Gauchos Get Top Spot in First National Poll of 2010
The Gauchos can certainly argue they've earned the top spot regardless of the Hokies inactivity. At the Shootout UCSB played perhaps the toughest schedule of the event with all five pre-determined matchups against teams currently ranked 13th or higher. The Gauchos were successful against 3rd ranked Lindenwood, 7th ranked Colorado, 8th ranked Florida, 10th ranked Texas and 13th ranked BYU. UCSB received 10 of the 13 possible first place votes in the poll. "Few other teams have played as tough a schedule so far this season as we have," commented UCSB head coach Paul Ramsey. "Someone would have to chart it out, and I'm not going to do it, but Lindenwood and the other teams that played us could argue they played a tougher schedule since they played us but everyone else took a break somewhere along the line with their Shootout schedule requests." All five UCSB Shootout opponents were ranked in the Top 16 in the WDIA Pre-Season Poll and the Gauchos chose to play the toughest slate of opponents possible. The Gauchos did not play the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th ranked teams that were at the Shootout. They are WWLL opponents Santa Clara, UC Davis, UCLA and Cal Poly SLO, respectively. UCSB has all four teams coming up on their league schedule as well as 18th ranked USC. As it turns out, with BYU moving up from 16th in the pre-season to 12th in The Week One Poll, the stretch of the last five games played was even more difficult than planned. UCSB has six regular season games remaining on the schedule and 5 of the 6 are ranked teams with a road game at 18th ranked USC coming up at 7pm on Wednesday, February 24th.
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