Why Navy is #1-by The Lax Swami

1. Navy
Division I's only team with two top five wins, and four top ten wins defeats Maryland convincingly.
2. Maryland
The edge over Hopkins diminishes, but not completely. The Terps played the #1 team tough.
3. Johns Hopkins
Maryland's record against common opponents North Carolina and Duke confirm Hopkins at #3 this week.
4. Syracuse
Navy's big win over #1 bumps the Cruisers down.
5. North Carolina
The Tarheels home loss in overtime to Navy ranks the Heels above Georgetown's two goal home loss to the Mids.
6. Georgetown
Georgetown's first home loss to the Midshipmen since 1992 drops the Hoyas, whose top win is still Cornell.
7. Ohio State
Consecutive victories over Notre Dame (9-8) and Duke (16-9), coupled with a Navy win, make the 8-2 Buckeyes the class of the GWLL.
8. Army
A credible performance against Syracuse, and victories over Penn and Rutgers, are offset by a narrow win over Air Force.
9. Princeton
Among quality opponents, Princeton has defeated only Hofstra and Virginia. How high should that place the Tigers?
10. Rutgers
The Knights played tough, but lost to Army and Princeton.
11. Brown
Lost to Princeton by 3 goals.
12. Duke
Erratic Duke lost to North Carolina in overtime, beat Loyola 11-3 on the road, and fell to Ohio State in Columbus 16-9.
13. Delaware
Owners of consecutive wins over tough Air Force and UMBC squads, the 8-1 Blue Men defeated Hofstra 12-10.
14. Penn
Lost to Notre Dame (19-11), lost to Delaware (12-10), defeated Loyola, squeezed past Villanova.
15. Loyola
A (combined) 25-6 drubbing by Duke and Brown, coupled with sagging fortunes of defeated opponents Towson, Notre Dame, and Hofstra are dropping Loyola fast.
16. Notre Dame
Knocks Denver out of the picture with a 14-12 conference win.

Why Navy is #1...
by The Lax Swami
"At this point, there's no question about it...
Head coach Richie Meade has seemingly done the impossible with Navy this season. He has taken a team with a losing 2003 record that has always been known for its patient and deliberate offense and transformed it into a potent and winning scoring threat without compromising its tradition of bruising defense and excellent play in goal. Navy averaged only 8.38 goals offensively last season. This year the Mids are scoring at 150% of that clip--with a starting offense that includes only two seniors.

Last week in this space the Swami marveled at the temerity of the voters in the Buddy Rankings--whoops, the USILA Coaches' Poll--in awarding Princeton the #6 position--perhaps the wackiest of all the zany blunders they have made this year. The Tigers, who have had to come from behind to win all but one of their games, have as their chief claim to fame the defeat of a #18 ranked team. Ohio State and UMBC have better wins and are ranked nowhere near #6. At the time Princeton was first awarded the #6 spot, the Tigers RPI was #18, and their Strength of Schedule (SOS) ranking was #23. But, hey, what's a difference of only 12 places among friends?

This week the buddies--er, voters--have Cornell ranked at #11. Cornell has wins over Stony Brook, Binghamton, Hofstra, Yale and Harvard. The only one of those teams that received even a single vote in the same USILA Poll was Harvard, which appeared as a footnoted entry unranked and outside the top 20. Penn beat Harvard by a bigger margin than Cornell, then beat Cornell. Do these guys care whether they have any credibility at all?

That being said, there is only one team in Division I that can boast victories over two top five teams and four top ten teams: Navy. The Midshipmen are the only team that defeated the previous #1 team, and accomplished that by holding that team to its lowest offensive output of the year--Maryland scored six goals against a season average of 12.75. That's rather convincing. With an 8-1 record and a competitive schedule, how can this team not be #1? Not only is Navy's RPI higher than Hopkins' (68.84 to 67.71), but the quality of Navy's single loss (Ohio State) is higher than Hopkins' lone defeat (Virginia). The notion that Hopkins somehow has played a more difficult schedule is also false. The RPI calculated Strength of Schedule (SOS) rating is 62.15 for Navy and 61.12 for Hopkins. But a even an anecdotal analysis of their respective schedules is pretty conclusive:

Navy Opponent Hopkins Opponent
1 North Carolina 1 North Carolina
2 Maryland 2 Syracuse
3 Georgetown 3 Penn
4 Army 4 Princeton
5 Ohio State 5 Duke
6 Hobart 6 Albany
7 Bucknell 7 Virginia
8 Colgate 8 Hofstra
9 Lafayette 9 none

Does anyone seriously believe that Navy's schedule is materially inferior to Hopkins'?"