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It's time to rank things, pals and gal pals! We're not talking about power rankings, either. (Which, if you're curious, looks like this: (1) Electric; (2) Nuclear; (3) Steam; (4) Coal; (5) Hoverboard over land; and (6) Hoverboard over water.) Nope, it's human polls from the media and coaches. The college lacrosse season is just about to become a real thing, you guys.
Inside Lacrosse and the USILA released their media and coaches polls today, respectively. Loyola led the way in each set of rankings with Maryland tucking in neatly behind. This isn't much of a surprise, but some mild dissention in each tally is somewhat interesting: Four teams shared at least one first-place vote in the media poll (Loyola (21), Maryland (2), Notre Dame (2), and Johns Hopkins (1)) and three teams were picked on at least one ballot as the nation's best squad in the coaches poll (Loyola (10), Maryland (1), and Johns Hopkins (1)).
Here's an aggregation of the two polls, ordered by placement average. If you want to see where I ranked teams in my media poll ballot, click this fancy highlighted text.
| TEAM | COACHES | MEDIA | AVG. |
| Loyola | 1 | 1 | 1.0 |
| Maryland | 2 | 2 | 2.0 |
| Notre Dame | 3 | 3 | 3.0 |
| Johns Hopkins | 4 | 5 | 4.5 |
| Duke | 6 | 4 | 5.0 |
| North Carolina | 4 | 7 | 5.5 |
| Cornell | 8 | 6 | 7.0 |
| Virginia | 7 | 9 | 8.0 |
| Denver | 9 | 8 | 8.5 |
| Lehigh | 11 | 10 | 10.5 |
| Colgate | 10 | 11 | 10.5 |
| Syracuse | 13 | 12 | 12.5 |
| Massachusetts | 12 | 13 | 12.5 |
| Princeton | 14 | 14 | 14.0 |
| Penn State | 15 | 15 | 15.0 |
| Fairfield | 16 | 16 | 16.0 |
| Bucknell | 18 | 18 | 18.0 |
| Yale | 17 | 19 | 18.0 |
| Hofstra | 20 | 17 | 18.5 |
| Ohio State | 19 | 20 | 19.5 |
Some brief notes:
- This piece was delayed due to the USILA poll not including North Carolina on its original release. The Tar Heels went from unranked to tied for fourth, which is magical.
- The teams with the biggest deviations between their media poll ranking and coaches poll ranking were North Carolina (three spots higher in the coaches poll than the media tally) and Hofstra (three spots lower in the coaches poll than the media tally). Six teams -- Loyola, Maryland, Notre Dame, Princeton, Penn State, Fairfield, and Bucknell -- held the same positions in both run while seven teams -- Johns Hopkins, Denver, Lehigh, Colgate, Syracuse, Massachusetts, and Ohio State -- move only a spot up or down.
- Each poll ranked the same 20 teams, which is odd given the level of unknowns inherent in the back-end of the field. I was anticipating maybe a team or two appearing as a ranked-unranked but, alas, homogeneity wins another battle for itself. Big Homogeneity gets what Big Homogeneity wants.
- Conference breakdown: ACC (four); ECAC (four); Ivy (three); Patriot (three); THUNDERDOME! (three); Big East (two); and Hopkinspendent (one).
What do you knuckleheads think? Good, bad, otherwise?