The teams to beat
I recently posted a run-down of the top ten women's teams in the country. While trying to gauge which teams I think will be especially good this year, I came up against the age-old problem of not enough information. As such, I thought the blog would be a great place to get feedback from people about who else to keep an eye on. Keep in mind that my list was meant to get the dialogue started and not be the be-all and end-all of rankings. Here is the list of teams I picked for the top ten:
There are obviously a lot of good teams left off this short list. From the west coast, UC-Berkeley and UC-San Diego have proven they have programs in place that consistently produce solid teams, while Western Washington and UC-Santa Barbara are programs on the rise that could give higher seeds a run for their money. UC-Santa Cruz, Southern California, and British Columbia can't be counted out either. With a combined 6 bids to the championships coming out of the Northwest and Southwest regions, there's bound to be a lot of jockeying for position.
Who are the powerhouse and up-and-coming teams from the rest of the country? Specifically, some questions I have are: will more teams from the Metro East make it out of their region to play out-of-region competition? How have the teams from North Carolina re-built themselves for this season? Are Dartmouth and Tufts ready to fill the gaps left behind by their graduating stars? Is Michigan for real this year? Who else should be on the radar screen?
- Stanford
- UCLA
- Wisconsin
- Emory
- Colorado
- Carleton
- Washington
- Oregon
- Texas
- Florida
There are obviously a lot of good teams left off this short list. From the west coast, UC-Berkeley and UC-San Diego have proven they have programs in place that consistently produce solid teams, while Western Washington and UC-Santa Barbara are programs on the rise that could give higher seeds a run for their money. UC-Santa Cruz, Southern California, and British Columbia can't be counted out either. With a combined 6 bids to the championships coming out of the Northwest and Southwest regions, there's bound to be a lot of jockeying for position.
Who are the powerhouse and up-and-coming teams from the rest of the country? Specifically, some questions I have are: will more teams from the Metro East make it out of their region to play out-of-region competition? How have the teams from North Carolina re-built themselves for this season? Are Dartmouth and Tufts ready to fill the gaps left behind by their graduating stars? Is Michigan for real this year? Who else should be on the radar screen?
posted by Gambler at 12:52 PM
3 Comments:
My first thought looking at this list is "Why is UW so high?" I know they've got two Riot players and a great deep from Viva, but last year's performance at Regionals makes me question #7. (Not saying UW won't do great this year, just that as a preseason ranking, it seems high.) What's the story with Davis? UCSC? UBC?
My second thought is that it lacks any team from the NE, even though, since 2001, a team from the NE has always made quarters and often done better. George Cooke, tell us about the NE.
Huck-a-hunk won by GW? Coffee Cup won by Tufts? What were these tourneys like? More info from the east coast would be helpful. (And college TDs, learn to fill out the score reporter.)
Thanks for chiming in, Neva. I agree that UW might be too high, but I wanted to give the team credit for doing so well in the fall tournaments against other NW competition and for having some top players (Claire Suver is pretty clutch). Based on history, I also thought it appropriate to have 3 NW teams in the top 8.
Based on this fall and their rosters' experience, Oregon and UW seemed like the best NW picks behind Stanford. It looks like UBC graduated a lot of players, so although the team still has Kira Frew, it could take a lot to rebuild it for Nationals contention this year. Same story with Davis; it graduated everyone from the team's core and did not perform well this fall. On the other hand, Santa Cruz and Berkeley could be strong contenders from the region. UCSC doesn't have a ton of experience past Lillian Berla and Tegwyn Lewis-Pine, but those two players are top notch. Berkeley has a great program in place and has a number of veteran players still around this year. When it stops playing with split squads in the winter, it'll be easier to tell how good the team really is, and I could easily see Berkeley getting ahead of UW or Oregon.
As far as the NE, there didn't seem to be a clear leader from the fall results, so I didn't feel comfortable putting my money on any particular team. I agree that more information would be nice...
GW has been playing some northeast tourneys (i.e. Purple Valley as well as Huck-a-Hunk) and doing quite well at both of them. Tufts is looking really strong with a bunch of returners (particularly returning handlers, which is probably going to be a weakness of the northeast IMHO), Dartmouth not as much so. Northeastern is looking solid as well with a bunch of experienced seniors. Otherwise... dunno who in the northeast is gonna turn out good this year, my guess is BU, Wellesley, & Harvard? have the best shots, but I haven't seen everybody play yet and my opinion is very personal experience-biased.
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