As has been the case all season, the men’s poll continues to be a maelstrom while the women’s poll is as placid as a mountain lake. This week, the Top 25 men’s teams compiled a pedestrian 38-14 record (.731), including a mere 8-6 performance by the top 7 teams. By contrast, the Top 25 women were 42-9 (.824), with the top 7 going 12-1…and that one loss was by the #6 team (McMurry) at the hands of the #2 team (Howard Payne). Although it seems like the men’s game is more chaotic and unpredictable than in years past, memories of such things can be unreliable. In an effort to apply an objective statistical measure to this perceived phenomenon, I have created a new measurement I call the “coefficient of chaos.”

In short, the coefficient of chaos attempts to measure the amount of turnover in poll voting from week to week, and is expressed in terms of the maximum possible change. In any given week, there are 8,125 vote-points available, meaning a complete turnover of votes would total 16,250 points. My observations suggest that a turnover of 15% of the vote (2438 votes) indicates a chaotic condition, while a figure of 10% could be described as placidity.

Using these somewhat arbitrary designations, the men’s poll could be described as being in full-blown chaos, with the coefficient topping 15% in each of the past three weeks. So far this season, the men’s coefficient of chaos, expressed as an average of all the weeks, is 14.0%, with five of the ten weeks topping the 15% threshold of chaos. Not since the 2001-02 season (15.4%) has there been a year with a higher average score; however, the polls have a tendency to calm down after week 10. Comparing the first ten weeks of each season, we discover that last season actually had a slightly higher coefficient, at 14.5%, although last year there were just three weeks where the score was over 15%.

There is no question that the last two seasons have been more chaotic than the four relatively calm years that preceded them, seasons where the coefficient sat in the 12-13% range. However, these past two years have a ways to go to catch up to the 2000-01 and 2001-02 seasons, each of which had an average coefficient over 15% and were at 16.2% and 17.2%, respectively, through week 10. Each of those two seasons saw seven chaotic weeks in the first ten, compared to five this season and just three a year ago.

There have been just two weeks of chaos later than Week 10 in the history of the men’s poll, both of which occurred in the 2000-01 season. It will be interesting to see if the men’s poll will settle down at this point like it has in most other seasons.

The women’s poll, in sharp contrast to the men, is at a placid 9.9% for the year to date, and was at a somnolent 8.9% this week, the sixth week this year that the coefficient was below the threshold of placidity (10%). This is just the second season in the poll’s nine-year history that the average score for the first ten weeks has been below 10% (2003-04 was at 9.6%). As with the men, the most chaotic seasons were the 2000-01 (13.3%) and 2001-02 (14.2%) campaigns. On the whole, however, the women’s poll is generally calmer than the men’s; in the 135-week history of the women’s poll, there have been just 17 weeks of chaos (one this season, in week 1, which is traditionally the most chaotic week for both genders), as compared to 37 chaotic weeks for the men (5 this year alone). This could perhaps be explained by the perception that the talent pool for the men is deeper, and that the better women’s programs tend to aggregate the available talent, with the result that the women’s game is a bit more top-heavy than the men’s. But that’s just a theory; maybe I need to concoct another statistic to measure that. Hmmmmm.

Debutantes:
Women: none this week.
Men: The Centre Colonels made their first Top 10 appearance a memorable one, zooming all the way to #5 in this week’s poll. Congratulations to the Kentucky Colonels!

Streakers:
Women: Second-ranked Howard Payne has received votes in 30 straight polls, and has been ranked in each of them. #5 Thomas More has a similar pairing of streaks, reaching 10 straight this week. Fourth-ranked Mary Washington has now been ranked in 40 consecutive polls, while #3 UW-Whitewater has been in the Top 10 in ten consecutive polls. Both #16 Illinois Wesleyan and #23 Lake Forest have garnered votes in 25 straight polls. Other voting streaks were advanced by #13 Medaille (30 weeks), Oglethorpe (20), and #25 Marymount (10 weeks). NYU, losers of four straight games, fell out of the Top 25 for the first time in 23 weeks.
Men: The special “Bo Derek” Trophy goes to Brandeis, awarded for being a Top 10 team for 10 straight weeks—and being #10! ‘Deis has another streak going, that being 25 straight polls in which they received votes. New #1 Amherst appears in the voting for the 90th straight week. #19 St. Thomas and #2 Mass.-Dartmouth also extended voting streaks, to 30 and 10 weeks, respectively. Sixth-ranked Hope and #7 Augustana are each ranked for the 40th straight week, while #25 Elmhurst is a Top 25 team for the 25th straight poll.

Milestones:
Women: Ninteenth-ranked Baldwin-Wallace has become just the ninth women’s program to be ranked in 100 polls. Congratulations! #22 UW-Stevens Point is ranked for the 75th time. #4 Mary Washington is a Top 25 team for the 40th time, while this week marks the 30th ranking for #25 Marymount. Both #11 Southern Maine and NYU are among the vote-getters for the 125th time (in 135 polls). Brandeis received votes for the 70th time, and Oglethorpe is now a 30-time vote-getter. #3 UW-Whitewater has accumulated votes in 20 polls, and been a Top 10 team in ten of them.
Men: Hope, ranked #6 this week, has now made 70 appearances in the Top 25. Fourth-ranked UW-Whitewater is in the top 10 for the 10th time. #10 Brandeis also reached this milestone, doing so in the 25th week that they have received votes. Other vote-getting milestones were reached by #19 St. Thomas (90 weeks), conference foe Gustavus Adolphus (80), #13 Puget Sound (70), #12 Mary Hardin-Baylor, DeSales, and Millsaps (each at 20).

High-Water Marks:
Women: Both #13 Medaille and #15 William Smith achieved new highs this week, while #2 Howard Payne, #5 Thomas More, and #14 Tufts each matched high-water marks set earlier this season.
Men: Mass.-Dartmouth established yet another high mark at #2 this week, with the ceiling fast approaching. Top 10 debutant and fifth-ranked Centre also reached a new high ranking, as did #21 Ursinus, making just its second appearance in the Top 25 (and first in nearly 5 years.) Fourth-ranked UW-Whitewater matched its best-ever ranking, set in the 2006 preseason poll.

Movers and Shakers:
Women: Puget Sound defeated George Fox Saturday in a battle for NWC supremacy, with the result that the Loggers gained 137 points and moved up six spots to #17, while the Bruins shed 130 points and fell six places to #18. NYU, ranked #3 just three weeks ago, has lost five of six games and 541 points since then, and this week was reduced to one single point.
Men: Lots and lots of movement in the men’s poll, with five teams gaining 100 or more points and five others losing that many or more. The gainers were led by #16 Guilford, which won back-to-back road games against Top 25-caliber opponents, gaining 154 points and 7 placements. The biggest falls were recorded by Williams (-234 points, dropping out from #13) and Washington U. (-181 points, falling from #1 to #9), each losers of two games this week.