4/7 ITA Rankings Preview

The top 4 stays the same this week with Oklahoma, Baylor, Illinois, and Virginia at 1, 2, 3, and 4 though the separation between the 4 changed a good bit. Oklahoma's lead over #2 Baylor dropped slightly from 8.5 points to 7 points though it'll likely change more this week when these 2 Big 12 heavyweights meet on Friday in Waco.  Last week #2 Baylor and #3 Illinois were separated by just .17 points but the gap opened up significantly this week to 6.57 - I alluded to the change in the Illinois section of my Top 10 breakdown last week. The gap between #3 Illinois and #4 Virginia shrunk from 9.46 to 4.88 due to Virginia picking up a big win over Virginia Tech and Illinois' 8th best win being outside the top 30.  

This week's rankings use each team's top 8 best wins and then next week it'll go up to 9 and stay there until the end of the regular season. 

Mississippi State is expected to enter the top 20 this week after being ranked at 34 just 2 weeks ago.  The Bulldogs upset #6 Georgia on Friday and have now won 5 in a row.  

Tulsa will take the biggest tumble inside the top 40 by dropping 8 spots from 20 to 28 after getting upset on Saturday by Tulane.  The Golden Hurricane have been see-sawing back and forth in the rankings for the last month. Here is where they have been ranked over the last 7 weeks (included tomorrow): 28, 20, 27, 20, 29, 26, 51.

Others Coming Up:

• USC is up 2 spots from 7 to 5 mainly due to Duke and Georgia losing.
• Texas A&M is up 1 spot from 8 to 7 due to its win over Florida and Georgia losing.
• North Carolina comes up 3 spots from 19 to 16 after knocking off Notre Dame.
• Columbia is up 6 spots from 28 to 22 after picking up road wins at Dartmouth and Harvard.
• Cal comes up 7 spots from 33 to 26 after winning on the road at Washington and Oregon.
• Oklahoma State comes up 5 spots from 30 to 25 despite not playing last week. The Cowboys actually have 10 ranked wins though several are on the lower end of the scale.  Enough of those ranked wins came up in the rankings last week to cause the bump this week for OSU.
• Tulane rises 15 spots from 54 to 39 after the Green Wave went into Tulsa on Saturday and came out with a 4-3 win.  

Others Going Down:

• Georgia drops 2 spots from 6 to 8 after losing to Mississippi State.
• Louisville drops 6 spots from 23 to 29 after losing to Virginia Tech and also due to several of its best wins dropping a few spots in the rankings last week.  The Cardinals also have just 6 Top 75 wins so 2 of the counted wins are ranked below 75. 
• A few teams dropped 2 to 3 spots due to a loss or due to other teams coming up a spot or two - too many to list each one.

Other Notes:

• Originally when I did the top 10 yesterday I had Texas A&M 6 and Duke 7 but I realized I forgot to update the points on Duke's losses and after doing so they jumped back up to 6.  

4/7 ITA Rankings Projections (ones in bold moves at least 5 spots)

Rank	School	Points	Previous
1	Oklahoma	85.59	1
2	Baylor	78.57	2
3	Illinois	72.00	3
4	Virginia	67.12	4
5	USC	66.72	7
6	Duke	65.72	5
7	Texas A&M	65.16	8
8	Georgia	59.72	6
9	Texas	59.34	9
10	TCU	59.07	10
11	Ohio State	50.90	11
12	Virginia Tech	45.31	13
13	Wake Forest	44.75	12
14	Ole Miss	43.99	14
15	UCLA	40.63	15
16	North Carolina*	39.16	19
17	Florida	39.03	16
18	San Diego	38.14	17
19	South Florida	37.49	22
20	Mississippi State	37.16	26
21	Vanderbilt	34.72	18
22	Columbia*	33.97	28
23	Texas Tech	32.94	21
24	LSU	32.71	25
25	Oklahoma State	30.63	30
26	California	29.81	33
27	Northwestern*	29.78	24
28	Tulsa*	29.34	20
29	Louisville*	28.90	23
30	Princeton	28.44	27
31	Drake	28.02	31
32	Minnesota	26.99	29
33	Florida State	25.22	32
34	NC State*	23.96	34
35	Harvard*	21.57	36
36	Stanford*	20.96	38
37	San Diego State*	20.17	37
38	Notre Dame*	19.03	35
39	Tulane*	18.78	54
40	Pepperdine*	17.02	41

* represents a team that has a win over someone that is ranked between 75-125 however it's tough to be 100% accurate pinpointing where in that range the team falls so the point totals may be off a bit.