Most of these rankings don't change very much this week so we're going to focus on two teams.
#1, and briefly, yes UC Santa Barbara comes in despite losing. But losing to Cal Poly 29-14 is not a bad result. Many teams within in the California Conference have lost by much more. UCSB has lost three games so far, those being Cal State Long Beach, Saint Mary's, and Cal Poly. All of those are teams we have ranked. Two of those games we competitive. They have beaten San Diego State, UC Davis, Sacramento State, Santa Clara, and UCSC. Ultimately, it's a tough call because they haven't beaten a ranked team and the teams they have beaten are struggling against other ranked teams. However, overall we're saying, basically, 29-14 against Cal Poly is better than Wisconsin (who had a good season in the fall) would have done.
#2 is Mount St. Mary's. What to do about the Mount. When you look at some of their games you think they should have been higher than they were—32-20 loss to Navy, a 68-27 defeat of Michigan State, a 37-17 defeat of St. Bonaventure. They also beat Kutztown in a close one and Queens in another close one.
But they lost to Mary Washington. That's the tripwire for the Mount. Is it possible that MSM is stronger overall than UMW despite the loss to that same team? Maybe. Against common opponents (including the game where they played each other) UMW is 2-2 with 104 points scores and 73 against. MSM is 2-2 with 91 for and 110 against. Those opponents were each other, Life, Belmint Abbey, and St. Bonaventure.
We can track like opponents as well. Both teams played playoff-caliber NCR-Big Rivers teams (Wheeling and Thomas More). Both played mid- to low-standings Rugby East teams with good pedigrees (Penn State and Kutztown). Both played teams who could win D1A (Lindenwood and Navy). Both played very good D1A teams that are likely playoff-bound (Davenport and GCU).
Against those teams, UMW is 2-2 with a PF of 64 and PA of 108; MSM is 3-1 with a PF of 120 and PA of 96.In addition, UMW has a big win over Virginia Tech and MSM has wins over Queens, Michigan State, Southern Virginia (twice).
So the questions we then need to answer are: Should Mount St. Mary's be ranked ahead of Grand Canyon. The answer is "yes." Should UMW be ranked ahead of Grand Canyon. Based on all the info showing UMW very close to MSM, we'd say "yes." Should MSM and/or UMW be ranked ahead of Cal Poly? Tough question. It comes down to strength of schedule as much as anything else. All three have played multiple highly-ranked teams. Cal Poly having played Cal, Saint Mary's, BYU, and Central Washington, probably has the edge there. They were close in two of those games; not really in the other two.
Should Cal Poly be ranked ahead of Arizona? Should MSM and UMW be ranked ahead of Arizona? Well in the end we can look at the CWU vs Arizona result (19-17 for CWU) and the Cal Poly vs CWU result (41-20 for CWU) and make a conclusion from that. Arizona was also closer vs Saint Mary's. It would have been nice to see Grand Canyon play Arizona in a full 1sts vs 1sts game, because that would have provided more of a direct comparison.
So we came into this discussion leaning toward bumping Mount St. Mary's up considerably. But in the end we're looking at what is sufficiently compelling evidence to throw out a 19-point loss, and is a close loss to Navy and a win over St. Bonaventure enough to do that? In the end we can't do it. We can move MSM past GCU, obviously, but there's not a clear path for MSM to bypass Mary Washington, and there's not a clear path for Cal Poly to bypass Arizona. We might think that if those teams played this coming weekend the lower-ranked team might win, but that's not good enough.
