Temper your glee. Curb your anger. The first 2022 regional rankings are out, and they kinda don’t matter.
The Week 1 “rankings” are not ordered. They also do not factor in results versus regionally ranked opponents. These initial rankings contain 10 alphabetical lists of very good teams while omitting several other very good teams.
The Week 2 rankings, which will be fraught with similar shortcomings due to the first rankings not being ordered and done without regionally ranked results, will be the first opportunity to mildly bellyache. Week 3 rankings — the only ones before selections that are formulated on solid data sets — are when things are expected to be ironed out.
That is my preemptive plea to keep an open mind until Nov. 2. Those are the rankings that truly matter.
REGION I: Amherst; Bowdoin; Hamilton; Simmons; Tufts; Wesleyan (Conn.); Williams.
REGION II: Babson; Coast Guard; Emerson; Endicott; MIT; Smith; Springfield.
REGION III: Brockport; Clarkson; Cortland; Ithaca; Manhattanville; New Paltz; St. John Fisher.
REGION IV: Arcadia; DeSales; Misericordia; NYU; Rowan; Stevens; Stockton.
REGION V: Franklin & Marshall; Johns Hopkins; Juniata; Salisbury; Scranton; Stevenson; Swarthmore.
REGION VI: Berry; Birmingham-Southern; Christopher Newport; Emory; Mary Washington; Randolph-Macon; Virginia Wesleyan.
REGION VII: Calvin; Carnegie Mellon; Case Western Reserve; Hope; Ohio Northern; Otterbein; Wittenberg.
REGION VIII: Chicago; Transylvania; Washington-St. Louis; Wisconsin-Eau Claire; Wisconsin-Oshkosh; Wisconsin-Stevens Point; Wisconsin-Whitewater.
REGION IX: Augsburg; Bethel; Coe; Gustavus Adolphus; Northwestern; Saint Benedict; St. Olaf.
REGION X: Cal Lutheran; Claremont-Mudd-Scripps; La Verne; Pomona-Pitzer; Texas Dallas; Trinity (Texas); UC Santa Cruz.
-Ricky Nelson
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