After a bit of a quiet period during the holidays, AA leagues are back in full force! CAL Season 8 is only 2 weeks away from playoffs, CEVO Season 2 is at the halfway point, and TWL Season 12 is just starting. It's been 2.5 months since the last list, and it was really getting outdated so I decided to release a new one. This list will cover 6 CAL matches (week 1-6), 3 CEVO matches (week 1-3), and some TWL ladder matches as bonus (which are pretty much worth 10-20% of what a league match is worth). The matches which were tabulated ran from November 1st, 2007 to January 17th, 2008. I will likely release the next list just after CEVO Pro & CAL Invite playoffs finish up, plus TWL is about half way through.
The way the list is determined is by starting with the last list (put link here), then tabulating the matches that happened since that list was released and moving teams up and down accordingly. Doing it this way makes the list somewhat progressive, but at the same time more recent matches are a bigger factor in calculating the rankings, than matches which happened over a month ago for example.

Mr.Clean's Top 25 AA Competitive Team Report for January 17th, 2008.

I will give a quick summary of the teams that moved up the most in the rankings. Starting with Audigy who moved up 7 spots to numero uno and who are the front runners for CEVO Pro right now. Even Flow had another impressive jump of 4 more spots. No Said Date & 2n Gaming were both previously unranked (or non-existent really), are both already in the top 10. Team unRestricted had a huge jump of 11 spots, and Unreasonable Ownage is back on the list and already cracked the top 15.

First off we will summarize the top 10 teams. The chart below shows the league results of the teams in the top 10, with a little summary afterwards.

Top List (1-10)

Rank	Squad	+/-	W-L-FFL	RW-RL	QM	QW	UW	BL
1.	Audigy	(+7)	8-1-0	79-29	7	6	1	0
2.	just Cause project	(-1)	2-2-1	23-26	4	2	0	2
3.	Redemption	(0)	5-1-0	43-30	5	4	0	0
4.	Team Mediocrity	(0)	7-2-0	66-46	8	6	2	1
5.	overRated	(-3)	5-4-0	56-53	8	4	0	3
6.	Cover 3	(+1)	4-3-2	52-45	7	4	0	1
7.	Even Flow	(+4)	8-1-0	86-40	8	7	3	1
8.	No Said Date	(NR)	5-4-0	70-51	9	5	5	0
9.	2n Gaming	(NR)	6-2-1	75-37	7	5	5	0
10.	IceNine	(-4)	4-4-1	56-59	7	3	0	2

Like I've already mentioned the Top 5 was a complete mess to figure out! No matter which way I analyze it, there is no CLEAR #1. Any of the 5 teams in the top 5 could be ranked anywhere from 1 to 5. I could have put co-leaders, but that would have been pretty lame. By using factors such as more recent matches having slightly more impact than matches over a month old, and CEVO having a better anti-cheat than CAL thus putting a little more emphasis on CEVO, it helped break it out a little better. When you look at the top 5, it coincides with this pretty well. Audigy is atop the CEVO pro standings, and jCp is just behind them, Redemption are the leaders in CAL invites, Mediocrity and overRated are more towards the middle of the pack in both leagues (although med should really be #2 in CEVO). Regardless of standings, I'll do a summary of the results. Audigy's only loss of their 9 matches was an 8-6 loss to c3. If they played the match vs oR for CAL it would help a little more determine these standings, but that hasn't happened yet. just Cause project had that horrible result against goingLive in CAL, but that match is almost 2 months old now plus they played with staff members, they lost in OT to audigy and beat down overRated and nsd in CEVO. Redemption could probably be #1 or #2 if they were in CEVO and doing well, but they opted out, and although jCp decided to drop CAL, they were already 2 spots ahead of redemption so red didn't do enough to pass them. Now an argument can be made for mediocrity being anywhere from 1st to 4th, but they didn't face audigy or jCp recently, plus they lost to red, and also lost to gL (but that was about 5-6 weeks ago). By med beating oR twice it was an easy to put them ahead of oR at this point. Again, med could really be higher, but we'll have a better idea by the time CAL & CEVO finish where they stand vs the other 4 teams in the top 5. overRated slid all the way to #5, now although this may seem a little too low, the fact is they were only 5-4 in these league matches. Losing to med twice really hurt them, plus the CEVO loss to jCp. The other loss for oR was against nsd who in turn were losers to jCp, aud & red (the top 3 ranked atm). At the end of the day it just goes to show you these top 5 teams are very even and anyone can beat anyone on any given match day.

 

From 6th to 10th is very interesting as well, but at this point it was pretty easy to separate them. Cover 3 is a standout 6th ranked team. They haven't done anything to deserve higher or lower than that. They could have made a step into the top 5 if they followed up their win over Audigy with at least 1 win in their 2 matches against overRated, but instead overRated put them in their place (which is 6th). Now Even Flow (formerly Nothing 2 Prove) may still have some people saying "who?", but if your team scrims a lot I'm sure you must have faced them as they spend many hours a week scrimming or matching. They've been beating the piss outta most teams lately in both CEVO-a and CAL-m, and are early favorites to win either one of those leagues. Coming in 8th we have No Said Date. With "upset" wins over Ataxia, dropouts, goingLive twice, plus a major upset against overRated, nsd has had the results needed to make such a big leap. They still suffered 4 losses, to the likes of jCp, audigy, c3, and redemption so it wasn't enough to crack the top 5 or 6 yet. Next in line is 2n Gaming, who skipped their last CAL match for some reason. Seems they only show up if they feel like it. Nevertheless, they had 5 upset wins in CAL-m and CEVO-p combined, where they beat EFlow, c3, nG, gL & epiC. If they didn't blow their match to Unknown Factor and forfeited against SARS they could be 7th or 8th, but for now they are 9th. Rounding out the top 10, is the everlasting IceNine squadron who made a bunch of pickups in order to stay alive and kicking. After starting slow in both leagues, IceNine has won 4 of their past 5 matches against pretty decent teams, and are looking healthy again.