FanLax Forum Poll

[Farfromgeneva]

1. Some teams have plenty of data. Others do not. The teams with an asterisks next to their name are the others-do-not teams. One asterisks means they need another W. Two asterisks means they need two more Ws. Three asterisks means they need three more Ws. When these teams get more Ws, they'll move up the rankings. In other words, Penn will move up, Yale will move up, Notre Dame will for sure move up, etc.
2. The Columns are Rankings, Teams, GP=Games Played, W%=Winning Percentage, SOS=Strength of Schedule, W=Win Ranking (based on 3 Best Wins), L=Loss Ranking (based on 3 Worst Losses).
3. Maryland is ranked #1 in Wins and Losses thus is the obvious #1 ranked team.
4. Good wins are more important than losses. But bad losses are not good.
5. Lastly, each team is judged based on their Ws and Ls in 2022 and the quality of those Ws and Ls in 2022, each team's 2022 resume. Period.

Can you bracket the w and l rankings possibly to see visibly? thanks in advance mr roboto

[FanLax Computer]

Can you bracket the w and l rankings possibly to see visibly? thanks in advance mr roboto

I'm not sure what that means...

[Matnum PI]

I don't get the JHU blind spot (for so many). JHU beat your consensus #17 J'ville (and others) and their only losses are to your #2 UVA, #6 G'town, and #9 UNC and... They're a consensus #21? I don't get it...

[rolldodge]

I don't get the JHU blind spot (for so many). JHU beat your consensus #17 J'ville (and others) and their only losses are to your #2 UVA, #6 G'town, and #9 UNC and... They're a consensus #21? I don't get it...

Hopkins started out higher in my poll, and have been moving down week to week appropriately. The Jacksonville win gets less weight as the season progresses and with their loss to Utah. They lost to Gtown by 8, UNC by 5, and Virginia by 11. Their other wins are over Loyola and Towson, who are underperforming compared to expectations and outside the top 20.

[Matnum PI]

Hopkins started out higher in my poll, and have been moving down week to week appropriately. The Jacksonville win gets less weight as the season progresses and with their loss to Utah. They lost to Gtown by 8, UNC by 5, and Virginia by 11. Their other wins are over Loyola and Towson, who are underperforming compared to expectations and outside the top 20.

I hear it...

[Typical Lax Dad]

I don't get the JHU blind spot (for so many). JHU beat your consensus #17 J'ville (and others) and their only losses are to your #2 UVA, #6 G'town, and #9 UNC and... They're a consensus #21? I don't get it...

Eyeball test.

[Chousnake]

Maryland. 5-0 High Point, Loyola, Syracuse, Princeton, Notre Dame
Cornell. 4-0 UAlbany, Lehigh, Hobart, Ohio State
Rutgers. 6-0 LIU, Marist, St Johns, Army, Loyola, Stony Brook
Virginia. 5-0 Air Force, High Point, Towson, Syracuse, Richmond
Georgetown. 4-1 Hopkins, Penn, Notre Dame. Mt St Marys. /// L to Princeton
Ohio State. 4-1 Detroit Mercy, Cleveland State, North Carolina, Harvard.  /// L to Cornell
UNC. 5-1 Richmond. Colgate, Brown, Hopkins, Denver. /// L to Ohio State 
Princeton 3-1 Monmouth, Binghamton, Gtown. /// L to Maryland
Penn. 2-1 Duke, Penn State. /// L to GTown
Duke. 7-2 Robert Morris, Vermont, Manhattan, Delaware, High Point, Richmond. /// L to Penn, Jacksonville

H377 of a layout.
Pretty obvious which have the better resumes.

I'd move Princeton ahead of Georgetown and everyone else down a notch. Things may very well shake out differently as the season progresses, but simply on what has been played, I don't see any reason to rank Georgetown ahead of the team they just lost to. And until someone else beats Princeton other than the #1, well...

Otherwise, that list makes sense...at this point.
That said, I think UVA is likely to end up higher than Cornell.

Time will tell.

I can see that viewpoint. I'm sure my own bias plays into it, BUT ... even though Princeton beat Gtown, my ranking is based on overall resume. Gtowns wins are stronger overall at this point. Head to head only comes into account as a tie-breaker.

mmmm, I see the general argument, but when we're talking about ranking the very top group, seems to me that beating the #5 is way more telling than beating the #9 and others outside of the top 10. And being beaten by the #1 counts less against than being beaten by the #8.

Again, all this shakes out with many more games and who knows where it all lands. I'm just looking at where we are now and PU beat Georgetown.

Almost any team in Div 1 can beat any other team on any given Saturday. Winning one game does not (necessarily) make a team "better" when looking at the overall picture. Princetons other wins are Monmouth and Binghamton. I might use losses to help with tiebreakers, but they generally count for very little, other than the number of. They will have the chance to prove they are better than Gtown generally, but they don't have the wins yet.

Just my opinion, based on so little data. Indeed, I think that heightens the importance of direct match-up. Georgetown, IMO, can "prove" they are better than Princeton, but not based on this weekend.

Absolutely. In the end, it's still subjective. Just further explaining my own subjective rationale.

I'm not sure what the point of this discussion is, but I fear this type of analysis is what skews the NCAA tourney selection process year after year. Lacrosse is a sport where games are actually played and we have winners and losers (sorry for the Captain Obvious statement). The national championship is determined on the field by games with actual scores and the losers go home. It is not decided by formulas and subjectivity. Unless Princeton was outplayed by Georgetown and won based on some lucky play, Princeton can lay claim to being the better team by having beaten Georgetown on a lacrosse field. It doesn't matter that much who each team played previously. I know there are situations where a clearly inferior team rises to the occasion on a given day and upsets a better team. But for too many years, the lacrosse powers that be have rewarded good losses over wins and given bids to team A because it plays a tough schedule and loses to good teams over team B that played a weaker schedule, but won more games and beat team A head to head.

[Farfromgeneva]

Can you bracket the w and l rankings possibly to see visibly? thanks in advance mr roboto

I'm not sure what that means...

if zero losses tied for #1, so I assume all two loss teams are indexed by who they lost to for the loss rank.

[Farfromgeneva]

Maryland. 5-0 High Point, Loyola, Syracuse, Princeton, Notre Dame
Cornell. 4-0 UAlbany, Lehigh, Hobart, Ohio State
Rutgers. 6-0 LIU, Marist, St Johns, Army, Loyola, Stony Brook
Virginia. 5-0 Air Force, High Point, Towson, Syracuse, Richmond
Georgetown. 4-1 Hopkins, Penn, Notre Dame. Mt St Marys. /// L to Princeton
Ohio State. 4-1 Detroit Mercy, Cleveland State, North Carolina, Harvard.  /// L to Cornell
UNC. 5-1 Richmond. Colgate, Brown, Hopkins, Denver. /// L to Ohio State 
Princeton 3-1 Monmouth, Binghamton, Gtown. /// L to Maryland
Penn. 2-1 Duke, Penn State. /// L to GTown
Duke. 7-2 Robert Morris, Vermont, Manhattan, Delaware, High Point, Richmond. /// L to Penn, Jacksonville

H377 of a layout.
Pretty obvious which have the better resumes.

I'd move Princeton ahead of Georgetown and everyone else down a notch. Things may very well shake out differently as the season progresses, but simply on what has been played, I don't see any reason to rank Georgetown ahead of the team they just lost to. And until someone else beats Princeton other than the #1, well...

Otherwise, that list makes sense...at this point.
That said, I think UVA is likely to end up higher than Cornell.

Time will tell.

I can see that viewpoint. I'm sure my own bias plays into it, BUT ... even though Princeton beat Gtown, my ranking is based on overall resume. Gtowns wins are stronger overall at this point. Head to head only comes into account as a tie-breaker.

mmmm, I see the general argument, but when we're talking about ranking the very top group, seems to me that beating the #5 is way more telling than beating the #9 and others outside of the top 10. And being beaten by the #1 counts less against than being beaten by the #8.

Again, all this shakes out with many more games and who knows where it all lands. I'm just looking at where we are now and PU beat Georgetown.

Almost any team in Div 1 can beat any other team on any given Saturday. Winning one game does not (necessarily) make a team "better" when looking at the overall picture. Princetons other wins are Monmouth and Binghamton. I might use losses to help with tiebreakers, but they generally count for very little, other than the number of. They will have the chance to prove they are better than Gtown generally, but they don't have the wins yet.

Just my opinion, based on so little data. Indeed, I think that heightens the importance of direct match-up. Georgetown, IMO, can "prove" they are better than Princeton, but not based on this weekend.

Absolutely. In the end, it's still subjective. Just further explaining my own subjective rationale.

I'm not sure what the point of this discussion is, but I fear this type of analysis is what skews the NCAA tourney selection process year after year. Lacrosse is a sport where games are actually played and we have winners and losers (sorry for the Captain Obvious statement). The national championship is determined on the field by games with actual scores and the losers go home. It is not decided by formulas and subjectivity. Unless Princeton was outplayed by Georgetown and won based on some lucky play, Princeton can lay claim to being the better team by having beaten Georgetown on a lacrosse field. It doesn't matter that much who each team played previously. I know there are situations where a clearly inferior team rises to the occasion on a given day and upsets a better team. But for too many years, the lacrosse powers that be have rewarded good losses over wins and given bids to team A because it plays a tough schedule and loses to good teams over team B that played a weaker schedule, but won more games and beat team A head to head.

The blood flow in fattylax is moving south when he reads this post.

[HGK]

It doesn’t matter who they played in previous games? The whole idea is to play a strong schedule, win more than you lose and let your body of work speak for itself. I agree that this week Princeton should be above Georgetown, in large part because it is early in season and both good teams. That i agree with but at the end of the year, that game will be a factor but not the determinant of ranking and seeding.

[Chousnake]

It doesn’t matter who they played in previous games? The whole idea is to play a strong schedule, win more than you lose and let your body of work speak for itself. I agree that this week Princeton should be above Georgetown, in large part because it is early in season and both good teams. That i agree with but at the end of the year, that game will be a factor but not the determinant of ranking and seeding.

This entire discussion is about this week's ranking. I don't think anyone disagrees that, should Georgetown keep winning and Princeton stumbles, Georgetown's body of work is superior and they would be ranked and seeded higher. But Princeton beat them 2 days ago - in Georgetown. Princeton should be ranked higher today.

[HGK]

I had Princeton higher this week so we agree, sort of

[Typical Lax Dad]

It doesn’t matter who they played in previous games? The whole idea is to play a strong schedule, win more than you lose and let your body of work speak for itself. I agree that this week Princeton should be above Georgetown, in large part because it is early in season and both good teams. That i agree with but at the end of the year, that game will be a factor but not the determinant of ranking and seeding.

This entire discussion is about this week's ranking. I don't think anyone disagrees that, should Georgetown keep winning and Princeton stumbles, Georgetown's body of work is superior and they would be ranked and seeded higher. But Princeton beat them 2 days ago - in Georgetown. Princeton should be ranked higher today.

I placed Georgetown one spot higher on the strength of its wins and moved the Tigers up by a decent amount. Princeton beats Rutgers this weekend and they are moving up again. I can’t be a hypocrite. Princeton didn’t make the 2015 tournament due to a head to head loss to Brown despite much better wins. I didn’t think the overall body of work was the same so I didn’t think head to head should have swung the invite. Ask the Rutgers folks that was left out of the NCAA despite beating JHU. So I am sticking with my philosophy of overall body of work as the priority (not “good loses”).

[rolldodge]

Maryland. 5-0 High Point, Loyola, Syracuse, Princeton, Notre Dame
Cornell. 4-0 UAlbany, Lehigh, Hobart, Ohio State
Rutgers. 6-0 LIU, Marist, St Johns, Army, Loyola, Stony Brook
Virginia. 5-0 Air Force, High Point, Towson, Syracuse, Richmond
Georgetown. 4-1 Hopkins, Penn, Notre Dame. Mt St Marys. /// L to Princeton
Ohio State. 4-1 Detroit Mercy, Cleveland State, North Carolina, Harvard.  /// L to Cornell
UNC. 5-1 Richmond. Colgate, Brown, Hopkins, Denver. /// L to Ohio State 
Princeton 3-1 Monmouth, Binghamton, Gtown. /// L to Maryland
Penn. 2-1 Duke, Penn State. /// L to GTown
Duke. 7-2 Robert Morris, Vermont, Manhattan, Delaware, High Point, Richmond. /// L to Penn, Jacksonville

H377 of a layout.
Pretty obvious which have the better resumes.

I'd move Princeton ahead of Georgetown and everyone else down a notch. Things may very well shake out differently as the season progresses, but simply on what has been played, I don't see any reason to rank Georgetown ahead of the team they just lost to. And until someone else beats Princeton other than the #1, well...

Otherwise, that list makes sense...at this point.
That said, I think UVA is likely to end up higher than Cornell.

Time will tell.

I can see that viewpoint. I'm sure my own bias plays into it, BUT ... even though Princeton beat Gtown, my ranking is based on overall resume. Gtowns wins are stronger overall at this point. Head to head only comes into account as a tie-breaker.

mmmm, I see the general argument, but when we're talking about ranking the very top group, seems to me that beating the #5 is way more telling than beating the #9 and others outside of the top 10. And being beaten by the #1 counts less against than being beaten by the #8.

Again, all this shakes out with many more games and who knows where it all lands. I'm just looking at where we are now and PU beat Georgetown.

Almost any team in Div 1 can beat any other team on any given Saturday. Winning one game does not (necessarily) make a team "better" when looking at the overall picture. Princetons other wins are Monmouth and Binghamton. I might use losses to help with tiebreakers, but they generally count for very little, other than the number of. They will have the chance to prove they are better than Gtown generally, but they don't have the wins yet.

Just my opinion, based on so little data. Indeed, I think that heightens the importance of direct match-up. Georgetown, IMO, can "prove" they are better than Princeton, but not based on this weekend.

Absolutely. In the end, it's still subjective. Just further explaining my own subjective rationale.

I'm not sure what the point of this discussion is, but I fear this type of analysis is what skews the NCAA tourney selection process year after year. Lacrosse is a sport where games are actually played and we have winners and losers (sorry for the Captain Obvious statement). The national championship is determined on the field by games with actual scores and the losers go home. It is not decided by formulas and subjectivity. Unless Princeton was outplayed by Georgetown and won based on some lucky play, Princeton can lay claim to being the better team by having beaten Georgetown on a lacrosse field. It doesn't matter that much who each team played previously. I know there are situations where a clearly inferior team rises to the occasion on a given day and upsets a better team. But for too many years, the lacrosse powers that be have rewarded good losses over wins and given bids to team A because it plays a tough schedule and loses to good teams over team B that played a weaker schedule, but won more games and beat team A head to head.

If your point is to say that National Championships are won on the field and polls are mostly meaningless, I agree with you! We do this entirely for fun and to evaluate how things might pan out going forward.

But, if you ARE to put together a poll, it is the relative ranking of teams where not all teams have played all other teams. So while head to head seems like “common sense” if you try to build a poll off of it, the logic falls apart and it turns Into a circular firing squad.

For the record, my approach is the opposite of “rewarding good losses”. In fact losses play a very small role in the evaluation and an entirely negative one.

You can build a case that Princeton should be ranked higher than Georgetown if you value the recency of the win over Georgetown over Georgetown’s wins over Notre Dame and Penn- which is absolutely any ones right to do (You just need to follow through with the “recency” logic across all of your team evaluations) . They both have one loss so that is a wash. Wins over Monmouth and Binghamton are at the very best a wash with wins over Hopkins and Mount St Marys. Losing to Maryland by 5 adds nothing no matter how people want to spin it.

With the strength of the Ivy this year, and the Big East being a bit down, Princeton has more opportunities going forward to climb in the meaningless polls, and if they win, rest assured, they will be rewarded in my meaningless poll! Should be some great games coming up with Penn, Cornell, Yale, and Brown.

[FanLax Computer]

if zero losses tied for #1, so I assume all two loss teams are indexed by who they lost to for the loss rank.

Correct. A team has 0 wins and 1 loss to the #1 ranked team while a second team has 0 wins and 1 loss to the #74 ranked team, the first team will be ranked higher than the second team.

[HGK]

We need a computer to figure that out?

[MDlaxfan76]

Maryland. 5-0 High Point, Loyola, Syracuse, Princeton, Notre Dame
Cornell. 4-0 UAlbany, Lehigh, Hobart, Ohio State
Rutgers. 6-0 LIU, Marist, St Johns, Army, Loyola, Stony Brook
Virginia. 5-0 Air Force, High Point, Towson, Syracuse, Richmond
Georgetown. 4-1 Hopkins, Penn, Notre Dame. Mt St Marys. /// L to Princeton
Ohio State. 4-1 Detroit Mercy, Cleveland State, North Carolina, Harvard.  /// L to Cornell
UNC. 5-1 Richmond. Colgate, Brown, Hopkins, Denver. /// L to Ohio State 
Princeton 3-1 Monmouth, Binghamton, Gtown. /// L to Maryland
Penn. 2-1 Duke, Penn State. /// L to GTown
Duke. 7-2 Robert Morris, Vermont, Manhattan, Delaware, High Point, Richmond. /// L to Penn, Jacksonville

H377 of a layout.
Pretty obvious which have the better resumes.

I'd move Princeton ahead of Georgetown and everyone else down a notch. Things may very well shake out differently as the season progresses, but simply on what has been played, I don't see any reason to rank Georgetown ahead of the team they just lost to. And until someone else beats Princeton other than the #1, well...

Otherwise, that list makes sense...at this point.
That said, I think UVA is likely to end up higher than Cornell.

Time will tell.

I can see that viewpoint. I'm sure my own bias plays into it, BUT ... even though Princeton beat Gtown, my ranking is based on overall resume. Gtowns wins are stronger overall at this point. Head to head only comes into account as a tie-breaker.

mmmm, I see the general argument, but when we're talking about ranking the very top group, seems to me that beating the #5 is way more telling than beating the #9 and others outside of the top 10. And being beaten by the #1 counts less against than being beaten by the #8.

Again, all this shakes out with many more games and who knows where it all lands. I'm just looking at where we are now and PU beat Georgetown.

Almost any team in Div 1 can beat any other team on any given Saturday. Winning one game does not (necessarily) make a team "better" when looking at the overall picture. Princetons other wins are Monmouth and Binghamton. I might use losses to help with tiebreakers, but they generally count for very little, other than the number of. They will have the chance to prove they are better than Gtown generally, but they don't have the wins yet.

Just my opinion, based on so little data. Indeed, I think that heightens the importance of direct match-up. Georgetown, IMO, can "prove" they are better than Princeton, but not based on this weekend.

Absolutely. In the end, it's still subjective. Just further explaining my own subjective rationale.

I'm not sure what the point of this discussion is, but I fear this type of analysis is what skews the NCAA tourney selection process year after year. Lacrosse is a sport where games are actually played and we have winners and losers (sorry for the Captain Obvious statement). The national championship is determined on the field by games with actual scores and the losers go home. It is not decided by formulas and subjectivity. Unless Princeton was outplayed by Georgetown and won based on some lucky play, Princeton can lay claim to being the better team by having beaten Georgetown on a lacrosse field. It doesn't matter that much who each team played previously. I know there are situations where a clearly inferior team rises to the occasion on a given day and upsets a better team. But for too many years, the lacrosse powers that be have rewarded good losses over wins and given bids to team A because it plays a tough schedule and loses to good teams over team B that played a weaker schedule, but won more games and beat team A head to head.

If your point is to say that National Championships are won on the field and polls are mostly meaningless, I agree with you! We do this entirely for fun and to evaluate how things might pan out going forward.

But, if you ARE to put together a poll, it is the relative ranking of teams where not all teams have played all other teams. So while head to head seems like “common sense” if you try to build a poll off of it, the logic falls apart and it turns Into a circular firing squad.

For the record, my approach is the opposite of “rewarding good losses”. In fact losses play a very small role in the evaluation and an entirely negative one.

You can build a case that Princeton should be ranked higher than Georgetown if you value the recency of the win over Georgetown over Georgetown’s wins over Notre Dame and Penn- which is absolutely any ones right to do (You just need to follow through with the “recency” logic across all of your team evaluations) . They both have one loss so that is a wash. Wins over Monmouth and Binghamton are at the very best a wash with wins over Hopkins and Mount St Marys. Losing to Maryland by 5 adds nothing no matter how people want to spin it.

With the strength of the Ivy this year, and the Big East being a bit down, Princeton has more opportunities going forward to climb in the meaningless polls, and if they win, rest assured, they will be rewarded in my meaningless poll! Should be some great games coming up with Penn, Cornell, Yale, and Brown.

Which is why your were correct that this a subjective choice as to how to view "recency" and "head to head" versus "body of work".

My view is that, absent strong countervailing evidence otherwise, I'm gonna assume, for the time being, that the winner head to head is the better team. If that doesn't pan out with more games, so be it.

Your view simply weighs that 'body of work' heavier...and we'll be far closer to agreement as the actual data set of "body of work" is much larger, and deeper into the season of development. This particular game will fade in relative importance to me. On the other hand, I'll be weighing higher what a team is doing in April than anything that happened in February.

To be clear for chousnake, I personally don't weigh a 'good loss' positively. It's a detraction, not a positive. But the relative cost of a bad loss I'd weigh higher, not simply just another L...all the more so if recent versus back in February. If you lose to the #1 it just doesn't mean the same as losing to the #35. Even if you were spanked by the #1.

Not until tournament time do I rank purely on win/lose as it's win or go home at that point.

Now, how the NCAA does all this is an entirely other matter. These are just my subjective choices and rationale.

[wgdsr]

top ten have to be:

1 p'ton
2 boston
3 uva
4 cornell
5 unc
6 g'town
7 umd
8 tosu
9 penn
10 brown

subject to minor shakeup on today's results.

[Typical Lax Dad]

top ten have to be:

1 p'ton
2 boston
3 uva
4 cornell
5 unc
6 g'town
7 umd
8 tosu
9 penn
10 brown

subject to minor shakeup on today's results.

It actually is TOSU !! I cringe when I hear TOS.

[wgdsr]

top ten have to be:

1 p'ton
2 boston
3 uva
4 cornell
5 unc
6 g'town
7 umd
8 tosu
9 penn
10 brown

subject to minor shakeup on today's results.

It actually is TOSU !! I cringe when I hear TOS.

probably why they wanted to steal "the university".