TEAM RANKINGS Here are the United Soccer Coaches', Chris Henderson's, and my pre-season rankings of teams. The USC did the top 50. Chris Henderson selected 25 teams, not ranking them individually but distributing them among 5 tiers. I've done all of the teams, but have included only the top 50 (plus the rankings for teams that the USC ranked in their top 50 but that are outside my top 50). I don't know how the USC comes up with their rankings, but it's a view from a coaching perspective. Chris Henderson's system looks at things like the quality and past contributions of players no longer with a team due to graduation, transfer or injury; the quality of players added to a team; the quality of the coach; and so on. I've numbered his tiers from 1 through 5, with 1 being the strongest tier. My system is a little different. It assigns a rating to each team based on past rating trends, determines simulated game results for the entire season assuming teams perform in accord with their assigned ratings, and then produces RPI rankings for the teams by applying the RPI formula to the full season's simulated game results. In the table below, I show both the ranks my system assigned to the teams (based on their trended ratings) and the ranks of the teams after applying the RPI formula to the season's simulated game results. These two rankings sometimes can be quite different due to the how the RPI formula works. None of the systems is perfect, but they all have something to bring to the table. I think of small differences in where the systems rank teams as being insignificant, the only question being whether the different systems' rankings are in the same ball park. Usually they are, but occasionally they aren't. Take all the rankings with a big grain of salt. The teams are in the order of their rankings by the coaches:
I always wonder if the coaches on the rankings committee favor teams that are on their schedules. Particularly games in the immediate future. It's easy to get away with early in the season when things are still sorting themselves out.
RANKINGS WITHIN CONFERENCES Here are how each conference's coaches pre-season rankings for their teams, as compared to Chris Henderson's and mine. Mine are based on the actual conference schedules (with some conferences not playing full round robins) and game locations, using the system I described in the preceding post, thus producing simulated end of regular season conference ranks (excluding conference tournaments). Except where noted, my conference tournament champions are the same as the regular season #1s. As with the general team rankings, take these with a big grain of salt: ACC America East: American: Atlantic Sun (Florida Gulf Coast conference tournament champion): Atlantic Ten (St. Louis conference tournament champion): Big East: Continued in next post ....
Also I think you might have already posted this last season, but would be cool to see what teams significantly outperformed or underperformed compared to their simulation predictions last season and by how much. This is great!
Big Sky (Northern Colorado conference tournament champion): Big South: Big Ten (Rutgers conference tournament champion): Big Twelve: Big West (Long Beach State conference tournament champion): Colonial: Conference USA: Horizon: Ivy: Metro Atlantic: More later ....
Mid American: Missouri Valley: Mountain West: Northeast: Ohio Valley (Tennessee Martin conference tournament champion): Pac Twelve: Patriot: SEC: Southern (UNC Greensboro wins conference tournament champion): Southland: