperdine* | 17.02 | 41 |
Probably around 45 or 46 this week.
Tulane moving up this week will help Memphis next week. Memphis isn't too far out of the top 40 – probably around
surprised Memphis is still sitting outside of the Top 40, will have a shot this week though with matches against USF and UCF. Wins over Tulane and SMU have to help, but the Pepperdine and Michigan loss hurts them