With the national championship all wrapped up here is the last rankings of the fall of 2023.
No surprise, of course, that IUP is #1, and in fact IUP was ranked #1 or #2 all season. Memphis worked their way up thanks to their results, but we were a bit hamstrung by their conference. The Tigers were so dominant in their conference it was difficult to judge where they stood nationally. Meanwhile, the Great Midwest Conference has historically been very strong, which is, in part, why Northern Iowa was ranked #1 for the last few weeks.
UNI's 4th-place finish national does bump the other Great Midwest teams down a bit. And if you ask us what is the strongest conference right now we'd probably say NEWCRC. Coast Guard gets a bump.
Further on Northern Iowa ... it's a shame for them. They lost their biggest try-scorer and one of their best players to injury and ultimately lost to Memphis by four points. Had UNI beaten Vermont in the 3rd-place game, then we might have had them at #3. But they didn't. We have Georgetown at #3 because they lost to Memphis 17-15—about as close as Memphis 43 UNI 39. It is fair to say that #2 through #10 is a pretty tight group. IUP is a shade better, and the thing about IUP is they are a shade better on a consistent basis. Even with top players hurt (and they won this past weekend's championship with their best player hardly able to run and their starting fullback on the sidelines) they played superbly well.
All of this is good. We have been seeing significant changes in D2 rugby because new programs show up and win and then move up a division. It is highly unlikely we'll see much change in the list of teams below ... just their order. This is the landscape of Men's D2 college for the foreseeable future, and if you look at the championship weekend, it was pretty good.
