D3VbWest Top 25 (9/9/24)

Week 2 of the season is over so it’s now time to see who we think are the best of the best so far. I dropped a number of big-time teams last week but you will see a couple of them reappear this week. It’s like a free magic show in the midst of a great article. Still have a lot of movement through out the rankings as there should be this early in the season.

Before I forget, again. (I should have mentioned this on the Wrap-Up.) Congratulations to Juniata for breaking the DIII consecutive wins record!

Here is what we’ve got this week:

My rank, (my previous rank, AVCA rank), record; key results; Points/Set.1 (1, 1) Juniata 5-0, W: Ohio Northern; 19.2. 2 (2, 2) Hope 6-0, W: Wittenberg; 17.95. 3 (3, 4) Johns Hopkins 5-1, W: Trinity, Emory; 16.43. 4 (9, 7) UW-Whitewater 7-0, W: Cornell, Northwestern; 18.96. 5 (4, 6) Emory 5-1, W: CMS L: JHU; 18.00. 6 (6, 8) UW-Oshkosh 8-1, W: None; 17.39. 7 (8, 17) Millikin 6-1, W: Chicago; 15.86. 8 (10, 11) La Verne 7-0, W: None; 17.33. 9 (18, NR) Centre 6-1, W: Transy, Covenant; 17.09. 10 (22, 9) Claremont-M-S 4-2, W: Trinity, Tufts L: Emory; 17.74. 11 (7, 10) Gust. Adolphus 5-2, W: None L: UW-Eau Claire; 16.82. 12 (14, NR) Marietta 6-0, W: Carnegie Mellon; 17.52. 13 (12, 13) MIT 6-0, W: None; 18.16. 14 (15, 15) North Park 6-0, W: None; 17.65. 15 (16, 18) Calvin 5-1, W: Wittenberg; 18.50. 16 (NR, 12) Northwestern 3-3, W: Cornell L: UWW; 14.50 17 (NR, 16) WashU 4-2, W: Trinity, Tufts; 17.02 18 (5, 5) Trinity 3-3, W: None L: JHU, CMS, WashU; 16.83. 19 (11, 25) East Texas Baptist 6-1, W: None; 18.72. 20 (13, 3) NYU 6-1, W: Stevens L: Bowdoin; 17.52. 21 (19, NR) Stevens 5-1, W: Bowdoin L: NYU; 16.10. 22 (20, NR) Salisbury 6-0, W: None; 18.43. 23 (17, NR) Southwestern 7-0, W: None; 18.06. 24 (23, NR) Case Western Reserve 8-0, W: Mount Union; 16.05. 25 (24, 19) Ithaca 5-1, W: None; 17.38.

Dropped Out: Otterbein (21) and Wesleyan (25)

I want to start off saying that I really tried to get Hanover and Gettysburg (both undefeated) into the rankings this week. I could have moved out Ithaca, CWRU, Southwestern or Salisbury but I would have been guessing and after looking at a bunch of schedules and statistics, I finally decided that it really didn’t matter that much this early in the season. On top of those two teams, I really wanted to get another New England team in the rankings but something always got in their way. Bowdoin beat NYU but lost to Stevens. Tufts has two losses (to good teams). Babson only has one loss and beat Wesleyan but that one loss is to a team that could be in the rankings in Franklin & Marshall. Of course, F&M lost to Eastern who has one loss to Haverford who has 3 losses. Other teams of note that didn’t make it are Virginia Wesleyan, Otterbein and Chicago.

I did a lot of pruning last week so there wasn’t much to trim this week. Thankfully Northwestern and WashU grew back although I’m still not sold on NW. I had a couple of comments about teams being fatigued during the tournaments and that does explain a number of unusual results or scores. There are such things as scheduled losses but every team will face this and the best are supposed to fight through. Still, this came into play with the ordering of some of the teams. I did have to drop Otterbein who suffered a loss to Hanover. Since I couldn’t get Hanover in the rankings, Otterbein had to leave. Wesleyan started a week later than most and lost a match to Babson. Again, without Babson getting in it was hard to keep Wesleyan in.

My next problem was the ordering as things start to get muddled as we have more results to consider. I do my best to explain my actions below.

Juniata is just unreal. Tune in Friday when they take on Hope. Hope is also unreal. Johns Hopkins has a loss to Juniata but just went 3-0 in the East/West Challenge. UWW gets another big boost up my boards. If you don’t know why, go read the Weekly Wrap-Up. Finishing my Top 5 is Emory as they went 2-1 in the East/West Challenge. Not too much to talk about with these five.

I’ve got UW-Oshkosh in my next five. They have a loss to Gust Adolphus but they took a loss to UWEC this week and I had to drop them down. Millikin follows and only has a loss to UWO. Three teams linked come next in La Verne, Centre and CMS. Centre beat CMS but lost to La Verne so the ordering is easy. CMS showed well this week so I don’t mind bringing them up to round out the Top 10.

Gust Adolphus slips to 11^th followed by Marietta (beat Calvin week one), MIT (no clue where they should be), North Park and Calvin. Not much movement from the teams sitting 11-15 this week.

At 16 and 17, I dropped in Northwestern and WashU. NW has that win over WashU while WashU has a win over Trinity. Trinity, in turn has a win over ETBU, which explains why those two teams follow. Rounding out this group of five is NYU. NYU did have that loss to Bowdoin but also beat Stevens who, because the world hates me and doesn’t want things easy, beat Bowdoin. I could have brought Bowdoin in here but just didn’t have a team I wanted to discard. The result did cause NYU to drop a bit in my rankings. If Bowdoin does come into the rankings at some point, they could get linked to these two teams.

The last group of five starts with Stevens and then Salisbury. Southwestern drops after being perfect this weekend. Their big wins are Aurora and UW-Stevens Point week one and those teams are losing some luster. That means Southwestern loses some luster. I finish with CWRU and Ithaca. As I mentioned above, any of these last 4 teams could have been replaced this week, which is sort of the danger sitting in the last 5 spots of any rankings.

I’ve got the Latvians NPI numbers for all of DIII. I’m waiting on Ned. The issue is the schedule and how matches are recorded. There seems to be errors and missing results, which happens every year but now at-large selection is on the line with each mistake. Ned and the Latvians are using different source data for the results, which is actually good if it stays that way. Allows us to compare and find the errors. I do want to give a word of warning to the NCAA and to every coach. First, NCAA please release the win/loss records and/or winning percentage with the NPI numbers. Second, coaches you’ll need to validate your team’s record with what the NCAA says you have. If the NCAA only releases the NPI number then there is no way to know if the source data is correct.