Here are the recently released women’s regional rankings from the NCAA:

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Here is the latest release as of October 29.

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The season is really heating up with the final spots for the upcoming conference tourneys being determined this week. Most of the conferences around the country now have tourneys to determine the AQ (Pool A), but a few notable exceptions are the UAA, the SCAC and the Northwest Conference. We’ll be doing our best to keep up with the conference action, so be sure to check the Daily Dose and message boards, as well as the front page on a regular basis (scroll down – we’ll be posting separate stories a bit more often these days).

Also, poster pabegg continues to maintain the strength of schedule rankings and is sharing his thoughts on the post-season in the post-season topics.

And coming soon will be our take on post-season potential. We’ll be sharing our thoughts on Pool B and Pool C teams, but will also be interested in your thoughts as well.  I’d love to hear more from those fans in the ASC, the NESCAC and the CAC as well as from the rest of you.  

Stay tuned and we’ll do our best to keep it coming.

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The NCAA released its first set of regional rankings for women’s soccer on Wednesday, through games of Oct. 19.

Please note, the first record is regional record, followed by overall record.

Central Region
1. Washington U. 9-1-1 11-2-1
2. Wheaton (Ill.) 9-2-1 13-2-1
3. UW-Stevens Point 13-2-0 13-2-0
4. UW-Eau Claire 14-1-2 14-1-2
5. St. Thomas 10-0-3 11-0-3
6. Carthage 9-1-0 12-1-0
7. Wartburg 9-2-1 12-2-1
8. Concordia-Moorhead 9-2-3 10-2-3
9. St. Benedict 12-4-0 12-4-0
10. Loras 8-4-0 11-4-0
11. Augsburg 8-2-4 9-2-4
12. St. Scholastica 15-2-0 15-2-0

Great Lakes Region
1. Calvin 9-0-1 11-2-1
2. Otterbein 10-1-0 11-1-1
3. Wittenberg 9-2-4 9-2-4
4. Transylvania 9-2-0 10-3-0
5. Wilmington 9-2-0 12-3-0
6. Denison 8-2-1 11-2-1
7. Ohio Wesleyan 8-3-2 9-4-2
8. Penn State-Altoona 12-0-1 14-0-1

Mid-Atlantic Region
1. Rowan 9-0-1 11-0-1
2. Messiah 12-0-2 14-0-2
3. Johns Hopkins 8-0-3 11-0-3
4. St. Mary’s (Md.) 8-0-3 8-1-3
5. Richard Stockton 14-2-1 14-2-1
6. William Paterson 10-2-1 10-2-1
7. Eastern 8-3-0 8-5-0
8. Swarthmore 8-2-1 8-3-1
9. New Jersey 8-4-1 9-4-1
10. Kean 10-4-0 10-4-0

New England Region
1. Williams 11-0-0 11-0-0
2. Amherst 8-1-2 8-1-2
3. Bowdoin 6-2-3 6-2-3
4. Middlebury 6-3-2 6-4-2
5. Endicott 11-2-2 11-2-2
6. Springfield 9-3-2 9-3-2
7. Tufts 7-4-0 7-4-0
8. Wheaton (Mass.) 12-4-1 12-4-1
9. Western Connecticut State 9-3-1 9-3-1
10. Bridgewater State 7-2-2 7-2-2
11. Trinity (Conn.) 7-4-0 7-4-0

New York Region
1. William Smith 10-0-3 10-1-3
2. Rochester 9-3-2 9-3-2
3. St. Lawrence 8-1-3 10-1-3
4. Ithaca 9-1-2 9-1-2
5. Union 11-3-1 11-3-1
6. Skidmore 10-4-2 10-4-2
7. Hamilton 7-3-1 7-3-1

South Region
1. Virginia Wesleyan 9-0-2 10-1-3
2. Lynchburg 10-0-2 12-0-3
3. Rhodes 10-1-1 10-2-1
4. Emory 10-2-1 10-2-1
5. Trinity (Texas) 8-3-1 8-3-1
6. Southwestern 10-2-1 10-2-1
7. Hardin-Simmons 9-2-2 9-3-3
8. Christopher Newport 9-2-1 9-5-1

West Region
1. Puget Sound 11-0-0 12-1-0
2. Whitworth 10-3-1 10-3-1
3. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps 9-4-0 9-5-0
4. UC Santa Cruz 7-3-1 9-5-1

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Here are the NCAA regional rankings that were released this afternoon by the regional committees. The records are through October 19th and 15% of the eligible teams in each region are ranked. The next ranking will be released on October 29th.

In region records are the records that drive the rankings, and of course are based on strength of schedule. If the season were to end today, the rankings would be a 99% accurate predictor of Pool B and Pool C teams.

We’ll get the women’s rankings posted shortly.

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Thanks to the work of poster pabegg, we now have an unofficial strength of schedule ranking of the nation’s top men’s teams.  We also have a regional breakdown which should give us an indication of what the NCAA regional rankings might look like next week.  Call it the D3soccer.com Power Ratings!  In any case, a big thank you to pabegg for his work.  Check it out on our message board.

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So far this season, the typical programs are doing well and will certainly be representing their respective conferences and regions in the post-season.  You know I’m talking about Trinity (yes, in Texas), York, Messiah, the UAA crowd and hopefully Williams.  But there are also some programs that have recently started to trend up, as well as some rather new looks in the NSCAA Top 25.

Look at Carleton at No. 8.  After today’s 5-0 thumping of Bethel, the Knights stand at 10-0-1.  This is their best start since 1977.  They also haven’t lost a regular season conference match in two years: not since a 2-0 loss at Hamline on Oct. 7, 2006.  They have Luther, Wartburg and North Park coming up in the coming weeks, so whether or not they can go undefeated on the season really remains to be seen.  But the Knights are definitely moving on up.

No. 7 Baldwin-Wallace is perfect at 11-0-0 after today’s 2-0 win over Mount Union.  This is the best start in program’s 39 year history.  The Yellowjacket’s best win was over Calvin and will have to play former No. 8 Capital later in the season, so their strength of schedule is a question.  But either way, Baldwin-Wallace is certainly going to enjoy a great result this year and should push themselves into the OAC conference match.

No. 11 Wittenberg is looking for their first conference title since 1993 and is feeling good about that prospect at 11-0-0.  While one can never count out Ohio Wesleyan, Wittenberg is playing well for the second straight season and might be looking at post-season play if they can keep winning.  They have quality wins over Centre and Capital, and will face Ohio Wesleyan late in the month.  Based on strength of schedule, I might put Wittenberg at a higher spot than Baldwin-Wallace, but either way, the Tigers are a good team.

A couple of great matches coming up this week: as was mentioned on the front page, York travels to Messiah for a 7:00 pm match at Shoemaker Field.  Messiah radio will be broadcasting this match so tune in and listen to perhaps the best two teams in the country go at it.

If you ‘re in Michigan, the ever-popular Hope/Calvin rivalry is on stage again as No. 17 Hope plays the Knights of Calvin College. That match will be at Calvin at 4:00 pm.  

Let me know if there are any other key mid-week matches I’ve overlooked.

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The Division III soccer season is in full swing and then some and we’re glad that more and more people are finding our new site.

Jim Matson, our managing editor, has written about Division III soccer before and has been wanting to do a site like this for a while now. He’d been talking to us about doing a weekly soccer column for D3sports.com since before we had D3sports.com up and running.

Instead, Jim seized the moment last fall and bought the D3soccer.com domain name. Although we are still building out the site, most of the major functions are in place, including:

Scores. Thanks to our partnership with PrestoSports, we have Division III soccer scores for about 20 conferences, right around half of Division III. Click here for scores, or visit the Scoreboard link on the left-hand side of the front page.

Forum. Or message board, if you prefer. If you’re already a member of our Division III basketball, baseball or football boards at D3boards.com, you’re set to post right now. Otherwise, you do need to register to join the Division III men’s soccer and Division III women’s soccer discussions. But we turn around all registrations in under 24 hours and most of them in under 6 hours. The registration is partly so we can keep spammers from flooding the boards with sales pitches. (When you register, make sure you read the Terms of Service and your mailbox is set to receive mail from us.)

Top stories. You can’t miss these — these are the wrapups of days of action on the front page that Jim assembles, using his experience and expertise in Division III soccer news.

Game stories. Sports Information Directors have the ability to log in and post game stories and other news releases directly on our site, and more and more of them do on a regular basis. These are stories from around Division III and can be found directly on the home page, between the top story and the second story on the front.

Daily Dose. As in, the blog, and you’re already here. This is where other items of interest will be posted, such as rankings, notes and other items that might generate discussion. You’ll need to register to post but it’s a quick process and your e-mail doesn’t appear with your comments.

Division III soccer · forum · scoreboard · scores · welcome · wrapup

There is a lot of talk about the new NSCAA Rankings that were released yesterday.  Most of this has to do with the criteria that are used to rank the teams on a relative basis, which some feel doesn’t always make sense.  An example of what can happen in this poll is that one program may truly represent the best within a particular region, but that fact doesn’t necessarily equate to a national ranking.  Yet that program will appear as a national ranked team (one respected soccer site refuses to publish the NSCAA poll for this reason).  But I’ve found that as the season progresses, these apparent disparities can (and usually do) sort themselves out.  And no system is perfect – the NSCAA ranking has been around for many years and is a dependable (if somewhat generalized) way of making sense of the national field.

If you really love to debate rankings, the date to watch for is October 22nd.  That’s when the NCAA men’s soccer committee releases the first NCAA regional poll.  This is the poll that ultimately decides the makeup of the post-season slate.  The poll uses in-region strength of schedule (which is a real plus), but does ignore out of region matches, which can limit its use as a national system.  The 2nd release date is October 29th and the final poll is released on November 5th.

NSCAA · rankings