[CTcard]

The rankings, as others have nicely detailed here, haven't predicted the NCAA outcomes well at all.  They seem almost comically bad.  Among the problems is that those rankings are based on season-long performance  Players in May aren't the players they were in October, for better or worse.  One guy goes sour--especially your one or two--and it's over.  One guy gets hot--especially your three or four--and you're the surprise of the tournament.

This is rather what I was asking about.

The statement was made that given that Stanford had only one guy who had only won one tournament whereas the semifinalists all had three different players who had won tournaments, therefore Stanford was not at the same level as these other teams. That sounded logical to me, given the tournament victories noted and the fact that Stanford was in fact not close to making the cut.

However, the national rankings seem surprising in light of that; it's not so much that a particular highly ranked team isn't in contention at one particular event - golf is like that as you noted with your "surprise of the tournament" comment. However, a team ranked #2 should not be at a fundamentally lower level than teams ranked #4-18. Now in some sports there are weird idiosyncrasies in how the rankings are compiled that lead to such a disconnect. I think tennis is one as they rely upon events that Stanford typically doesn't enter. I was wondering if anyone understood what the similar issue was in the golf rankings. Depending upon fall events would seem like it could be a little bit of that, but it is not as if Stanford was collecting a ton of individual tournament victories in the fall either.
It seems in this particular case there must be more, though I suppose it could all be due to a one-off rough week.

[CTcard]

The rankings, as others have nicely detailed here, haven't predicted the NCAA outcomes well at all.  They seem almost comically bad.  Among the problems is that those rankings are based on season-long performance  Players in May aren't the players they were in October, for better or worse.  One guy goes sour--especially your one or two--and it's over.  One guy gets hot--especially your three or four--and you're the surprise of the tournament.

This is rather what I was asking about.

The statement was made that given that Stanford had only one guy who had only won one tournament whereas the semifinalists all had three different players who had won tournaments, therefore Stanford was not at the same level as these other teams. That sounded logical to me, given the tournament victories noted and the fact that Stanford was in fact not close to making the cut.

However, the national rankings seem surprising in light of that; it's not so much that a particular highly ranked team isn't in contention at one particular event - golf is like that as you noted with your "surprise of the tournament" comment. However, a team ranked #2 should not be at a fundamentally lower level than teams ranked #4-18. Now in some sports there are weird idiosyncrasies in how the rankings are compiled that lead to such a disconnect. I think tennis is one as they rely upon events that Stanford typically doesn't enter. I was wondering if anyone understood what the similar issue was in the golf rankings. Depending upon fall events would seem like it could be a little bit of that, but it is not as if Stanford was collecting a ton of individual tournament victories in the fall either.
It seems in this particular case there must be more, though I suppose it could all be due to a one-off rough week.