Men D2 College Rankings 2021 Week 10
Men D2 College Rankings 2021 Week 10
Well the rankings took a bit of a hit in playoff time.
This isn't the first time that's happened, and the reason is even more pronounced—we don't see a lot of teams cross over from one conference to another, or even from one division within a conference to the other side, and in this post-COVID-shutdown time that lack of crossover data has been even tougher to make up for.
Still, it wasn't a complete bloodbath. The #1 team survived (although #2 lost in a close one). Overall, higher ranked teams won eight and lost six this week. Thomas More over Marian was the biggest surprise. Georgia Tech over Memphis wasn't much of a shocker at all, really, as they were ranked very close. We didn't have Drexel ranked because we hadn't seen them against tough opposition (same with Georgetown at #39). But they showed they deserve to be in the rankings.
Georgetown's downing of Bucknell happened because we had some other teams ranked highly because of reputation, so when Bucknell beat those teams were we like "wow" when we should have been like "huh."
UNC-Wilmington's victory over Furman is predictable too because UNCW was getting better and better through the season and Furman is pretty young. We still think the Great Midwest teams are strong and any of the three in the playoffs could win it all on the right day. But could the champion be #23 Virginia? Sure it could. Could it be #3 Principia? Of course. And Thomas More, moving from #10 to #34; could they move to #1? Why not?
(We moved East Carolina down despite their not having done anything one way or the other because we had Citadel too low and needed to nudge them up a bit, while also bringing a team Citadel beat down below them. And we can't move any idle team up too drastically because there are so many important games actually being played.)