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NPI Wildcards
In my NCAA Power Index (NPI) schedule series, I’ve used 2024 numbers to reflect how the 2025 schedules might play out. It’s pretty much guaranteed that a team will not perform exactly like they did the season prior but I also think, for the most part, teams will be somewhat close to what they did in the previous year. There are exceptions and that’s why I’ve done the statistics loss articles. Teams that lose a lot of offense can and will struggle the following year. Power programs tend to avoid this because they can always recruit top talent. These programs also seem to do well in the transfer portal and enticing athletes from DI and DII to “drop down” to their team. Thankfully, the need for the Super Senior is no more (knock on wood) as that also caused problems when trying to determine how much offense a team lost from one year to the next. With all of that said, what I wanted to do here was to look at the NPI wildcard teams for 2025. These are the teams that based on 2024 data will give you an expected NPI range but factoring in statistics loss due to graduation might give you something drastically different. I then hope to look at a few teams and see if we can see if their schedule will trend up or down based on the wildcard opponents.
The first thing I did was look at the statistic loss “leaders”. Which teams were losing the most due to graduation. I then discarded the teams that had an NPI of less than 50 since these teams would still be low NPI squads and that should have been the expectation of any of their opponents.
Here are the top 10 that fit that criteria:
All of these teams should take a hit in 2025 but you’ll notice two power programs made the list in Juniata and WashU. There can be no doubt that Juniata will not be a 77 NPI team in 2025 but they should still deliver a good NPI result if you beat them this season. WashU may lose a couple of points off that 2024 NPI but falling below the cut-line would be surprising just because of who they are. The other programs are a little more interesting to me and it’s also interesting to note that 7 of those 8 are all from the Northeast.
Next, I turned my attention to the flip side of the statistics loss and looked at the programs that weren’t losing much, if any, offense due to graduation. Using 10% as my cut-line, there are 70 programs who will lose less than this in offense. That’s way too many teams for me to process so I limited the schools to those that were below 55 NPI and those only in the Northeast Region simply because that would group my two findings. The schools above the 55 NPI mark were Colby, William Smith, Mary Hardin-Baylor, Williams, UW-Eau Claire, St John Fisher, Middlebury, Swarthmore, St Benedict and Bethel. The teams in bold are those from the Northeast Region. The reason for getting rid of the 55+ teams was simply that they will continue to be good so no real surprise with these teams. After I got rid of the schools outside of the Northeast, I was left with 38 schools that stretched from Virginia to Maine and as far east as Pennsylvania. Because of the rather large number still in this portion of the study, I then eliminated teams that had an NPI of 42 or less. My thinking here is that these schools will be improved but probably will not get above 50 in a single season (and, therefore, won’t really help teams when trying to get to the anticipated cut-line). That took away 11 schools leaving me with the following list:
Alright. So, playing the first list of teams in 2025 will result in, most likely, getting less NPI than you would have thought based on 2024 statistics while playing teams in the second list will get you more.
The next problem was to find some schedules but I already know that Middlebury has released theirs and I know that Colby has theirs out although they are missing some specific matches from two tournaments. Regardless, a good place to start.
Starting with Middlebury, they play five teams mentioned above. Three of them were 55+ NPI teams that are not losing much, if any, statistics due to graduation. These are teams we already knew were going to be tough but now will be tougher. They will also play Union College (53.60 NPI) who will be getting better so they may have another Quality Win Bonus (QWB) team to contend with in 2025. Skidmore was the fifth team and they look like they will move from a low-NPI team to a 50+ NPI team in 2025. Overall, a tough Middlebury schedule will be slightly more difficult than thought. (Just because Middlebury is fresh in my mind from their schedule analysis, that Skidmore change is rather significant. They go from a team where you don’t want to use their win, if earned, to a team that can really help you compensate for a loss and still stay above the cut-line.)
With Colby, I don’t have all of their opponents, yet. From what we have, the only team mentioned above that we know they will play is Middlebury. This is another 55+ NPI team in 2024 that should be getting better. In essence, Colby knows what they are getting with their schedule and the wildcards shouldn’t change that.
Just spot checking some teams and I find that Bowdoin has posted their schedule. Teams that should be better in 2025 that they are playing are Rochester, Colby and Middlebury. Rochester could get to QWB status but they play in the tough UAA so they are going to take their lumps. Bowdoin also plays two NEWMAC teams that could be significantly worse in 2025 in Emerson and Clark. These are both teams that were above 50 NPI but could drop into low-NPI status in 2025. All of that sort of sounds like a wash.
Speaking of Rochester, I decided to see if their schedule had dropped and it had. They will play WashU who we said would be worse this season but, even though Rochester should be better, I would think the gap between the two teams will not get completely covered. Teams on their schedule that should improve are William Smith, St John Fisher, Wheaton, Alfred and Union. Okay. Well, maybe the UAA won’t be so tough this season. (Just trying to be positive here but that Rochester schedule looks to be getting tougher.)
I want to get a NEWMAC school in here because we know those teams have to play Emerson and Clark and I see that Smith has dropped their schedule. Those appear to be the only two teams with a significant chance to be worse this season on their schedule. On the other side of things, they get Colby, Swarthmore, Wheaton, Wellesley and Salve Regina. That appears that the upside of their schedule will compensate for Clark and Emerson. In fact, with three NEWMAC teams in the second list (not losing much), that conference will probably be just fine when it comes to NPI again in 2025.
Well, I didn’t mean for this site to spend so much time in the New England regions but that has been the focus of late. Oh well, I’ll try to fix this moving forward. This look into the NPI wildcards was a little skewed because I had more teams getting better than getting worse. I scanned a few more down the list of teams that should be getting worse (but above 50 NPI last season) and noticed a couple of New England teams in Widener and Eastern but that was about it. In the end, this is a lot of words just to remind people that no one really knows how teams (and schedules) will change from last season to this one. We can look at the statistics and make our best guesses but it appears that 2025 will be another year where we’ll just have to play the matches.
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