The penny dropped for us after the second round of playoffs so we’re not all that impressed with ourselves.
Vermont was clearly the #1 team in the country. It took us until our penultimate rankings to cotton on to that. However, we had UNC-Wilmington #1 for a while and we’ll take credit for that because no team was close to Vermont all season. No one.
Except the Seahawks.
The reason we took so long to recognize Vermont was because of their conference. With all due respect to the NACR, this was not a year of top-to-bottom strength in that conference. Last year we had four solid teams and four that had work to do. This year we had one team at the top of the game, one very good, and the others with work to do. Some a LOT of work to do.
So we didn’t have much of a frame of reference, which is crucial in rankings. At least with UNCW, which plays in kind of a weird conference, we had a frame of reference with their games against D1AA teams.
But then, after the playoffs, we started to see that no matter who Vermont played, they won big. Very big. It’s kind of astonishing what they did.
Counting the final regular-season game, which decided the top seed in the playoffs, and then conference final, UVM played six straight playoff-level games. The scores were:
42-12
43-10
64-11
43-16
22-11
71-5
These results were against conference champions or runners-up. It’s pretty sobering to look at.
OK, Vermont is #1. UNC-Wilmington (that 22-11 team) is obviously #2. No one was anywhere close to that score vs the Catamounts.
Then? Look, we have all sorts of respect to Chicago and Grand Valley State and what they were able to do, but in the end the NCR playoff brackets were lopsided. Having UVM, IUP, Cornell, UNCW, and Memphis in the same side of the bracket was pretty crazy. We feel that if any of those teams were in the other side of the bracket, they would have at least made the semis, if not the final.
The comparison scores bear that out. The score of the final and (to a lesser extent) the 3rd-4th match (UNCW 74 GVSU 14) helps us make the comparisons we need to make.
So all of that prompted us not to just follow the playoff finishes. We also had to fix something (Coastal Carolina beat Salisbury in a consolation round and we ranked them based on a loss. Not a big deal, it’s a consolation game, but it does end up having an effect.)
The NACR has some coattails, and so does the Southern Conference. Other conferences might find themselves dropping a bit overall. We didn’t go crazy on this because we’d already baked in some of that into our rankings, but you will see RPI move up, and Coastal Carolina, and we seriously considered dropping some GMW teams down a spot or two.
The problem with the NACR overall, however, is no one was really close to Norwich or Vermont. We would have liked to have seen Coast Guard vs Maine, but with the success of Vermont we’re moving CGA and the Black Bears to a tie for #39.
In the end, though, the big moves are more obvious than that. Memphis moves from #11 to #3. Their very close loss to UNCW (50-43) is why. Coastal Carolina lost to Memphis 39-38, and with their “loss” to Salisbury thrown out, we move them up from #16 to #9.
Cornell was very competitive with UVM and lost 43-16 thanks to a couple of late scores and we feel that #4 if fair.
These are all pretty arguable. It’s pretty clear that #3 to #14 is, overall, pretty close. #1 and #2 are indesputable.
This was a good D2 season because of that, and also because this was a true battle of club teams. These are student-athletes who play for the love of it and for the love of their team. Some might find success as adult rugby players, and we’ve noticed a few who would do well there.
But at the top, every now and then there’s a team you can’t touch. UM-Duluth was like that once. UW-Whitewater was like that. Then we got the run of teams that should have been in other divisions winning the title. They were either D1 schools (NCSU) or school-supported (Thomas More, Adrian, Principia). Once that started to change, here comes IUP with a special run (runners up to Principia and then two championships).
That’s how it goes, but we have rarely seen a team blast through their competition to the level that UVM did.
