20th: South Carolina
The Top 20 starts with the best result by a team in a state so far.
USC Moksha (who tried to confuse me into thinking they were from California thanks to that abbreviation), the only DDN team in the state, placed only once out of their 3 comps that we have information for in the Legends era. But that place was a 2nd, the first team on the rankings to get that high.
Unfortunately, a 7th as their only other known result brings down their overall average but either way, congrats on the Top 20 team that isn’t actually from California!
19th: Maryland
The other state in the DMV, Maryland is the first state that has multiple places in the rankings.
In fact, with 3 places out of 9 competitions, the 3 teams (JHU Zinda, Maryland Dhoom, and UMBC Adaa) have a solid 33% placement.
But with only 5 comps where we have full information for the Maryland teams, the state fell just short of the threshold to sneak into the upper echelons (fancy word count: 2).
Hey, if a Maryland team can upset a 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, it’s only a matter of time before they make it higher in these rankings.
18th: Alabama
Keeping up the streak of firsts, Alabama is the first state to have a win during the Legends era.
Their only team (UAB Rangeela) took the dub this past year at Dance Ke Deewane. Add another place to that (3rd) and they had the potential to be right up there with the top states. Unfortunately, they only competed in 4 competitions total in the Legends era that we have information for, so we just don’t know how good they really are.
Still, that biggest trophy is something no one can take away from you and they’re the first team with it so it’s tough to argue with that (even though I guess I just did… blame the statistics).
17th: Indiana
Looks like Indiana is the GOAT state in DDN. Why? Simple, they’ve placed at every single comp they’ve ever been to.
The only team in Indiana (IU Jhanak) got 2nd at Nashaa at Purdue this past year, making sure they used that home state advantage.
Sadly, that is the only competition that we have information on for them.
Either way, they are the only team with a 100% placement percentage in the Legends era so “put some respek on their name” (did I use that right?).
16th: New Jersey
The first state where we do actually have enough information to know exactly how good (or not good) they are is arguably also the most disappointing state.
New Jersey, USA’s little India that is literally known for how many Indians are in the state, is the lowest ranked state with enough information to make that designation.
Granted, all of their results come from one university (Rutgers), so I guess that just means the Desis are growing up and getting the heck out of New Jersey.
Ehsaas and the extremely creatively named SAPA combined to place 1 time in 13 competitions in the Legends era, meaning they placed only about 7.7% of the time.
Well… the first ever football game in the US was Princeton-Rutgers so New Jersey still has that I guess.
15th: New York
Another state, another first. This time, the first state to have 2 victories. Unfortunately for the state of New York, that’s all they got.
NYU Pandemonium and the pride of Stony Brook University SBU Junoon have a win each in the Legends era, but Macaulay Deewane, NYU Dillagi, NYU Nasha, and RPI Rounak as well as all the other comps Pandemonium and Junoon competed at came up empty.
20 comps placing 10% of the time is not the ratio any state wants but winning every time they place seems like a pretty good tradeoff. With 6 teams, they’ll definitely have the opportunities to move up.
Until then, New York stays down here in the rankings.
14th: Florida
As a numbers guy, Florida has easily my favorite distribution of placings. They have one 1st, two 2nds, and three 3rds.
They also have contributions from all of their teams and all of their universities with Florida’s Gator Adaa, Miami’s UJhoom, and NSU’s Maasti each placing at least once in the Legends era.
Unfortunately, Florida also has the greatest number of competitions so far with 29, so the about 20.7% placement is not quite enough to make the Top 10.
Hey, at least the state has the weather working in its favor (and, coming from a cold weather college, you should treasure that).
13th: Pennsylvania
Unlucky 13 sees a few unlucky teams as well. More than any other state, the sheer number of teams in the state works against Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania has the same number of 1sts, 2nds, and 3rds than the previous best state had total placings with 6 of each, with Broad Street Baadshaz’s (BSB) 4 wins single handedly trying to drag the state towards the Top 10.
Pennsylvania is also the first state to have any teams to qualify for national competitions with BSB making it to Legends in 2018 (where they placed 2nd) and Penn Dhamaka qualifying for the cancelled BA in 2020 and being in position to go to Legends 2020 when the season ended prematurely.
But with 75 total competitions among the 12 teams and 9 universities/cities, the teams from the state fall short of placing over 75% of the time.
Looks like the quantity over quality strategy doesn’t exactly work this time.
12th: Massachusetts
The city of Boston takes full credit for all of the teams from Massachusetts.
With the 4 walking-distance universities of BU, Harvard, MIT, and Northeastern accounting for 5 teams, the city itself has 2 more in DDN.
Massachusetts actually has the 2nd highest number of teams than any other state so far with 7, but they benefit from going to far fewer comps than Pennsylvania. Despite only placing at 7 comps in the Legends era, the relatively small number of 28 comps over the 4-season period gives them a 25% placement percentage, exactly 1% higher than Pennsylvania.
The strategy works well enough for the state so who are we to argue?
11th: Wisconsin
The state that just (and I mean JUST) missed out on the Top 10, Wisconsin has a very unique distribution.
Out of the two teams in the state, 1 team, Marquette Mazaa, has the state’s only win. The other, Wisconsin Surma, has placed exactly one time each year in the Legends era, but it’s a 3rd place every time.
Mazaa also has a much larger range, placing anywhere from 1st to 9th in their 3 years of existence while Surma found its sweet spot in between 3rd and 7th.
Either way, by placing about 27.3% of the time, they sneak ahead of Massachusetts but fall inches short of the Top 10.
Tune in next week to see the final top 10 ranking of states during the Legends Era!
About the Author:
Akshay Luthra is a senior at the University of Michigan. He was on Michigan Manzil for 2 years (if you count pandemic years) and was a Competition Logistics Chair. He got really into DDN after making it on his team and that's why he decided to write about it. If you have any questions about the articles or him, his email address is aluthra@desidancenetwork.org!
