GRR's D2 rankings have only had the opening week, so it's expected that they will change, but before the rankings come out here's a look at how the ranked teams did over this past weekend.
The over 50 teams in action (albeit some were D3 teams in mixed conferences) saw 12 out of the 21 relevant games we have results for had winning margins of 39 or more. So there is clearly a difference between levels.
And, also, interestingly, some of the teams that lost those games are ranked and expected to do well in their conference.
Close Games
We talked a little bit in GRR about how the Northern Lights is back and more robust this year, and the first week's results show that. Northern Lights is a combined league (D2 and D3 teams in the same schedule). St. Thomas (D3) edged D2 Minnesota-Duluth 14-13. North Dakota State got by Winona State 22-10, and MSU Mankato beat D3 St. John's 38-28. All three of those games are in the Northern Lights.
UMBC edged Bucknell 22-19 in MARC. Kent State beat Robert Morris 38-22, and Vermont beat Norwich 44-26.
That UVM vs Norwich game was probably the highest-profile close game of the weekend, with #7 vs #8.
But, interestingly, that was about it for close games (keep in mind we're still trying to confirm one or two scores).
Big Winning Margins
Of the 22 games for which we currently have scores, we'll take one result out because it's D2 Northern Iowa against D1AA Iowa State. That's not particularly representative of what we're talking about.
So now out of 21 games, two were within a try, four more were within 18 points. The next-closest game was a 22-point win, but it was a shutout, which at least comes across as not close. Three games were a margin of 22 to 28. The rest, 12 games, were 39 more (largest winning margin 110, lowest 39 which is why we picked that number as our lowest boundary).
Of those 12 games, two involved were really D3 games. Only one of the rest involved no ranked teams (and it's likely we'll see the winner, University of New Hampshire, ranked this week). The other nine games featured at least one ranked team, and the higher-ranked team won all but one game. Three of the games had a ranked team losing (but to a higher-ranked team), and five had games with unranked teams losing the game.
The higher-ranked loss was Albany (#33) losing to #34 RPI.
So you have in those nine games, the winning teams scored an average of 68 points, and the lower-ranked teams scored an average of five points. So what that tells us is there is an upper echelon.
