Starting today, the AP** of WPEX will be able to share their rankings for the upcoming NCAA Men’s season.
I’ve opened up the pre-season poll here:
I’ll setup the polling cadence based on our early ballot counts.
This is early days on development, any feedback or bug reports are most welcome.
*Associated Parents 
Through the first day of voting
Here is the preseason top-10 according to WPEX!
| # | Team | Points | 1st-place votes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | UCLA | 338 | 7 |
| 2 | USC | 333 | 4 |
| 3 | Stanford | 324 | 1 |
| 4 | California | 316 | 1 |
| 5 | Fordham | 299 | 1 |
| 6 | Long Beach State | 248 | — |
| 7 | UC Davis | 240 | — |
| 8 | San Jose State | 232 | — |
| 9 | UC San Diego | 207 | — |
| 10 | Princeton | 204 | — |
And as more votes flow in, the community is starting to converge with the coaches’ poll.
The largest disagreement with the coaches are
So far the voters that are closest to the consensus, i.e., the average of all voters, are polofan24 and h17polo, while the most divergent are sctrojanje and polopolopolo
I asked Claude to go through the 2025 NCAA thread and put a list of individuals with strong opinions over the season that have not cast their vote yet. We don’t want to miss you. A reminder. @Rbpolo @anon39560856 @polosurfer @polofan @tpolo @swimcoach @H2Opolo10 @CoachMCH @Mepolo @Pacificblue
I wonder if the rankings would shift much if everyone put in 20 or 25 teams.
And the rest of the reminders: @wpolo93 @WaterPolo @Wapomama @CalPolo1987 @Polo22 @Polo14 @Gibson
It might change on the margin at the 15-25 ranking, not the top 10. But only on the margin statistically.
I suggested Clark turn this ranking into one of the ‘Fantasy WP’ games this season and monitor over the season who best predicted their 1-25 ranking. That would incentivize everyone to go down to 25.
Stanford v UCLA in the final
Yes @tpolo, you now hold the second most divergent view in this poll.
Submitted, but truthfully haven’t looked to much at incoming classes. Looking forward to a fun season.
Submitted: UCLA gets it done (3 loses): Improved depth at Keeper, Tico, Dodd, Ben, Wade, McFarland deliver 6-5 and scoring, and Adam gets what he needs up the middle. Cal is my surprise rebound pick for 2nd, Everest improved up the middle (Dom maturing with nat team, Israeli defender), and is too good a coach to be down another year. Stanford is stacked! but needs to learn to win and handle duress. SC lost so much incredible talent from 25, is still awesome, but I was concerned how Krstic gelled with the system/officiating/attitude. The rest will be a dogfight for conference championships and the at large. Will be a great year. Navy and Claremont are my super underdogs.
Thanks, wp2024.
it is a fun thing to do but I will abstain. I do not know that much about incoming freshmen at many programs so my educated guess would be too random. I will say two things though.
First, I expect Fordham, UOP, and St.Mary to improve as the season goes on as their big (and talented) recruitment classes might need some time to mesh together. Second, Lucas Wulfhorst is a real deal. He might be the best freshman Dan Leyson has had during his tenure at UC Davis.
Lucas Wulfhorst can flat out ball indeed - great kid too.
I went for scrtojanje’s spot but immediately got bumped
I don’t see UCLA winning it this year. Stanford has the depth, speed, defense, and talent to go all the way.
We still have a few hours to reflect on the news about Litvak stepping down from coaching Princeton. It will be interesting to see how much weight the community places on coaching.
As of the announcement, Princeton is ranked 9th on WPEX.
A few hours before the start of the 2026 NCAA Men’s season, the WPEX preseason ranking is out with 44 participants. Large divergence among voters, but the wisdom of the crowd is tightly hugging the coaches’ preseason poll. Princeton has not moved much from 9th place post-announcement of coach Litvak’s departure.
The ‘major’ (downgraded 2 places by the WPEX community) downgrades are: Pepperdine, Pacific, and CBU. The only upgraded team with 2 places up is LMU.
The teams that enjoy the largest divergence/disagreement among voters are: UCI, LMU, CBU, Harvard, and SMC.
The voters that are the closest to the community consensus are: polofan24, calvesofsteel, and coachmch
The voters that are the most ‘independent thinkers’ are just wrong are: polopolopolo, ec2024, and tdpolo
This is great , is the idea to do this weekly ?
The idea is to track our preseason intuition over the season. If @clark has the time, mostly tied to beating me in Fantasy WP :), he might be able to make this dynamic over the season and compare it to the coaches. My guess is WPEX will be more predictive of the final ranking earlier than the coaches.
