The NCR D2 finals will be in a couple of weeks but we've got to update our rankings after the pre-Thanksgiving playoff weekend.
It was a very interesting group of results, which included three consolation games (they didn't play one in one of the brackets). We don't hang a lot of meaning on consolation games, and in this case we had one of those four games not played, another officially forfeited, and one being a 100-plus winning margin. The only game really of any note was Memphis 32 Loyola 26, and that one seems to make sense to us so we're using it.
Overall, then, we're looking at 13 meaningful games to track. Of those, higher-ranked teams won eight times, and lost five times. Now, a .643 winning percentage isn't so great, but it's not horrible. Add in that one game (#11 RPI vs #14 Georgetown) was decided by a single point, another was #4 over #3, and another was #6 losing to #7. So we're not too worried about those. The big rankings upsets, if that's what you want to call it, were Montana State over Chicago and Towson over Grand Valley State.
Those are easily explains away—Montana State has not played a lot out-of-region games and we talked about this through the fall. We suspected MSU was stronger than #18, but couldn't be sure unless we saw it. The result, by the way, that moved MSU up more than the win over Chicago was in fact the close loss to Northern Iowa.
The other game, Towson over GVSU, is just a manifestation of Towson turning their season around. They had their earlier losses still hanging on them, but they have well and truly dismissed them now.
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