Big Weekend in DI Shifts Teams Upward, But Top Three Remain Unchanged

NEW ORLEANS – After a fantastic weekend in collegiate track & field to close out January, the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) National Team Rankings for the Division I indoor season had some shifts from the previous week. New teams leapt into the top five or ten, but on both men’s and women’s sides, the nation’s top three remain the same.  

National Ranking PDFs: Top 25 | Full by Team | Event-by-Event | Week-by-Week
Regional Index PDFs:Top 15 by Region | Full by Team | Event-by-Event
Previous Rankings

On the men’s side, No. 1 Arkansas gained more distance from No. 2 Florida and No. 3 LSU in the national rankings after an impressive weekend. Freshman Gunnar Nixon became the collegiate leader in scoring 6,022 points in the heptathlon. Having just recently turned 19-years-old, Nixon claimed a new World Junior Record, topping a standard set by Germany’s Michael Kohnle in 1989. For the Hogs, that’s two consecutive weekends in which a freshman has claimed an NCAA automatic qualifying mark. Pole vaulter Andrew Irwin bettered the bar at 18-½ (5.50m) last weekend.

Texas moved up to No. 4 from No. 5 with the help of freshman Ryan Crouser who opened the season in the shot put with a mark of 66-7 (20.29m) which currently ranks second among collegians this season.

Arizona surged into the top five for the first time this year after adding the Mile performance turned in by sophomore Lawi Lalang this weekend. Lalang won the Razorback Invitational race by over five seconds, clocking 3:55.09 – just seven hundredths of a second off the collegiate record.

Minnesota notched up ten spots to No. 8 with a pair of 800-meter performances from Harun Abda and David Pachuta. Both went sub-1:47 at the Bill Bergen Invitational at Iowa State.

For the nation’s women, No. 1 Oregon widened their lead thanks to 2011 Bowerman Semifinalist Brianne Theisen. The senior notched the third collegiate record of career in the pentathlon by scoring 4,555 points at this weekend’s Texas A&M Mondo Challenge. Theisen was able to top her own previous record with a clearance of 6-2 (1.88m) in the high jump portion of the event. The high jump mark ranks second among all collegians this year as well.

No. 2 LSU gained enough points to shake off No. 3 Arkansas for the time being as a result of Charlene Lipsey’s collegiate leading 2:03.79 in the 800 meters.

No. 12 Iowa State climbed into the top 25 with a 16-spot bump after recording a pair of automatic qualifying marks in the 3000 meters at home with Betsy Saina and Dani Stack.

Among conferences, the SEC remains the highest-scoring league on both the men’s and women’s side when combining all ranking scores among institutions.

In the men’s rankings, the SEC has now climbed over 700 ranking points, far superior to the Big Ten’s (451.57). The SEC now has seven teams in the national top 25 with the addition this week of Auburn. The Big Ten retains six in the men’s top 25 while the Big 12 has four.   

The Big 12 has six women’s squads in the top 25 to lead the category, followed by the Pac-12 and the points-leading SEC with four.

The next round of computer rankings will be released on February 7. The 2012 NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships will be held in Nampa, Idaho, on March 9-10.

About the Rankings

For more on the rankings and links to guideline and rationale information visit …
/rankings/division-i-rankings

The purpose and methodology of the national team computer rankings is to create an index that showcases the teams that have the best potential of achieving the top spots in the national-title race – not as a method to compare teams head-to-head.

The Regional Index is determined using a similar method as national rankings, but on a smaller scale, comparing teams versus others within the same region. The result is a ranking that showcases squads with better all-around team potential — a group makeup critical for conference or similar team-scored events. A team may achieve a better regional ranking than a counterpart that has a better national ranking. Historically, some teams are better national-championship teams than conference-championship teams, having a few elite athletes that score very well in a diverse environment where teams do not have entries in more than a few events. Some teams are better at conference championships or similar team-scored events where they enter, and are competitive, in many of the events.

How a team fares in a national championship, conference championship, or scored meet with only a couple or few teams (like a dual or triangular) can be very different, given the number of events, competition, scoring, and makeup of entries — thus the rationale behind each of the ranking systems. Similar arguments about team makeup and rankings can also be found in swimming & diving and wrestling as their sports also have a similar trichotomy when it comes to team theory.