[ColoradoTree]

Thanks, CT, for bringing this discussion to our attention.  I read the thread to see what they said about the men's side.

Most observers favor Wake Forest because they are the overall #1 seed and the host for the tournament. The only other favorite seems to be UCLA. Ohio State gets some love too, but no one mentioned #4 seed Stanford.

Yeah, the conventional wisdom appears to be that on the women's side, any number of several teams (including Stanford, the 15 seed) could plausibly win the national title, but on the men's side, the likely winners are a much, much smaller group (excluding Stanford, the 4 seed). I don't follow the men's game overall closely enough to say how crazy that might be, but it does seem weird given that Stanford's UTR Power 6 (the sum of the 6 singles players' individual ratings) is 83.8, while Wake and UCLA are both at 83.7. The talent is there, though heck, I also think UCLA is better than Stanford on the men's side and that home court will be tough to overcome against Wake. And that's if they get to Wake in the semis--Stanford's men will first have to beat 5th-seeded Texas A&M in the quarterfinals, and A&M has the top UTR in the country.

[ColoradoTree]

Thanks, CT, for bringing this discussion to our attention.  I read the thread to see what they said about the men's side.

Most observers favor Wake Forest because they are the overall #1 seed and the host for the tournament. The only other favorite seems to be UCLA. Ohio State gets some love too, but no one mentioned #4 seed Stanford.

Yeah, the conventional wisdom appears to be that on the women's side, any number of several teams (including Stanford, the 15 seed) could plausibly win the national title, but on the men's side, the likely winners are a much, much smaller group (excluding Stanford, the 4 seed). I don't follow the men's game overall closely enough to say how crazy that might be, but it does seem weird given that Stanford's UTR Power 6 (the sum of the 6 singles players' individual ratings) is 83.8, while Wake and UCLA are both at 83.7. The talent is there, though heck, I also think UCLA is better than Stanford on the men's side and that home court will be tough to overcome against Wake. And that's if they get to Wake in the semis--Stanford's men will first have to beat 5th-seeded Texas A&M in the quarterfinals, and A&M has the top UTR in the country.