NCR's DIAA brackets are set.

As reported Sunday on GRR, there was a little shuffling, partly due to how the Mid-Atlantic Rugby Conference handled its tiebreakers, and partly due to the fact that West Chester will be in the middle of exams and needed their players to get back to campus quickly.

This bracket is a bit of a strange one because before switching to playing under NCR the Chesapeake Conference was DIAA, but during this season it became clear that the top two or three teams in the Chesapeake were of a higher level. Meanwhile, the Liberty Conference was formerly DIA, and the teams in that conference still have expressed the desire to be considered of a DIA level. However, the conference is split when it comes to playoffs, with the top few going into the DI playoffs (or the play-ins—Brown beat Fordham 52-5 in one such play-in), and others that didn't finish as high in the DIAA playoffs.

So DI and DIAA in the NCR is in part based on a fluid examination of the level of play within conferences. At the same time, the MARC is a wholly DIAA conference, and there could be an argument that those teams, as well, might best be split between the two levels.

(The counter to that argument is that some MARC teams left the Chesapeake because it was becoming too quasi-varsity, and therefore, by definition, they are DIAA).

It does seem that we are slowly getting to a real definition if DI and DIAA. 

The numbers next to the team names are the NCR rankings. GRR has their own DIAA rankings, which includes non-NCR teams, and last week we ranked the participating teams as follows:

Boise State #19 Boise State, WWU Start Strong in NCRC
Nazareth: Not Ranked
Salisbury #23
Virginia Tech #45
St. Joseph's #16
Binghamton: Not Ranked because Liberty teams not considered DIAA
West Chester #22
Buffalo: Not Ranked because Liberty teams not considered DIAA