Latest USAU Ranking Approximations: Easterns & Centex Shake Things Up

Get an early look at the bid scenarios.

Ultiworld’s Cody Mills has put together a statistical tool to approximate the USA Ultimate rankings by using publicly available score data and applying the algorithm that USA Ultimate uses to run their numbers. While the results below are unofficial and could include some scores which are liable to be altered or removed from the official rankings, they are a good representation of the what the current rankings would look like.

Throughout the remainder of the college season, we will be running this USAU ranking approximation and, later, applying different algorithms and/or ranking methods to test possible alternatives to the existing algorithm.

For more information about the USA Ultimate algorithm, ranking system, and some of its perceived flaws, see this FAQ from last year.

Men’s Division

The rankings below include only teams with at least five sanctioned games.

RANK TEAM REGION RATING #1 Massachusetts NE 2221.21 #2 Wisconsin NC 2165.83 #3 Minnesota NC 2152.02 #4 Oregon NW 2077.03 #5 Pittsburgh OV 2070.93 #6 Stanford SW 2063.77 #7 Washington NW 2022.93 #8 North Carolina-Wilmington AC 2019.73 #9 Florida SE 2002.89 #10 North Carolina AC 1973.25 #11 British Columbia NW 1967.99 #12 Harvard NE 1950.36 #13 Victoria NW 1947.09 #14 Georgia SE 1910.01 #15 Colorado SC 1909.68 #16 Carleton College NC 1899.45 #17 Texas A&M SC 1853.33 #18 Cal Poly-SLO SW 1810.29 #19 Brigham Young NW 1802.15 #20 Texas Christian SC 1784.91 #21 California-Santa Barbara SW 1782.12 #22 Cincinnati OV 1779.01 #23 Texas SC 1772.88 #24 Florida State SE 1768.93 #25 Virginia Tech AC 1750.18 #26 Auburn SE 1746.68 #27 Michigan GL 1733.89 #28 Arkansas SC 1723.62 #29 Ohio State OV 1719.81 #30 Central Florida SE 1714.74 #31 Oregon State NW 1714.21 #32 Purdue GL 1708.89 #33 LSU SE 1708.70 #34 Tulane SE 1707.75 #35 Connecticut ME 1688.12 #36 California-San Diego SW 1669.25 #37 Colorado State SC 1667.96 #38 Western Washington NW 1663.60 #39 James Madison AC 1662.64 #40 Georgia Tech SE 1638.27 #41 Case Western Reserve OV 1624.12 #42 Brown NE 1609.14 #43 Virginia Commonwealth AC 1607.86 #44 Missouri SC 1601.07 #45 Maryland AC 1593.49 #46 Whitman NW 1592.50 #47 Utah NW 1592.17 #48 George Washington AC 1589.01 #49 North Carolina State AC 1574.20 #50 Arizona SW 1571.89

Implied Bid Allocation

Atlantic Coast: 2 bids

Great Lakes: 1 bid

Metro East: 1 bid

New England: 2 bids

North Central: 3 bids

Northwest: 4 bids

Ohio Valley: 1 bid

South Central: 2 bids (-2)

Southeast: 2 bids (+1)

Southwest: 2 bids (+1)

Discussion

The big moves this week: TCU and Missouri both fell from the top 18, significantly darkening the South Central’s hopes for a bid bonanza. Georgia’s strong play at Easterns vaulted them into the promised land, adding strong hope for a multibid Southeast, and Cal Poly SLO is boosted just above the cutoff thanks to teams above them falling out, adding a second bid for the Southwest (at least for now).

Much rides on the two coming weekends, with Northwest Challenge, Huck Finn, and Centex likely to generate many more changes. Teams like Victoria, Cal Poly, TCU, and Texas A&M will have a lot on the line heading into the final push of the college regular season.

Note that UMass’ dominance at Easterns has sent them to #1 overall, which will give them a good shot at the overall #1 seed at Nationals.

An interesting side note: BYU is the first team outside the cutoff at #19. They played a very good game against last week’s #1 Wisconsin at Trouble in Vegas this weekend, losing 12-10. BYU will be competing at the Northwest Challenge. As discussed here, there are some very interesting conversations ahead if BYU manages to earn a bid for the Northwest.

Women’s Division

The rankings below include only teams with at least five sanctioned games.

RANK NAME REGION RATING #1 British Columbia NW 2513.50 #2 Whitman NW 2476.72 #3 Stanford SW 2401.94 #4 Central Florida SE 2378.61 #5 Oregon NW 2350.96 #6 Texas SC 2192.39 #7 Washington NW 2156.67 #8 UCLA SW 2152.44 #9 Michigan GL 2136.96 #10 Pittsburgh OV 2115.28 #11 Colorado SC 2093.22 #12 California SW 2050.48 #13 Minnesota NC 1992.71 #14 Ohio State OV 1981.04 #15 California-Davis SW 1974.96 #16 Virginia AC 1958.86 #17 Colorado College SC 1946.85 #18 Western Washington NW 1935.31 #19 Vermont NE 1895.37 #20 California-San Diego SW 1892.28 #21 Wisconsin NC 1890.77 #22 North Carolina AC 1863.80 #23 Northeastern NE 1858.10 #24 Penn State OV 1835.09 #25 Tufts NE 1833.11 #26 North Carolina-Wilmington AC 1826.82 #27 Maryland AC 1819.02 #28 Notre Dame GL 1814.50 #29 West Chester OV 1809.69 #30 Kansas SC 1809.42 #31 Florida State SE 1799.23 #32 Southern California SW 1766.96 #33 Victoria NW 1766.42 #34 Liberty AC 1741.72 #35 Iowa State NC 1728.34 #36 Bowdoin NE 1719.05 #37 Denver SC 1682.76 #38 Delaware AC 1634.34 #39 Georgia Tech SE 1633.59 #40 Dartmouth NE 1613.48 #41 Carleton College NC 1588.34 #42 Florida SE 1570.80 #43 Texas State SC 1569.78 #44 Northwestern GL 1544.66 #45 Boston College NE 1529.10 #46 Truman State SC 1524.63 #47 Harvard NE 1521.41 #48 Case Western Reserve OV 1521.30 #49 James Madison AC 1509.81 #50 Georgetown AC 1505.49

Implied Bid Allocation

Atlantic Coast: 1 bid

Great Lakes: 1 bid

Metro East: 1 bid

New England: 1 bid

North Central: 1 bid

Northwest: 5 bids

Ohio Valley: 2 bids (+1)

South Central: 3 bids

Southeast: 1 bid

Southwest: 4 bids (-1)

Discussion

The biggest move is the only move: Ohio State reclaiming a bid for the Ohio Valley, to the detriment of the bid-rich Southwest. Fever put together a good enough showing at Centex, particularly with a notable win over UCF, who is the 4th best team to beat. Meanwhile, UC San Diego opted to go to College Southerns instead of their usual trip to Centex, and that decision could contribute to Southwest’s bid total. Despite the Psychos cleaning up at College Southerns, the meager competition dropped their total points; USC’s Centex struggles also hurt the Southwest’s chances and second order scoring.

There’s a chance these numbers are pretty close to the final rankings. Western Washington, currently at #18, is the only team near the cutoff that will be playing at Northwest Challenge, and barring key losses to the tournament’s lower ranked teams — Victoria and Carleton — it will likely be hard to WWU to move much. That means we are that much closer to a shocking four bid Southwest and to another year of west coast dominance, with nearly half of the teams at Nationals coming from the states of California, Oregon, and Washington.

Some Notes About This Approximation

We, of course, looked at the results of the initial USA Ultimate rankings and how they compared to our approximations. There were few discrepancies, but there were some. Here is some discussion from Cody Mills on the differences:

1) Two weeks ago was the first test for the projection algorithm in the college season (as opposed to club), where sanctioning is trickier (alumni teams, etc.) and team names are more troublesome.

– For example, many teams are listed on score reporter as Stanford (Bloodthirsty) on their team page, but when listed as an opponent appear as simply Stanford. This seems pretty straightforward until a team with a name like Wheaton (Illinois) (Mastodons) comes along. Consequently, these teams were erroneously counted twice in the earlier projections.

– Alumni teams/unsanctioned teams also give some trouble. While they can be filtered out on one side by using the filters in UI, all games a team has played appear in their opponents list. Thus, at PLU BBQ, while PLU Alumni did not have their team page scraped for scores, their scores still came in by way of all their (legitimate college) opponent’s team pages.

2) The projection algorithm is consistently about 28 points lower in rating for all teams than the official USAU ratings — this occurred in club also. However, despite the translation, the relative distance and order of the teams did not change. It appears this is being caused because USAU is using 1-0 scores when they are running their algorithm (mostly from Big D in Little D). There used to be a regulation that required a game reach seven points (or half) for it to count, but it’s apparently gone now. That said, I’m pretty sure these 1-0 games will eventually be thrown out.

3) Some game results were unpublished or changed, which caused some small downstream effects, especially on the women’s rankings from two weeks ago.