We beat FL in SEC play. We win the SEC title ahead of FL. We make it to the National Championship game ahead of FL. And we fall in the NC game by one match, 4-3.

And yet we finish 3rd?

Congrats to our ladies- who are indeed the national champ runner-ups.


Oh, and I would add that in the tourney, we beat the following ranked teams:

(14) 4-0
(6) 4-0
(7) 4-3

While FL only beat one ranked team:

(8) 4-2

[This message has been edited by AnalogyAg (edited 5/29/2013 11:22a).]

Florida was the defending National Champion.
They won the SEC tournament beating us 4-1 in the process. They were seeded higher than us in the NCAA tournament. The NCAA rankings people obviously feel that if we had been on their side of the draw they would have beaten us. The 4-1 win in the SEC Tournament was probably the deciding factor.
Not agreeing with the ranking but I can see the logic behind it.

A&M went 1-1 against Florida: a W in the regular season and a L in the SEC Tournament.

A&M also shared the regular season SEC championship with Florida and UGA (all finished 12-1 and a draw determined the #1-#3 seeds in the SEC tourney), while UF won the SEC tourney.

My guess is that Florida gets some "brand" or "name-recognition" points because they were the 2-time defending national champions.

Final Rankings:
1. Stanford
2. Florida
3. Texas A&M
4. North Carolina
5. Georgia

3 of the top 5 for the SEC... not bad. Great season for the Texas Aggies!

There are no such thing as NCAA tennis rankings, they're done by the ITA. There is a ranking committee that comes up with the poll at the beginning of the season, and they take in to account variables like if a team played with their full lineup, if it was an upset because one team wasn't used to playing indoor/outdoor, if it was a close 4-3 match, etc. But after the first six weeks of the season, a computer takes over and rankings are calculated by a formula that mostly takes in to account your quality wins, and each team has a point value. Thus, there is no "name recognition" bias, and nothing from last year carries over. Also, the computer sees your results recorded as either a win or a loss, so a last-match-standing-third-set-tiebreak 4-3 win is worth the same as a 7-0 blowout. And vice versa, a 3-4 loss is no different than getting shut out.

Everyone will recognize the Aggies as the National Championship runners up, the final ITA rankings are basically just for year-end press releases and to brag about in recruiting.

[This message has been edited by road not taken (edited 5/29/2013 3:33p).]

Ahh. Knew ITA did it, but didn't realize it was entirely computer based during the season. Thanks for the info.

Farmers, Road pretty much hit the nail on the head, but in addition, it is actually a mathematical calculation. My only guess as to why Fl ends up ahead of us is 1. we were 1-1 with them during the season, And 2. Ga, the only team to beat us was beaten by Fl twice, once in the season and the championship game of the SEC tourney. Because of the way Ga ended up with such a high score is the reason Fl out scored us by 4 points in the ranking system.

[This message has been edited by Signem (edited 5/30/2013 5:16p).]