Tennis Atlantic’s Inaugural College Tennis Conference Power Rankings
Jeff McMillan, Tennis Atlantic

One of the most contested debates in collegiate sports these days is always which conference is the strongest. I have created a formula that determines the college tennis conference power rankings. The formula works to determine the quality per team in each conference and ranks the conferences based on an average score.

The formula works as follows:

The lower the score the better. It assigns teams points based on ITA ranking.

Teams ranked 17-75 are assigned the same amount of points as their ranking.

Unranked teams are given a flat score of 90 (meaning that the conferences without any ranked teams are given the lowest possible score of 90)

Teams 1-16 are given the following point assignments:

1. -25
2. -21
3. -18
4. -15
5. -12
6. -10
7. -8
8. -6
9. -4
10. -2
11. 0
12. 2
13. 4
14. 6
15. 8
16. 10

The top 16 teams in the nation are the host teams come tournament time so naturally the point gap from 16 to 17 is larger. Teams in the top 10 have negative point values in order to reward conferences with multiple top 10 teams. The gaps are wider at the top to indicate the gap in strength. The #1 team and the #11 team have a 25-point gap, which indicates the same gap in strength from the team ranked 25 and the team ranked 50.

All team scores are added together in the conference and then divided by the amount of teams in the conference.

Example:
Big 12
Oklahoma #1, -25
Baylor #5, -12
Texas #7, -8
TCU #13, 4
Texas Tech #30, 30
Oklahoma State #37, 37

Added together the Big 12 total is 26/6 which = 4.33 and (as will be shown) blows away any other conference in the inaugural Tennis Atlantic Conference Power Rankings.

Tennis Atlantic Conference Power Rankings:

1. Big 12: 4.33
– The Big 12 comes in at #1 due to the fact that they have no teams ranked lower than 37 and have 3 teams in the top 7 and 4 in the top 13. The quality per team in the Big 12 is by far and away the strongest in the nation.

2. SEC: 33.08
– The SEC comes in 2nd due to having 3 teams in the top 10. Where they lose points is having two unranked teams.

3. ACC: 38.62
– The ACC falls behind the SEC based on having 3 unranked teams instead of 2 and only having 1 team in the top 10.

4. Ivy League: 38.88
– The Ivy League is barely behind the ACC and comes in at #4. The Ivy League has such a strong score because they only have 1 unranked team out of 8 and of the ranked teams none are ranked lower than 49. The lack of a top 10 team prevents them from being ranked higher.

5. Pac 12: 43.75
– The Pac 12 comes in at a surprisingly low 5th. Utah dropping out of the top 75 hurts as does USC dropping to #6. Stanford, Washington and Oregon having relatively low rankings does not help either.

6. Big Ten: 45.33
– The Big Ten has 3 unranked teams and 3 other teams outside the top 50, which kills their overall score and drops them to the 6th spot in the conference rankings.

7. American Athletic: 64.44
– There is a substantial gap in score from #6 to #7 where the AAC comes in. 4 of the 8 teams in the conference are unranked. USF at 17 is their high.

8. Mountain West: 75.13
– Another big gap follows #7 to #8. The Mountain West like the AAC has half of their teams ranked (4 out of 8). They have a lower score than the AAC due to their highest ranked team New Mexico only being at #45.

9. West Coast: 75.55
– Starting at #9 are teams that have the majority of their teams unranked and only a few ranked ones. The West Coast is the highest ranked of such conferences thanks to 3 ranked teams, including #32 San Diego #43 Pepperdine and #50 San Francisco.

10. Missouri Valley: 77.14
– The MVC is at #10 thanks to Drake being in the top 25 and also Wichita State coming in the rankings at #66.

11. Big West: 78.83
– The Big West has half of their teams ranked, but none higher than #61.

12. Sun Belt: 78.86
– The Sun Belt is just barely behind the Big West after Troy zoomed into the rankings this week joining South Alabama and UL-Lafayette. They are hurt by having more unranked teams than the Big West.

13. Summit League: 83.14
– Starting at #13 are leagues with only 1 ranked team. Denver’s lofty ranking at 42 helps the Summit League.

14. Atlantic Sun: 84.43
– North Florida at #51 gets the A-Sun to #14.

15. Conference USA: 85.38
– The CUSA has two ranked teams (ODU at 68 and Rice at 75). However, the low rankings of these teams is not enough to overcome the single higher ranking of North Florida or Denver and therefore it puts the CUSA behind those two leagues.

16.Mid-American: 87.33
– Western Michigan sneaking into the rankings gives the MAC a barely register-able above 90 score.

17. Colonial: 87.38
– UNC-Wilmington keeps the Colonial above the 90 score.

The other 14 conferences in D1 have the lowest possible score of 90, meaning none have ranked teams. Those conferences are:

Atlantic 10
Big East
Big Sky
Big South
Horizon
Metro-Atlantic
MEAC
Northeast
Ohio Valley
Patriot
Southern
Southland
SWAC
WAC