New USTA Poll Released Plus ITA Releases Men’s Team Rankings

Wednesday was a busy day for rankings with the USTA releasing its inaugural top 25 while the ITA released its first singles and doubles rankings in over a month in addition to releasing its men’s top 25 (no women’s team rankings this week due to the NTIs). I’ll start off with the ITA top 25 which kept the same teams at one through four (UVA/Wake/Ohio State/Cal) with North Carolina moving up two spots to No. 5. Florida was the biggest mover of the week rising five spots from No. 11 to No. 6 after defeating USC and UCLA over the weekend. Georgia and Texas A&M took the biggest tumbles with each falling five spots. No teams dropped out which of course meant no new teams entered though there were some that received votes last week that didn’t this week and some that didn’t last receive them last week but did this week. South Florida, Tulsa, Duke, and Arkansas received votes last week but not this week while Cornell and Utah State received some this week after not receiving any last week. Down at the bottom of this post I have results from every team that was ranked or received votes last week so you can see why teams moved up or down. FYI, I’ll have a separate post about the singles and double ranking. 

The USTA released its first top 25 of the year with Virginia and Florida holding the top spots in the men’s and women’s polls. There are eight college tennis “experts” on the voting panel, including yours truly, and each of us ranked 25 teams from numbers 1 to 25, with the first-place team receiving 25 points and the last-place team receiving one. When voting we were to consider strength of schedule, Top 25 wins/losses, road wins/losses and personnel adjustments for each program while also basing our vote on performance, not reputation or preseason speculation. For control, the highest and lowest outlying ranking for each team on the ballot was removed. Therefore, the maximum number of points a team can receive is 150. First-place votes were not tallied. 

For those interested in how I voted you can see my ballot here with the full panel vote beside it. 

Below is a side-by-side comparison of the ITA and USTA polls with a column to the right that shows voter variance. The USTA poll liked Georgia Tech (+5), Texas A&M (+4), Florida & USC (+3) more than the ITA poll while it didn’t like Texas (-4), SMU (-4), and North Carolina (-3) as much as the ITA. The USTA panel had both Vanderbilt and Old Dominion ranked while the ITA panel did not. The ITA panel had TCU and Ole Miss ranked while the USTA panel did not. 

{loadposition ads}