Seriously?!

Someone, please, break it down for me.

Speak slowly. Use small words, and repeat yourself if need be.

Somehow, someway, can you PLEASE make me understand…

HOW IN THE WORLD IS A 5-5 JHU LACROSSE TEAM THE #6 TEAM IN THE COUNTRY?!

Or more specifically, how, in the past three weeks of being 3-5, 4-5, and now 5-5, has this team been ranked 15, 10, and now 6, repsectively?

And don’t look to the coaches to set things straight. The coaches poll has viewed them even more favorably.

Understand that this is not a personal vendetta (although I am a little bitter that they just leapfrogged my alma mater). I’ve got nothing against Hopkins. But forget Notre Dame football or Duke basketball, THIS is the biggest case of ratings inflation I’ve ever seen.

What has caused this? True enough, the Blue Jays are the defending national champion. They’ve got the #1 schedule in the nation. But herein lies the rub. When scheduling the nation’s best, an additional charge is put before you: To win. And yet five times – against Hofstra, Syracuse, UVA, Carolina, and Duke (all ranked, granted) – the Jays failed to accomplish that task. Hopkins does have some quality wins too—over Princeton, Maryland, Navy, and my own UMBC Retrievers. I can’t say, at this stage of the game (and only in this last week) I’d object to them being ranked. but #6, to me, is ridiculous.

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With nearly a week passing since the above rant, we'll see in this coming Monday's rankings what the future shall hold for the Jays. They are now a 6-5 after a mid-week win over the Towson Tigers. Still, the poll has shown us for other teams that even a win against a lesser team (which at this point, the Tigers are) can lead to a drop in rankings. Still, I'll see how the polls turn out before taking the risk of applying Earth logic to Hopkins.