We have a new #1.
UNC Wilmington didn't do anything wrong, it's just that, if you're beating a top-three team you should be in consideration for #1, and if we're not making a move now, when?
For the most part, this week, the rankings held. Vermont's defeat of Boston University is an exception, and Montana State moves up.
But, really, we should mupdate you on the playoffs and the main games that set them up. That's more fun to talk about.
Chicago moved to #1 because they won the Great Midwest over a really strong Northern Iowa side. The score was 40-19 with the centerpairing accounting for 30 of UC's 40—the inimitable Caius Michlitsch, a product of the Conestoga club in Pennsylvania, scored three tries, and freshman Henry McGowan, a product of St. Ignatius in Ohio, kicked five conversions and added a try to equal Michlitsch at 15 points.
In seven games this fall Michlitsch has scored 21 tries, getting zero in one game, six in another and exactly three in the remaining five matches. McGowan has scored 105 points in those seven matches, which is exactly 15 per game.
Grand Valley State made a claim for #1 with a 45-17 defeat of Miami of Ohio to win the Great Lakes Conference. This game was quite close in the first half and the teams changed ends with GVSU up 12-10.
But Reinhardt Stipp, Aiden Reilly, and brothers Calvin and Wesley Schwandt all helped spark a dominant second half. Prop Joe Hindenach was impressive at prop.
RIT capped off an undefeated conference season at 8-0, defeating RPI, who end up 0-8, 81-17. This wraps up a dramatic turnaround in the Liberty Conference. RPI is usually a contender in this league and they end jp 0-8, while RIT has not been much in the championship conversation yet here they are.
Also in the Liberty, Cornell completed their rebound from a rough start to beat SUNY Oswego 27-20 and get themselves into a play-in game.
Benedictine beat late surger UMS&T to win the Gateway. Villanova won comfortable over Scranton 33-12 to win the MARC. Like a lot of these conference champions, 'Nove plays best when it's unified, and generally success at the D2 level involves a team finding 2 or 3 or 4 special players who lead the way.
But most now we're seeing teams win with smart organization.
All of these teams are contenders for the NCR national title, but another bunch of teams can make the D2-ranked contenders get sidetracked. And the dark horse? What about Sam Houston State? They were a pretty useful D1AA team, making the CRAA semifinals before switching the next year to NCR and now moving to D2.
They did that because a group of very good players graduated and in fact the school is small enough to be D2. With a more normal player pool it's where they feel they should be. We'll see how that all shakes out. SHSU beat Baylor 33-12 to be the top D2 team out of the Lonestar, and Mermphis beat upstarts Georgia Tech to take the SCRC.
So ... going by the brackets and the rankings, it seems like we expect Chicago to play Grand Valley State in the quarterfinals. Our rankings say Chicago takes that but it's really a tossup.
Memphis vs SHSU in the first round is a bit harsh. That should probably be a quarterfinal matchup. We think the winner of that game will end up in the semis.
Vermont-Scranton-BU-RIT is the most competitive bracket and the rankings bear that out—#7, #8 #9, and #12. So who knows? BU could easily get revenge over UVM. Scranton might beat both ... and we might say the ram about RIT.
We do feel like Wilmington should get to the semis but Villanova will cause them problems. It should be a UNCW-Villanova quarterfinal.
If we were to use the rankings to seed these playoffs, and if geography weren't a consideration, you'd get some differences, but massive ones. Our rankings would have Northern Iowa into the Round of 16 without a play-in, and we'd be on the fence about Coastal Carolina as opposed to, say, Baylor or Georgia Tech.
We've likely have Chicago vs the winner of Cornell and Miami with BU vs RIT in their quadrant of the bracket. We'd have UNC-Wilmington taking on the winner of Duluth and Loyola (and, yes, we know that would never happen), with Vermont vs SHSU in their quadrant.
We've have Memphis vs Weber State and UNI vs Scranton, and we'd have GVSU vs a play-in team (Benedictine or Coastal) while Villanova would play IUP.
Again, travel considerations and other peoples' opinions are factors here. But that's what our rankings say. The only really glaring switchup from reality is UNI.
