Latest USAU Ranking Approximations: Easterns & Centex Shake Things Up

Get an early look at the bid scenarios.

March 22, 2016 by Charlie Eisenhood and Cody Mills in Analysis with 37 comments

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.