I'm genuinely a bit surprised that we're moving up this week. Obviously Pickle Smoochers is solid and Ohio State is a decent team, but I didn't think that 2-2 would move the needle in a positive way. Do you think this is more of a case where other ranked schools had worse showings than we did?
Good question. A couple weeks back, Kendall at D1 made the comment that
for him weekend results weigh more than weekday when it comes to rankings. I think he made that comment when some ranked teams (Florida) were losing midweek to bad teams (Jacksonville) then went on to win a conference series. That's just one example. I don't expect him to hold his word for long though as we're past the half-way point of the season.
Our overall RPI (18) is very strong, our non-conf is slightly stronger (16), non-conf strength of schedule (28) and overall sos (57). Add this; 0-3 in Q1, 12-4 in Q2, 6-1 in Q3 and 4-0 in Q4. We have no bad quad losses, and the one Q3 loss we have is at home to South Alabama (RPI 82) where we won the series. All of the metrics added up support us still in the Top 25. I feel confident in saying Kendall knows he's a week late in ranking us too.
I don't believe 2-2 will keep us in the polls long. Maybe one more week. We really need a 3-1 week @ Kansas and 3 @ Rutgers. After that, 8 of our next 9 are at home and we can really make a statement to host a Regional heading in to the last 10 games of the season.