Texas Women, Cal Men, Still Lead in First CSCAA Poll of 2019

Editor’s Note: SwimSwam is not on the voting panel for the CSCAA Dual Meet Rankings, but the rankings are posted as a courtesy to the CSCAA. See our most recent men’s Power Rankings here and women’s Power Rankings here.

The CSCAA has released its dual meet ranking polls for the first time in the new calendar year, and the Texas women and Cal men lead for the fourth straight iteration.

There wasn’t a ton of movement on the  men’s side, which isn’t surprising considering that many teams haven’t even had a meet since the last rankings. The top four teams remained exactly the same as they did were in the last poll, while Florida moved up to 5th, and NC State down to 6th. The Gators were one of the few teams with an early January meet, and impressive performances by Khader Baqlah and Robert Finke undoubtedly bolstered Florida in the eyes of the voters.

Overall, no men’s team that was ranked in December moved up or down more than two spots. Meanwhile, Virginia Tech jumped into the rankings at 21st, perhaps largely due to the fact that Antani Ivanov is now on campus and competing for the Hokies. Auburn and Harvard tied for the final spot in the poll, while Kentucky and Minnesota dropped out of the top 25.

At first glance, the women’s poll looks to be similar to the men’s in that there’s not a lot of change…at least when you look at the top four teams. Texas retains its spot for the 4th poll in a row, followed by Michigan, Stanford, and Cal, in the exact same order.

Once you get past the top four, however, there was a ton more movement than there were in the men’s rankings. UVA continued its rankings bungee jump. They were ranked 4th in the November poll, dropped to 11th in December, and now are back at 5th. That makes some sense, given the Cavaliers didn’t appear to taper to much for the UGA Invite, and they had a dominant victory over Virginia Tech a couple weekends ago.

There was also probably a strong argument to be made for Auburn moving up after a strong dual against Alabama right after the last set of rankings came out, and a keeping it relatively close against the top-ranked Texas women a couple weeks ago, although 17th to 7th is a big jump.

It’s not nearly as easy to figure out why Southern Cal and Louisville, who had been consistently ranked in the top ten, dropped as far as they did. USC moved down seven places, from 7th to 14th, while Louisville saw an even bigger drop, plummeting from 6th to 16th. The CSCAA release does specify, as always, that the poll focuses on the results of the most recent polling period, and the Trojans haven’t had a meet since November, so that may partially explain the voters’ rationale there, but we can’t come up with a good reason for the Cardinals’ downgrade, considering they beat Missouri a couple weeks ago.

Results can be found below, or on the CSCAA website here.