This is why the D2 rankings are so much fun.
Teams do not play a great deal out of their region, sometimes they don't play much out of their division within a region.
And when they do, well, we see what you could call upsets. We saw #4, #5, and #6 lose to teams ranked lower. Why? Because teams peak at different times, and teams don't always cross borders. But the biggest reason, and this is the result of some introspection at GRR World Headquarters.
We favored some legacy teams a bit. Norwich, Salisbury, Northern Iowa are teams that are always strong. They are still strong, but when we might have been suspicious of a close win or even a loss we gave them the benefit of the doubt.
Note, though, that we didn't bump Northern Iowa down too far. UNI is still a team to be wary of.
At the same time, the Lonestar's format made it difficult to know even which teams were D2. TCU comes into the Top 40 now, and we're OK with how that went down. A little communication goes a long way guys. Now, where to put TCU? That's when we imagine the Horned Frogs playing each of the teams in the Top 40, and we get them to #24. They could certainly go higher. Their problem in the playoffs will be travel and playing teams they don't know.
The High Peaks was similar in that there's been flex. We saw Mesa coming through, but not to this extent. They have been impressive and showed us up a bit.
So Mesa is up seven spots, Scranton up eight, and Chicago up six. Playoffs are coming, and we could see more shifts. This seems to be a wide open group from #4-#14. The top three, right now, look slightly more unassailable.
