I have no idea how Maryland or any other team will perform this season. However, looking back over the past 10 seasons not a lot has changed. There have been a total of 40 programs that have finished the season ranked in the Top 20.
20 programs have finished the season ranked in the Top 20 five times or more over the past 10 seasons. They are:
10 - UNC
10 - Maryland
10 - Boston College
10 - Northwestern
10 - Florida
10 - Virginia
10 - Syracuse
10 - Princeton (actual 9, they did not compete in 2021 but no reason to believe they would not have been top 20)
10 - Penn (see Princeton above :-) )
9 - Stony Brook
9 - Notre Dame
8 - Loyola
7 - Penn State
7 - UMass
6 - Duke
6 - JMU
6 - Denver
5 - Stanford
5 - Dartmouth
5 - Hopkins
Several teams have finished 1 X and some others 2 or 3 times but none are consistently ranked.
Looking at just the past 5 seasons not much has changed...
36 programs have finished the season ranked in the Top 20 over the past 5 years.
22 of those programs have finished in the Top 20 more than once during that 5 years. They are:
5 - UNC
5 - Maryland
5 - Boston College
5 - Northwestern
5 - Florida
5 - Virginia
5 - Syracuse
5 - Princeton (see above)
5 - Penn ( see above)
5 - JMU
5 - Stony Brook
4 - Notre Dame
4 - Loyola
4 - Denver
3 - UMass
3 - Navy
3 - Colorado
3 - Dartmouth (see Penn and Princeton above)
2 - Stanford
2 - Michigan
2 - USC
2 - Duke
Penn State and Hopkins have fallen off a bit while Navy, Colorado, USC and Michigan appear to be on the rise.
Will Boston College be the next program to go on a run? Only time will tell.
UMass & Denver do not get enough credit. They are very good programs.
