[Hulk01]

Golf is idiosyncratic, particularly college competitive golf.

You dispatch five 20-year-old guys to a distant locale to play a course they aren't familiar with, particularly given that day's setup and weather.  Get up the next day, play another round, repeat once more.  Think of it as three consecutive away games--except, unlike in all other sports, the field changes for every new event.  It's like playing with an 18-foot, three point line one week and a 22-footer--along with a much wider key--the next

And five guys.  One may be struggling off the tee, another struggling almost everywhere, a third on the verge of quitting and going home (e.g.) Jimmy Liu.  Go through a year of college and its challenges, including finals, midterms, social life.  Variables upon variables.

Whatever the variables and challenges, Stanford never demonstrated this year that it belonged in the elite.  SC beat us badly twice, Vanderbilt in our only match up. 

But with that said, men's college golf also has an odd feature.  It really is hard to distinguish team #3 and #14. The difference is so small that the specifics of the day and the course matter far more than the small apparent differences in talent between the teams. 

That helps explain why in six NCAA finals contested at match play, men's and women's, the #1 team has  qualified only three times and has never won, and the highest-rated team ever to win the finals was ranked 8th. 

I think you can trace this partly to scholarship limits.  A sport with fewer scholarships (4.5) than starters (5), is bound to push all the teams more toward the middle.  And if you guess wrong on even one of those scholarships, your team has an albatross. 

Oregon may look like a juggernaut after two consecutive appearances in the finals, and therefore evidence otherwise, but that's only because (1) a scholarship opened up to Casey Martin's surprise when Oregon's #1 decided to go pro; and (2) Oklahoma State's #1 lost his mother to cancer and wanted to get far from Oklahoma for his final year, and had been recruited by Martin--who, again, had a full scholarship available.

[Hulk01]

Golf is idiosyncratic, particularly college competitive golf.

You dispatch five 20-year-old guys to a distant locale to play a course they aren't familiar with, particularly given that day's setup and weather.  Get up the next day, play another round, repeat once more.  Think of it as three consecutive away games--except, unlike in all other sports, the field changes for every new event.  It's like playing with an 18-foot, three point line one week and a 22-footer--along with a much wider key--the next

And five guys.  One may be struggling off the tee, another struggling almost everywhere, a third on the verge of quitting and going home (e.g.) Jimmy Liu.  Go through a year of college and its challenges, including finals, midterms, social life.  Variables upon variables.

Whatever the variables and challenges, Stanford never demonstrated this year that it belonged in the elite.  SC beat us badly twice, Vanderbilt in our only match up. 

But with that said, men's college golf also has an odd feature.  It really is hard to distinguish team #3 and #14. The difference is so small that the specifics of the day and the course matter far more than the small apparent differences in talent between the teams. 

That helps explain why in six NCAA finals contested at match play, men's and women's, the #1 team has  qualified only three times and has never won, and the highest-rated team ever to win the finals was ranked 8th. 

I think you can trace this partly to scholarship limits.  A sport with fewer scholarships (4.5) than starters (5), is bound to push all the teams more toward the middle.  And if you guess wrong on even one of those scholarships, your team has an albatross. 

Oregon may look like a juggernaut after two consecutive appearances in the finals, and therefore evidence otherwise, but that's only because (1) a scholarship opened up to Casey Martin's surprise when Oregon's #1 decided to go pro; and (2) Oklahoma State's #1 lost his mother to cancer and wanted to get far from Oklahoma for his final year, and had been recruited by Martin--who, again, had a full scholarship available.