2014 regional rankings: Rams jump 2 spots to 5th in Midwest

The NCAA released the last of three public regional rankings today. The national committee will create a final working order once all conference tournaments are completed (let’s be honest, they have a general working order Saturday evening). Unfortunately, we are not privy to the final working orders. Why? Nobody knows.

Central (Week 1, 2 rank)1 (1,1). Nebraska Wesleyan 2 (2,2). Washington-St. Louis 3 (4,3). Augsburg 4 (3,4). St. Thomas 5 (5,5). Saint Benedict 6 (6,6). Coe

Midwest (Week 1, 2 rank)1 (3,1). UW-Stevens Point 2 (1,2). Carthage 3 (2,4). Elmhurst 4 (4,3). Millikin 5 (7,7). Cornell 6 (5,5). UW-Whitewater 7 (NR,NR). Chicago Dropped out: No. 6/6 UW Oshkosh.

Top three in other regions (Week 1, 2 rank) Great Lakes: Hope (1,1); Calvin (3,2); Wittenberg (2,3). Mid-Atlantic: Christopher Newport (1,1); Eastern (2,2); Juniata (3,3). New England: Williams (1,1); Bowdoin (2,2); Roger Williams (3,3). New York: Clarkson (2,1); New Paltz St. (3,3); Stevens (4,4). South: Emory (1,1); Hendrix (5,3); Washington and Lee (2,2). West: Cal Lutheran (1,1); Pacific Lutheran (3,3); Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (4,4).

The Midwest Region rankings are what I thought they’d be last week. However, recent results should not have affected the rankings this much. Some? Absolutely. But my amateur opinion is that the committee also corrected prior ranking assessments. And that’s fine.

Additional comments, if any, will follow later tonight. Anyone have a compliment or gripe about the last rankings we’ll see?

Update (11/6/14  @ 4:45 p.m. central): The PDF’s are great with extra columns devoted to many of the criteria. Only things missing are the rest of the teams. Seems like a lot to be missing. It would be quite a confident move if the NCAA is saying, “Because we all agree on the proper teams that should be ranked in each region, here’s an expanded look at those teams.”

The problem is that we (probably) don’t all agree with the teams. Even if we did, I for one would like to see the supporting evidence that makes it so clear.

Update (11/6/14 @ 5:30 p.m. central): That was quick. PDF’s have reverted to their regular forms. I know the national committee has a comparison tool and other bells and whistles at its disposal, but I hope today’s first published versions of the PDF’s were not the only resources for the RAC’s. It’s something I should know for sure, but I don’t [know] what they have at their disposals this year. If you did not see them, two adjectives I’d use to describe the truncated-but-in-depth PDF’s are inadequate and incomplete. However, they were very nice in an overview/quick-facts type of way. They were a nice start to my projections prep, not a comprehensive tool for ranking teams.

-Ricky Nelson