The Best Freshman Classes of the 2016 NCAA Indoor Season

Mar 21, 2016

Every January, Track & Field News ranks the collegiate recruiting classes. This year's top tens are here. But those rankings are based on high school performances; we wanted to see how each recruiting class was actually performing.

So with indoor completely over, we went through TFRRS data and ranked each school that had at least one freshman in the top fifty in one event. A collegiate #1 performance was worth fifty points, #2 forty-nine, and all the way down to #50 being worth one.

These rankings are imperfect for a number of reasons. I tried to remove as many redshirt freshmen and athletes mislabeled in TFRRS as possible, but I certainly missed a few. And these are only for indoor, so classes that are particularly strong in outdoor-only events like the javelin, discus, steeplechase, 10K, and 400 hurdles suffer. This doesn't measure performance at the NCAA meet--just the season best mark on the TFRRS top fifty. Finally, T&FN took transfers and junior college signings into account in their rankings; this just included freshmen.

You can view the full document here and email me any corrections.

For the men, Texas A&M came in at #1 thanks in large part due to Donavan Brazier's NCAA-leading 800. The SEC took up the top four spots, with Florida, Missouri, and Arkansas coming in second through fourth. Arkansas was #1 for women, led by pole vaulting twins Alexis and Victoria Weeks. Boise State--thanks mostly to Allie Ostrander--was #2, ahead of a pair of Big 12 programs in Texas and Iowa State.

Programs that were ranked in T&FN's top ten were noted in paretheses in the chart.

Men

1	Texas A&M (6)	135
2	Florida	92
2	Missouri	92
4	Arkansas (4)	81
5	Penn State	79
6	Houston (2)	78
7	Wichita State	66
8	Michigan	65
9	LSU	56
10	Florida State (5)	49
11	Ohio State	49
12	Rutgers	48
13	Oral Roberts	47
13	Youngstown St.	47
15	UCLA	43
15	Virginia Tech	43
17	USC (9)	42
18	Texas	41
19	Akron	40
19	Wake Forest	40
21	Georgia	38
22	Baylor	37
23	N. Carolina A&T	36
23	South Alabama	36
23	UTEP	36
23	Virginia	36
27	Texas Tech (7)	35
28	Nebraska	33
28	Oregon (1)	33
30	Iowa State	31
31	Kansas	29
31	Princeton	29
33	Memphis	27
33	Notre Dame	27
33	Western Carolina	27
33	Western Kentucky	27
37	BYU	26
38	Colorado (8)	23
39	Indiana	21
39	Iowa	21
39	Wisconsin	21
42	California	17
43	Alabama (3)	16
44	Boise State	14
44	Syracuse	14
46	Clemson	10
46	Oklahoma State	10
48	Mid. Tenn. State	9
49	Dartmouth	8
50	Stanford (10)	7
51	Auburn	6
51	UTSA	6
53	Minnesota	5
54	Eastern Washington	3
55	Illinois	2
55	Illinois State	2
57	Boston U.	1

Women

1	Arkansas (3)	145
2	Boise State	117
3	Texas (1)	102
4	Iowa State	100
5	Florida	87
6	Georgia Tech	84
7	Notre Dame	81
8	Oregon (4)	72
9	LSU	64
10	Penn State	63
11	Texas A&M (6)	56
12	Kentucky (8)	55
13	UCLA (10)	53
14	USC (2)	52
15	North Carolina	41
16	Colorado	39
17	Harvard	38
18	Ohio State	36
19	Auburn	34
19	Oklahoma (9)	34
21	South Carolina	33
22	Texas Tech	32
23	Tennessee (7)	31
23	Texas-Arlington	31
25	Alabama	27
25	Purdue	27
27	SMU	22
28	Rutgers	20
29	Stanford (5)	18
30	Minnesota	17
31	Virginia Tech	15
32	Dartmouth	12
33	Temple	11
33	Washington	11
35	San Diego St.	10
35	Texas State	10
37	Connecticut	9
38	West Virginia	6
39	Wyoming	5
40	Kansas State	4
40	Louisville	4
42	Cornell	3
43	Lamar	2

This article has been updated.