DIAA-Level Men College Rankings Week 13
DIAA-Level Men College Rankings Week 13
Happy Thanksgiving everyone and here are our updated DIAA rankings.
The #1 team Tennessee did what strong #1 teams do and won a tough playoff game. With the Chesapeake getting knocked down a peg or two Mary Washington drops to #9; this is in part because a number of teams have had good wins or close losses that say more enough about their status to make the slope slippery for the Mothers.
Yes Brown lost, but by a point to Penn State (a Penn State team that is essentially equal to the team that beat UMW, St. Bonaventure). We could argue that Notre Dame deserves to drop after a bigger loss to Indiana, but in the end their results have been good enough, including that win over Bowling Green, for the Irish to hang in there.
The key mover is Virginia Tech, which made the opposite argument for the Chesapeake by being unranked and yet winning two playoff games. Even though Salisbury drops after that result, we are kind of being cautious about that results (91-0). It was a rough ending for the Salisbury numbers and depth. Is V-Tech really that good best vs best? You wonder. The Hokies defeat of Boise State is also a situation where you could argue that the NCRC #3 team (which is what they are) isn't the toughest game VT could have had. In the end Virginia Tech vaults to #20, but we're not sold. It could be that this was just a fortunate bracket for the Hokies.
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The results do force us to essentially push aside the VT loss to Southern Virginia, because we're not moving SVU up—no evidence we should. But ...
Remember, Virginia Tech was supposed to play West Chester, but West Chester asked for a change so they could be closer to campus. What would we be saying had the original seedings remained? We think West Chester would have beaten Virginia Tech just as they beat UB and SJU, and if that had happened we might instead have moved teams like Boise State further down and barely seen VT edge into the top 45. We would, however, also likely have been St. Joe's still in the Top 10.