Not a lot of changes in our DIA Rankings this week.
In the end, everyone did just about what the rankings would expect. Cal is a great example of that. Ranked #5 by GRR and #4 by the entire DIA voting process, Cal beat #7 Army a week ago 31-14, and then lost to #1 Navy 33-28. Central Washington, ranked #2 by GRR, beat Army 36-14.
Everything there slots in somewhat nicely with the rankings, although it did prompt us to nudge Cal up a slot to #4.
The rest of the results fit fairly nicely into the rankings, which means it's not especially exciting, but confirmation of the ranking has its own level of interest.
We did spend a large amount of time looking at UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz. Davis almost beat Santa Clara and we ended up wondering whether the early-season loss by Davis to UCSC, to the tune of 22-20, might be thrown out if Davis was markedly better in other results.
In the end, no. We looked at like-opponent comparisons between the two. Davis had a better results vs Saint Mary's, Santa Clara, and UCSB, while UCSC had a better result against Cal Poly. But ... the Saint Mary's vs UC Davis game was played on the same day as Saint Mary's played UBC. And of course, don't forget that Santa Cruz beat Davis head to head. We're going to need more. Add in the fact that Davis lost to Cal State Long Beach, a team UCSC plays this weekend, and you do not have the recipe for throwing out that close result.
This coming weekend Central Washington plays BYU, Penn State is at Navy, and Life is at Lindenwood. That could shake things up a bit.
