:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/photo_images/2896085/GYI0064952493.jpg)
The new polls are out -- media // coaches -- and Virginia is still your number one in both tallies. The Cavaliers would be a unanimous top-pick save for two guys in the media poll that voted Johns Hopkins ahead of Virginia. Troll hard, friends. Troll hard.
(Although, those voters are going to either dine on the the souls of the unconverted or take their comeuppance on Saturday afternoon as the Cavaliers will host the Blue Jays at Klockner Stadium. These are the days of our lives.)
It's also an exciting new day for "Acrosse the College Lacrosse Polls": It's the first time this year that I'm including computer/math rankings! Like the human rankings, they mean absolutely nothing! This is truly a great day to be alive.
Here's the poll aggregation for this week featuring teams located in any set of rankings' top ten. Some brief thoughts follow after the jump.
| TEAM | LAXPOWER | RPI | EFFICIENCY | AVG. | COACHES | MEDIA | AVG. | DIFF. | AVG. |
| Massachusetts | 3 | N/A | 1 | 2.00 | 3 | 4 | 3.50 | -1.50 | 2.20 |
| Virginia | 4 | N/A | 5 | 4.50 | 1 | 1 | 1.00 | 3.50 | 2.20 |
| Johns Hopkins | 5 | N/A | 6 | 5.50 | 2 | 2 | 2.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 |
| Maryland | 2 | N/A | 3 | 2.50 | 6 | 7 | 6.50 | -4.00 | 3.60 |
| Loyola | 1 | N/A | 8 | 4.50 | 5 | 5 | 5.50 | -0.50 | 3.80 |
| Cornell | 10 | N/A | 2 | 6.00 | 4 | 3 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.80 |
| Denver | 7 | N/A | 7 | 7.00 | 8 | 9 | 8.50 | -1.50 | 6.20 |
| Princeton | 6 | N/A | 4 | 5.00 | 13 | 12 | 12.50 | -7.50 | 7.00 |
| Notre Dame | 11 | N/A | 12 | 11.50 | 7 | 6 | 6.50 | 5.00 | 7.20 |
| Duke | 9 | N/A | 9 | 9.00 | 10 | 11 | 10.50 | -1.50 | 7.80 |
| Colgate | 8 | N/A | 10 | 9.00 | 12 | 13 | 12.50 | -3.50 | 8.60 |
| Lehigh | 18 | N/A | 13 | 15.50 | 11 | 10 | 10.50 | 5.00 | 10.40 |
| Syracuse | 24 | N/A | 19 | 21.50 | 9 | 8 | 8.50 | 13.00 | 12.00 |
LAXPOWER: These are the LaxPower ratings. These ratings are based on solid math, similar to Jeff Sagarin's rankings. Importantly, they consider margin of victory and where a game was played.
RPI: This is stupid person math. I include these rankings only because the NCAA is full of stupid people and they still use this stupid person math as a major piece of their stupid tournament selection criteria. I don't include these rankings this week because they have crazy eyes.
EFFICIENCY: This is just a ranking of a team's efficiency margin, as adjusted for strength of schedule. These are similar to Ken Pomeroy's rankings, but slightly different. (Pomeroy uses win expectation as the basis of his ratings. We each, however, use the same foundation (efficiency).)
AVG.: Average of the "math" rankings.
COACHES/MEDIA: These are the human polls, as voted on by humans. These humans have different jobs, though: One set judges humans while clad in university-issued apparel; the other set of humans judges others simply to sell ink and paper. These polls are from March 19, 2012.
AVG.: This is the average the Earth-human polls.
DIFF.: The difference between the "math" polls and the human polls. A negative value means that "math" is rating a team higher than the things that are carbon-based; the inverse means that the things made out of 75% water are rating a team higher than the things not made out of any water.
AVG.: Average of the math and human polls. This is how the table is ordered.
More after the jump.
- The math-ish rankings like Princeton a lot more than the human ones and it's primarily for one reason: The Tigers started in the middle of both the media and coaches poll, lost to Johns Hopkins, and teams ahead of them haven't really lost to allow them to move up. The math-ish rankings don't really care much about that stuff as they just try and measure performance coldly with a snifter of brandy. The Tigers are probably undervalued in the human polls right now and, concededly, a little overvalued in the math-ish polls. This is definitely a team to watch, though.
- After Johns Hopkins' domination of Syracuse this past weekend and the struggles the Orange exhibited against St. John's the week prior, it's probably a wise decision to start pumping the brakes on Syracuse. Yet, the human polls still kept the Orange in the top-ten in each measure. There are red flags all over the place that the math-ish rankings are seeing and, should Syracuse continue its erratic play, will be reflected in the human polls after a Villanova-Duke-Princeton-Cornell gauntlet.
- I feel like I write this every week: Maryland is decidedly underranked in the human polls. I don't get it; it's like every voter saw the Terrapins lose to UMBC, took some nasty head wounds, and decided that Maryland was no longer one of the top four teams in the country. Teams lose; it happens. But, the Terrapins got a bad beat from the voters on this one and are going to have to bide their time to move back to their rightful position (assuming they keep up their play and don't have a performance brain fart again like against UMBC).
- I think that the efficiency rankings are undervaluing Loyola at this point. The Greyhounds are likely one of the top five teams in the country. Loyola is getting a little smacked in those rankings because of its strength of schedule: 33rd nationally. So, don't read too much into that one; the Greyhounds are playing as solid as anyone at this point.
Anything else, chuckleheads? The comments are yours.