Here is our penultimate Men's DII rankings for this 2016 fall season, and this is after two weeks of playoffs.

And we have to stay, the rankings held up quite well the last couple of weeks. First off, the four teams left in the playoffs are the four teams we had in the top four the last two rankings. It was November 2 that we moved Norwich and and Furman up into the #3 and #4 spot, respectively. Since then Furman and Norwich have switched places, but they remain in the top 4 along with Whitewater and Duluth. That's not bad.

Secondly, overall, the rankings did pretty well. Of the 19 games played in the playoffs so far, the higher-ranked team won 14. Straight up, our rankings were 14-5. But even the losses are somewhat mitigated. Of the five losses, no two teams were ranked more than six places apart (Middlebury, #48, over Plymouth State, #42), and we had rankings differences of 1, 2, 3, and 4. In fact, the 2-place ranking difference was Rowan v Illinois State, and the winning margin was only a single point. Overall, three of the five losses were within a try, and the average rankings difference was 3.2 with an average winning margin of 7.7.

That's a long way of saying - even when we got it wrong, we didn't get it wrong by much. Lower-ranked teams that won over higher-ranked teams only beat teams ranked close to them, and not by large margins.

So, we'll take that. Still there have been changes. North Dakota State did really well, and their loss to Duluth was pretty competitive, also, so they move up. The biggest move has to be Colorado School of Mines, which beat Principia and then was pretty close to Duluth. 

The final games are December 3 and 4. Goff Rugby Report will be there on-site and we'll get a good, close look at the top four teams.