Power Rankings are here once again to cure your Hump Day blues! I promised at 1PM and it is a race to the finish to get this thing done. It’s currently 12:43 PM and that means I should be right on track. Welcome to a very important but potentially uninteresting Power Rankings as not too many upsets happened at the top of DIII last week. There were a lot of things that happened at the bottom, though, and that means something. Shout-out to Raz on today’s Power Rankings. Great day. Just kidding. Let’s get to the Power Rankings before I do something stupid.
Notable Movers
Note that there were basically no moves in the top 19, which is pretty surprising but not surprising at the same time. I was having a discussion with one of our readers and I think the Top 10-11 is a tier above the rest of the crew. The teams from 12-19 are all kind of in the same boat, with potential for stunning disappointments but still scary due to their program name. Crazy, right?
Mary Washington, up 3 spots to #25 – Welcome to the resurrection of the Mary Washington season. After taking a ton of losses earlier this year, the Eagles have now taken out Chris Newport, Hopkins, and others while looking pretty good doing it. The Eagles seem to have found their chemistry now that Gilmore is gone and they are trending up. This is a team that should still win their conference and take a #2 seed and potential host in NCAAs.
Brandeis, down 5 spots to #26 – The DIII Tennis Gods giveth, and the Tennis Gods taketh away. A week after getting their highest power ranking of all time from the Blog, Brandeis falls 5 spots after a loss to Trinity CT. Good teams handle their success and keep it rolling. Teams learning how to be successful sometimes take their lumps. Oh, the Judges were so close to the top 20. Welcome back to the #25-30 range. We’re glad to have y’all back!
Trinity CT, up 9 spots to #30 – If you get a big win in the top 30, you’re bound to move up a billion spots in this year’s rankings because everyone seems to be losing to everybody. Trinity CT is the main beneficiary of a weak 25-40 set of teams and they move up 9 spots with their win over Brandeis. They did so on the back of a doubles sweep and some timely grinding. Bantams are back in the top 30.
CNU, down 3 spots to #32 – The freefall continues for CNU, who are doing the opposite of the Mary Wash Eagles. This weekend, CNU got trounced 9-0 by TCNJ, yet are somehow still ranked ahead of them in the rankings. C’mon bloggers. CNU had David Reed back so there really is no excuse to being shutout by a team ranked below you. CNU gave me a lot of flak on twitter for some comments I made earlier this year, so this fall has me chuckling a little. Earn back your ranking, Captains..
Sewanee, down 7 spots to #34 – Sewanee becomes the latest victim to lose to an unranked team, continuing a trend that we’ve only started to see this year. They lost this weekend to SAA rival Oglethorpe, who has never been ranked before (and still should not be). Sewanee is a solid team but they have had a hard time putting everything together. They simply don’t have enough diamonds in the rough and their top guys aren’t good enough to carry every time out. Sewanee stock, down.
W&L, down 9 spots to #40 – Despite getting Jordan Krasner back this weekend, the Generals lost to conference foe Virginia Wesleyan, another surprising defeat. You’ll notice that W&L hasn’t fallen out of the top 40, but they will soon with another conference loss. The Generals are hoping for Michael Holt’s return sometime soon so they can back to their top 30 winning ways. Until then, the Generals fall to the cusp of our National Rankings.
There you have it. The Power Rankings on this sunny day on the East Coast. Time to hit some rooftop bars and prepare for the UAA Tournament, am I right? Whatever your plans are for this lovely Wednesday, make sure to check back later for a UAA Day 1 Preview, headed up by yours truly. This is my week. I’m not about commenters saying that D3NE is the most active blogger. We run this thang. ASouth, OUT.
Correction…. Oglethorpe was ranked #40 once this season.
They have never been ranked on our Power Rankings, which is what this article is.
Denison beats Depauw. Depauw beats Coe. Coe is ahead of both of them. More weight to moral victories than to actual victories? Close only counts in horseshoes, hand-granades, and power rankings.
Coe beats Rose-Hulman 8-1, Rose-Hulman beats Wabash 9-0, Wabash beats Denison 5-4, Denison beats DePauw 5-4
Coe beats Oglethorpe. Oglethorpe beats Sewanee
Coe beats Carleton. Carleton beats Virginia Wesleyan. Virginia Wesleyan beats Washington and Lee. Washington and Lee beats Mary Washington. Mary Washington beats Stevens. Stevens beats Swarthmore. Swarthmore. Swarthmore beats Lewis and Clark. Lewis and Clark beats Whitman. Whitman beats Redlands. Redlands beats Wesleyan. Wesleyan beats Amherst. Amherst beats Bowdoin.
Amherst beat Bowdoin last year. So nvm but you get the point
Also Redlands didn’t beat Wes. But they beat tufts who beat Amherst
I think if this year has shown us anything it’s that with the increasing popularity/power of DIII, the parity between all but the top teams has increased even more dramatically. Everyone and their mom now has at least a couple two and three stars loitering around their lineups, which means that teams in the 21-40 range are probably an absolute nightmare to rank. If I had to guess about the bloggers’ intentions re: coe’s ranking, they probably gave them a more favourable ranking because they feel coe has at least done a decent job of not losing to the teams that they’re supposed to beat. That seems like pretty much the only thing that can differentiate a team from the rest of the mid-tier anarchy
Amen to that! After the top 10, it’s a nightmare. Also I think the parity is because the top teams are as strong as ever making the rest of the teams on average weaker, but much more spread out in terms of talent than before.
I actually think the top 10 or so teams are actually getting stronger! There are ~50 5 star recruits per year, and of that lot next year’s freshman class for div. III is going to have 6 of them! that’s absolutely insane. Even 4-5 years ago a recruiting class that had a handful of 3 star recruits was considered quite good. Granted any discussion of older recruitment rankings is going to have to consider whether they were more/less generous back then or even whether the system was as reliable back before they were really “a thing”
I agree that recruiting has gotten stronger, but all those 5 stars are going to the top teams. They are going to continue to distance themselves from the rest of the pack.
There are a bunch of indirects flying around. You’re right that in the power rankings we’re more free to rank teams subjectively. A perfect example is Tyler, who we have in the top 25 despite the fact that they have 0 top 40 wins this season. In the NCAA rankings, it means nothing, but six 5-4 losses shows me that they consistently play at the level of a team ranked in the top 30 but not in the top 20