Oct. 5, 2010
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By Brian Ormiston
UCFAthletics.com
ORLANDO, Fla. (UCFAthletics.com) - The NCAA released its first edition of the Ratings Percentage Index Tuesday and the UCF women's soccer team entered at No. 14 in the country out of 322 programs. The RPI is the main ranking systems used by the NCAA in helping to determine the 64-team postseason field.
UCF has been a staple in the RPI top-20 in recent years, and a high rating in 2009 enabled the Knights to receive a national seed for the NCAA Tournament.
Under head coach Amanda Cromwell who is in her 12th season at UCF, the Knights are 8-2-2 this season and 3-0-1 in Conference USA. The defending regular-season champions, the Black and Gold is in third place in the standings and will be hosting Houston and Rice, who are tied for first place at 4-0-0, this weekend. UCF will battle the Cougars Friday at 7 p.m. and then the Owls Sunday at 1 p.m.
Not only will those two matches play a big part in who eventually qualifies for the six-team C-USA Championship field at UCF Nov. 3-7, Houston (No. 48) and Rice (No. 41) are also ranked in the top 50 in the NCAA RPI report.
Before the C-USA season began, UCF played one of the toughest non-conference schedules in the nation. In terms of RPI rankings, UCF defeated No. 6 Arizona State and its two losses in 2010 came against No. 8 Florida and No. 9 Florida State.
Among the three top-25 polls this week, UCF was ranked as high as No. 19 in the nation.