Rankings Talk

Long day of travel but the (hot) wife and I are now on vacation. I normally come out with a very detailed thought out and wrong Top 25 on Mondays but that’s a lot of work without the time to do it correctly. (It’s hard to be incorrect correctly.) I thought I might kill two birds with one stone here and talk about the Top 25 and where I would probably go with it and combine it with some NPI talk.

Looking through my Top 25 from last week, there is no doubt that Juniata is your undisputed number 1. They have wins over Hope, Johns Hopkins and UW-Oshkosh. They have dropped 3 sets in 8 matches and never more than one at a time.

Hope was last week’s number 2 but they dropped two matches this week. One was to Juniata so…understandable. Also understandable was a loss to UW-Oshkosh although getting swept throughs up a red flag to me. (Maybe not red. How about a mild pinkish hue?) The question for me this week would be who is number 2 and deciding between Oshkosh, Johns Hopkins and Whitewater. I might go in that order while dropping Hope down to 5^th. Looking at Whitewater, however, they have a win over Millikin who beat Oshkosh, so maybe UWW, UWO and then JHU?

Emory had a nice week with wins over Northwestern, Gust Adolphus and Stevens Point. As a reward, they drop a spot.

Millikin now has two losses but they are to UWO and UWW so they probably stay where they are. La Verne didn’t play this past week but will go to Whitewater so let’s keep them where they are at for now. They will move next week one way or another.

Centre was my 9^th team but they dropped a match to Transylvania in 4-sets. They had previously swept Transy the week before and both matches were played at Transy. They are going to drop but I’m unsure by how much.

CMS had moved up to 10^th last week for me but took their third loss, this time to East Texas Baptist in 5-sets. They did have a nice win over Whitworth but I think I need to move them down and remember, one of their losses is to Centre.

Gust Adolphus (last week 11) went 0-3 this week and are now 6-5 overall. They have a big win over UW-Oshkosh week one and their losses are against good teams but they would be at risk this week of dropping out of the rankings. Their loss against UW-Stevens Point is troubling because other teams in this ranking have wins over the Pointers.

Marietta went 2-0 with a win over Mount St Joseph but that’s not your 2023 win there. They have a win over Calvin and with others dropping they probably get moved up (they were 12 last week) but I sort of like them around the 12 to 15 range.

Things have become clearing regarding MIT. The problem with their program is trying to figure out if they are going to play anyone of note and win. Well, they have a sweep over Endicott who went to Trinity and won this past weekend. This week they beat Whittier (good team) and took a 5-setter from Chris Newport who had a good weekend for themselves. I think MIT is in the Top 10 easy this week.

North Park was 14^th last week and they are really living on their 2023 performance. They just haven’t played anyone this year. I don’t see myself moving them up despite others having tripped up.

Calvin beat Whittier and Tufts but lost to Chris Newport (swept). They were at 15 last week but are probably falling this week, but still in the rankings.

Northwestern has played one tough schedule and went 2-1 last week moving to 5-4 on the season. Their losses are Hope, Coe, Whitewater and Emory. We can only really pick at that Coe loss. They have a sweep of WashU so they stay in the rankings but finding a home for them is difficult right now.

WashU had 5 wins last week but were only challenged by Loras (good but not great team). I probably keep them with NW for another week due to their head-to-head loss earlier in the year.

Something is off with Trinity. They are 5-4 playing a tough schedule but take a loss to Endicott at home. They do have a 5-set win against ETBU at home. They will stay rank as I think some of this is bad luck but finding a home for them would have also been tough.

I had ETBU at 19^th last week being blocked by Trinity. They had a nice weekend winning 4 matches in SoCal including one against CMS. I probably move them past Trinity this week and they probably sail past a number of other teams. I don’t think they make Top 10 but they are probably sitting just outside of there.

Colby College? I didn’t have them ranked but they took down NYU. They have one loss on the year and that’s to MIT. They also have a win over Endicott. NYU’s big win is Stevens. NYU probably hangs on to the Top 25 but Colby has to make an appearance in front of them.

Stevens is 7-1 with a loss to NYU. No big wins to speak of so they probably stay behind NYU and hope they hang on somewhere.

Salisbury doesn’t really have a great win on their resume and they lose two this week including once to Washington & Lee. W&L looks to be a team I need to bring into the Top 25. I doubt Salisbury stays.

Southwestern is another team that is at risk. They took a loss to a good Hardin-Simmons team (who lost to Mary Hardin-Baylor this week). Southwestern did beat Mary Hardin-Baylor so tough call there. The HSU loss was 5-sets while the UMHB win was a sweep. Not sure they hang on. With that win over Stevens Point, it would be hard to bounce them and keep Gust Adolphus.

CWRU (the darling of NPI…see below) keeps doing what they need to do, which is win. They stay and probably see a slight bump. Ithaca was my 25^th team last week and they took a loss to Johns Hopkins. They really don’t have a top win right now and might be an easy team to drop for someone else.

I’m not going back to count but there does seem to be a few spaces for teams. I mentioned Colby and Washington & Lee have to be considered. Last week I really wanted to get Hanover and Gettysburg in the rankings. Hanover is undefeated with a win over Otterbein. Unsure. Their Strength of Schedule is really low. Gettysburg lost to William Smith and that does them in. I liked Babson but they have a loss to Franklin & Marshall and they just beat another team I like in Virginia Wesleyan. F&M would probably be in the rankings this week.

There are others under consideration but that is where the extra time comes in to research. I hope this run through keeps everyone happy until next week.

I could have led off with this next part but then why read about rankings if we also discuss the NPI? I have updated the 2024 NPI Rankings Page with the latest from the Latvians. I have both sets of data from our simulations and they are very close. We are struggling with which teams contribute to NPI or not. For instance, does Ferrum who is moving to DII count? UT-Dallas is doing the same thing but we know they do not count. The Latvians did something neat, which was include the SOS calculation that would have been used as a selection criterion last year. Ned did something cool, too. He listed the NPI leader for each conference and then figured out where the at-large cutoff would be. Anyway, lots to discuss so let’s get to it.

The first thing to note going through the numbers is that we now have teams that are dropping bad wins. CWRU is 12-0 and have now dropped their matches against Adrian and Albion because it lowers their overall NPI. Those matches, of course, count for the other teams and teams that have played CWRU, Adrian or Albion. As teams drop matches, their NPI will start increasing in jumps.

The at-large cutoff, per the Latvians, is Smith at 56.19. That means teams like CMS, Chris Newport, Babson, Coe, Northwestern and Gust Adolphus are out unless they win their conference tournament. All of these teams are ones that I have ranked or were looking to rank.

Juniata is the clear leader with a large gap to second place MIT. Hope is ahead of UW-Oshkosh despite losing to them this week. Unranked teams like Franklin & Marshall, Colby and Washington & Lee are experiencing NPI love. Anderson is sitting at 5-0 and would have an at-large bid despite having an SOS of only 0.498. Interesting that Trinity is still above the cutline at 5-4 while CMS at 6-3 are below it. Both have an SOS above 0.600. Trinity has played against better NPI teams. Northwestern is looking like our Ithaca example of a team that plays a tough schedule but suffers too many losses. They are 5-4 with an SOS of 0.619 but are below the cutline.

 (The Ithaca Example describes their program a few years back when they played a tough schedule but lost to most of those teams. They finished with an almost 0.500 record but a great SOS. They made the tournament. NPI will not favor those teams.)

I’d love to write more about this but there is a drink somewhere with my name on it.