We enter now the most tumultuous time of the Men's DII College Rankings.

With playoffs coming, we now see not only how specific teams match up against other good programs, but how that affects our view of conferences as a whole. If team from Conference A sweeps through the playoffs, wouldn't we then take a close look at every team from Conference A? Seems reasonable. And that's how some teams can get a big bump, or a big drop, even if they aren't playing anymore.

And sometimes we look at it all from a new perspective, and change our minds. So, this week, we had the rankings ready to go, and were writing our explanation of why we had various teams from the Northeast where they were. But in writing our rationalization of the decision-making process, we realized we were wrong. So back to the rankings, think about them again, and this is what we came up with:

Providence College is undefeated in the Rugby Northeast, and beat Southern Connecticut in September. SoConn beat Bentley this past weekend. But, it's worth remembering, that Rhode Island beat Providence College in September. Rhode Island is 3-3 in the NECRC, which doesn't seem so great until you realize they lost two competitive games to Norwich, a team we've bumped up to #3. And URI split with Vermont, a close win and a less-close loss. 

It made us think, and reevaluate, and ultimately decide this: Vermont is ranked ahead of URI based on aggregate score. URI is ranked ahead of Providence College based on their September meeting. PC is head of SoConn, which is ahead of Bentley based on results.

Now, we're not sure this will hold up as the playoffs come. UVM wasn't super consistent, and as such putting them as #16 is sort of a nod to that. If they get slammed in the playoffs, they will go down. SoConn and Providence, we think, are much improved. So it could be they go past URI at some point. Providence plays Bentley this weekend - that will tell us a lot.

Also getting a bump - UNC-Charlotte for winning a playoff game on the road against our #10. Principia moves up after beating two ranked teams in the Gateway playoffs and showing real improvement. Montana State also gets a bit of a nudge.

(See updated DII standings here: Men DII College Standings Fall 2016 and playoff update here: College DII Playoff Update)

Now we get to the big stuff. Who can win when they play really tough teams? Among the games coming this weekend:

#1 UW-Whitewater v #23 Northern Iowa
#6 Illinois State v #14 UW-Milwaukee
#18 Providence College v #20 Bentley
#26 William Paterson v #30 Sacred Heart
#8 Rowan v Scranton
#25 IUP v #32 York
#38 SUNY Geneseo v #45 SUNY Oswego
#15 Cortland v RIT
#4 Furman v #11 UNC-Charlotte

​​​​​​​An upset or two and we could see a massive shift.