The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- April 12, 1999

Tennis rankings not as easy as

BY VANESSA L. ABELL
STAFF WRITER

In today's complex world of college sports, polls more and more determine the fate of various teams and often can make or break a champion.

>Computer rankings have stepped up in importance with college football, and college basketball RPIs go a long way in determining national tournament seedings. Even in nonrevenue sports, regional rankings exist to pump publicity into team sports.

Indeed, rankings seem to crop up for just about everything.

Even tennis.

The Intercollegiate Tennis Association provides rankings not only for all Division I men's and women's teams but for most Division I players.

Sounds daunting? It is.

Within an ITA office located on the Princeton University campus, a single computer is responsible for ranking the teams and student-athletes participating in all Division I men's and women's tennis programs.

The ITA administers the rankings of the top 75 Division I men's and women's tennis teams and the top 100 singles players and top 50 doubles tandems.

The ITA formulates the Division I rankings using a spreadsheet program. The computer program is a performance index based on a team's or player's results through a certain time period of the season. The computer program provides rankings through a rating that compares all entries to one another. Through this system, the rankings are achieved objectively, without bias, and based solely on performance.

Points are awarded to a team or player according to the ranking of each victory. The higher a win is ranked, the more points are awarded. All losses are computed as they are considered countable matches, but losses incurred against higher-ranked teams or players are computed as a percentage of matches played, rather than full matches played.

The spreadsheet is developed from information faxed to the ITA by coaches and sports information directors. Casey Angle, media director of the ITA, inputs the all the data and the points and runs the rankings report. Angle also is responsible for distributing the report across the country to sports information offices and national media outlets.

Angle estimates about 250 submissions each for the men's and women's singles, about 125 each for the men's and women's doubles teams and approximately 125 to 150 team entries for each of the men's and women's team rankings.

"Coaches are pretty good about knowing if their players are in the ballpark when it comes to reporting not only their teams but singles and doubles players," Angle said.

Weekly interval considered

Presently, the ITA administers the Division I rankings twice in the fall and seven times during the regular season on a biweekly basis. The ITA also calculates rankings at the Division II and III levels. These rankings are produced three to four times a season and are achieved through a committee poll/vote.

A push toward a weekly ranking has been discussed, but Angle said one of the reasons that isn't feasible at this point is that he is the only person inputting the data from all the Division I schools.

"For the time being, people wonder why there is a weekly lag period between a report and a release," said Angle.

Tim Cass, men's tennis coach at Texas A&M University, College Station, is one of those people.

"The frustrating thing with the ITA rankings is the results are dated," he said. "Other sports have a system in place for release on Monday and Tuesday (from results through Sunday)."

Cass said that by the time the rankings come out, everyone's position has been altered. For example, he said if a school participates in a tournament with its most recent ranking being 28, an opponent will go into competition expecting that team to play like the 28th-ranked team in the nation. But on the Wednesday following the tournament, the country finds out that school was actually the ninth-ranked team in the country at the time of the tournament, but that information was not available until after the matches had been completed.

Cari Groce, women's tennis coach at Washington State, also has concerns about the computer formula.

"The first ranking is on a poll of national coaches," she said.

After that, the computer takes over, but because the starting point is based on coaches' opinions, it may take several weeks to accurately reflect the strength of the teams and individuals.

"It takes a while to catch up," Groce said of teams that might not have been ranked highly at the start. She said the hardest part for her is that when the team does well against higher-ranked opponents, the players expect to move up in the rankings. But that doesn't always happen.

"It's good to have the ITA rankings, and I like that the computer is doing most of it, but I would like to know how the computer calculates them," she said.

Other options

Cass believes that a coaches poll might generate additional interest in the sport and could possibly be more timely like those polls published for football, basketball and baseball. Coaches are able to consider injuries when voting for teams, whereas the existing computer rankings will not reflect such intangible data. The computer rankings are "very accurate at the end of the season," Cass said, but he believes that they are not an accurate reflection during the regular season.

Angle admits that there is a widespread misunderstanding of the existing rankings. With so many collegiate sports having polls selected by writers or coaches, even those in the tennis community tend to forget that the ITA rankings are based strictly on a computer formula.

In a voted poll, it follows that if one individual is ranked ahead of another and the higher-ranked individual loses to the lower-rated player, the lower-ranked player will move up in a poll while the higher-rated player's position will drop.

That doesn't always happen with the ITA rankings.

"For better or worse, sometimes logic doesn't factor into the rankings," said Angle. "Last year, undefeated Stanford was ranked No. 1 in the rankings for most of the season. LSU was ranked No. 2 and had lost only to Stanford. But in the last two weeks of the season, LSU surpassed Stanford in the rankings, based on their schedule strength."

Selection tool

The NCAA tennis committees do not use the ITA rankings as a specific selection tool when it comes time to select each division's men's and women's team and individual championships brackets.

Of the six selection subcommittees, only the three men's and Division II women's subcommittees use the ITA rankings as a guide in the selection and seeding process.

"The rankings are a definite starting point for the committee," said Larry Easley, tennis director at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and chair of the Division I men's subcommittee.

Easley said the rankings are looked at closely by the subcommittee especially when it comes down to the bubble teams and individuals. The subcommittee's discussions on selection and seeding are still more essential than a single computer report. "Impact wins are important (in the selection and seeding process)," he said. "The computer might not have that information."

"NCAA results and selection determines what is done with the rankings," said Jon Carlson, women's tennis coach at Gustavus Adolphus College and chair of the Division III women's subcommittee.

Carlson said because the Division III rankings are produced only three or four times in the year, the subcommittee doesn't have a midseason poll or an end-of-season poll from the ITA to work with before selections.

"The subcommittee gets the end-of-season results and determines the selections. The ITA rankings mirror what happens with the NCAA. The same people (serve) on both groups for the ITA and the NCAA," said Carlson.

John Hansen, men's tennis coach at Valdosta State University and chair of the Division II Men's and Women's Tennis committee, said the committee frequently uses the rankings. He said one of the goals is to keep the members of the Division II committee the same as those who vote on the ITA Division II poll. But Hansen admits that there are differences between the selection and seeding process.

"People wonder how they could be ranked and not seeded accordingly," said Hansen. "A lot of people don't even realize that there are two committees.

"The ITA has made a great effort in working with the NCAA. They have a good working relationship. The two groups try to work together as much as we can. There is very little difference in the two as far as the selections go."

David Benjamin, executive director of the ITA, said the rankings are very accurate in providing a reference point for the committees.

"We work closely with the NCAA committees," he said. "A number of coaches on the tennis committees are active members of the ITA. If the committees feel there is something off with the ITA rankings, the committee will let the ITA know, and refinements are made."