One of the key things to remember in the early going on rankings is that teams can move very dramatically on admittedly flimsy evidence.
We're looking at some preseason warmup games here and those games can have so many caveats attached—player availability issues, testing players at different positions. We take the results at face value but it's worth remembering that early non-conference results might also be thrown away if a team shows better evidence in conference or (even better) playoff games.
We also find ourselves giving major moves for one or two results and that also pushes down teams that haven't played. It's a very volatile time. So, yes, we're pretty comfortable with the top 20 or so, but the next 30 got shuffled around pretty heavily. This includes the arrival of Fairfield, UMass, and IUPUI, with those last two coming in despite losing, because they lost close games.
What is helpful about the preseason is the crossover matches. The ones we already saw, and the ones this coming weekend such as Kentucky at Thomas More, Ohio State at Tennessee. Combine those with conference games, as the MAC, Big 10, Rugby East, and Liberty all hit their stride, we'll have a lot more data.
