[ColoradoTree]

As a reminder, final season rankings are computer-generated, and they're based on total rankings points. It can get complicated, but it boils down to this: wins get you points and losses lose you points, but wins over good teams get you lots of points, and losses to good teams only lose you a little, so as to reward teams who challenge themselves with tough schedules. So, a hard schedule is valuable, and how you do against the top teams will tend to decide your postseason seeding fate. (Here's a quick explainer from the ITA website if you're interested: https://wearecollegetennis.com/ita-ranki...explained/) And it only counts your ten best wins. With these new rankings in mind, here's a summary of how we've done against those teams, and seeing what our ten best wins might look like as the season progresses. 

As of right now, we're 5-0, but only two of those wins really give us any juice--the away win at San Diego and the neutral site win over A&M. We've got three other wins that technically count, but the goal is to push out less valuable wins from the ranking formula and replace them with better wins. And Indoor Nationals is prime hunting ground to get some valuable wins. 

* W @ #20 San Diego
* W vs. #9 Texas A&M** 
* Indoor Nationals Match 1
* Indoor Nationals Match 2
* Indoor Nationals Match 3
* Possible fourth match if we make the final
* Feb. 23 vs. #10 Texas
* Mar. 8 @ #24 Arizona State
* Mar. 29 vs. #13 UCLA
* Mar. 30 vs. #16 USC
* Apr. 5 vs. #6 Pepperdine
* Apr. 14 @ #21 UW
* Apr. 19 @ #15 Cal

Then it's the Pac-12 tournament, where if we win, it should mean two more wins among that group of UCLA/USC/UW/Cal/ASU--in other words, wins in the teens but probably not not top ten wins. So, it makes it all the more important to have a good showing at Indoor Nationals and handle business at home vs. Texas and Pepperdine to maximize rankings opportunities. But even if we drop 2-3 matches from the list above, we should hopefully still be able to bank 10 ranked wins, which should hopefully keep us in the top 8 for postseason hosting purposes. 

** You don't get a bonus for neutral site wins, and the points you get reflect the current ranking of the other team, not their ranking when you played them. So, while A&M was #2 when we beat them, they're #9 now, so the points we get for that win are the points for beating the #9 team. So, since we already have wins over San Diego and A&M, we want those wins to count for more as the season goes on, so we want them to win as much as possible from here on out. And really, we want every team on our schedule to do as well as possible throughout the year, so our wins over them count for more, and our losses to them hurt us less.

[ColoradoTree]

As a reminder, final season rankings are computer-generated, and they're based on total rankings points. It can get complicated, but it boils down to this: wins get you points and losses lose you points, but wins over good teams get you lots of points, and losses to good teams only lose you a little, so as to reward teams who challenge themselves with tough schedules. So, a hard schedule is valuable, and how you do against the top teams will tend to decide your postseason seeding fate. (Here's a quick explainer from the ITA website if you're interested: https://wearecollegetennis.com/ita-ranki...explained/) And it only counts your ten best wins. With these new rankings in mind, here's a summary of how we've done against those teams, and seeing what our ten best wins might look like as the season progresses. 

As of right now, we're 5-0, but only two of those wins really give us any juice--the away win at San Diego and the neutral site win over A&M. We've got three other wins that technically count, but the goal is to push out less valuable wins from the ranking formula and replace them with better wins. And Indoor Nationals is prime hunting ground to get some valuable wins. 

* W @ #20 San Diego
* W vs. #9 Texas A&M** 
* Indoor Nationals Match 1
* Indoor Nationals Match 2
* Indoor Nationals Match 3
* Possible fourth match if we make the final
* Feb. 23 vs. #10 Texas
* Mar. 8 @ #24 Arizona State
* Mar. 29 vs. #13 UCLA
* Mar. 30 vs. #16 USC
* Apr. 5 vs. #6 Pepperdine
* Apr. 14 @ #21 UW
* Apr. 19 @ #15 Cal

Then it's the Pac-12 tournament, where if we win, it should mean two more wins among that group of UCLA/USC/UW/Cal/ASU--in other words, wins in the teens but probably not not top ten wins. So, it makes it all the more important to have a good showing at Indoor Nationals and handle business at home vs. Texas and Pepperdine to maximize rankings opportunities. But even if we drop 2-3 matches from the list above, we should hopefully still be able to bank 10 ranked wins, which should hopefully keep us in the top 8 for postseason hosting purposes. 

** You don't get a bonus for neutral site wins, and the points you get reflect the current ranking of the other team, not their ranking when you played them. So, while A&M was #2 when we beat them, they're #9 now, so the points we get for that win are the points for beating the #9 team. So, since we already have wins over San Diego and A&M, we want those wins to count for more as the season goes on, so we want them to win as much as possible from here on out. And really, we want every team on our schedule to do as well as possible throughout the year, so our wins over them count for more, and our losses to them hurt us less.