A new season is about ready to tip off, and D3hoops.com is ready with its preseason polls for the men and women. The women start off with a brand new #1 team in Mary Washington. Last season’s third-place finisher ascends to the top of the preseason poll for the first time in their history. As the Eagles’ star rises, two of the brightest stars in the women’s firmament have dimmed slightly. #11 Bowdoin missed out on the top 10 by a scant 3 votes, ending a record streak of 89 consecutive top 10 rankings. Even more notably, Hardin-Simmons was left out of the voting entirely; this is the first time in the 125-week history of the D3Hoops.com women’s poll that the Cowgirls failed to draw a single vote. This reduces to three the number of teams to rate a mention in every poll: #6 Washington U. and #25 Scranton among the women, and men’s #8 Wooster.
The voters in both polls expect more success from last year’s Final Four teams, placing all eight of them within the top 8 in each poll. Defending men’s champion Amherst starts out as the #2 team, their record 79th consecutive appearance in the top 25. The Bears of Washington U., third-place finishers in Salem, move up to the top spot for the 13th time in their history. Fourth-place Wooster starts the season at #8, extending their record run of top 10 appearances to 54 straight polls. Women’s champion DePauw will begin defense of their title from the #5 position, the 124th time in 125 polls that the Tigers have drawn voting support. All four of the teams that reached Springfield last year earned first-place nods from the voters to begin this season.
Each poll week I’ll post an entry to this blog with some brief thoughts about the poll results, including notes in the following categories:
Debutantes:
This category recognizes programs that make their first-ever appearances in the voting, the top 25, or the top 10. This week’s debutantes include the #16 Plattsburgh St. men, celebrating their first-ever top 25 ranking. On the distaff side, #7 Kean is a top 10 team for the very first time; #18 UW-Whitewater makes their top 25 debut; and Carthage receives voting attention for the first time. Congratulations to these fine programs!
Streakers:
This space is generally reserved for teams that reach round-number (divisible by 10 or 25) consecutive streaks of top 10, top 25, or voting appearances.
Women: #3 Messiah is in the top 25 for the 75th straight week. #1 Mary Washington and #2 Howard Payne have been ranked in 30 and 20 straight polls, respectively. As noted above, #6 Wash. U. and #25 Scranton have received votes in 125 straight polls (i.e., every poll.) Rochester attracted votes for the 25th straight time; #2 Howard Payne and Medaille are included in the voting for the 20th straight week; and Oglethorpe is a vote-getter for the 10th consecutive time.
Men: #5 Augustana and #11 Hope are each ranked for the 30th consecutive week, while #13 Aurora and #18 Elmhurst are in the top 25 for the 10th straight time. #2 Amherst has now been mentioned in the voting for 80 straight polls. Whitworth and St. Thomas have reached 20 consecutive poll appearances, and Trinity (Conn.) received votes for the 10th straight time.
Milestones:
Teams in this category have achieved round-number weeks as a top 10, top 25 (i.e. ranked), or voted-for team, whether consecutively or not.
Women: This poll represents the 50th time that #14 Brandeis has been a top 25 team. #1 Mary Washington is ranked for the 30th time. #6 Wash. U. and #25 Scranton are vote-getters for the 125th time, while #13 Millikin, #21 Emmanuel, and Rochester appear on the voting list for the 75th time each. Oglethorpe and Carroll are on the list for the 20th time each, and #18 UW-Whitewater is in the voting for the 10th time.
Men: St. John Fisher receives votes this week for the 50th time. Other vote-getting milestones include St. Thomas (80 weeks), #19 Puget Sound (60), WPI (40), #14 Mary Hardin-Baylor (10) and Ohio Wesleyan (10). #3 UW-Stevens Point is a top 10 team for the 70th time, and #11 Hope is ranked for the 60th week.
High-Water Marks:
This section recognizes teams that achieve their highest-ever ranking in the D3Hoops.com poll.
Women: #1 Mary Washington, #7 Kean, #12 Luther, and #18 UW-Whitewater each attained their highest ranking this week, while #2 Howard Payne tied their highest-ever mark.
Men: #4 Guilford, #12 Brandeis, #13 Aurora, #14 Mary Hardin-Baylor, and #16 Plattsburgh St. are at their highest levels, while #24 Stevens has matched its top ranking.
Movers and Shakers:
In this category, I make note of the teams that had the largest gains or falls from the previous week’s poll. This will begin for this season with the week 1 poll.
Congratulations and best wishes to all of these programs, and to all players, coaches and fans of D3 hoops. Here’s to another great season!
Dave:
There are 10 teams in the men’s preseason Top 25 who finished last year unranked, which seems like a lot. Why do you think that is?
My take, from looking at the preseason info we got from schools, is that a lot of teams lost a lot of talent.
For my part, I had two teams at the top of my ballot that I felt comfortable with and the rest I had question marks about. What to make of UW-Stevens Point without Jon Krull? What is Guilford without Jordan Snipes? Still pretty good, both, but Top Five teams?
Should be an exciting season. Could see lots of parity. Changing of the guard?
Even us Point fans have a bit of trepidation about UWSP… They’re going to be good, yes, but how are they going to compete against anybody with a decent big man, or multiple big men? Last year against Wash U, Wash U’s perimeter players managed to neutralize Point’s great guards, and it took away everything that Point could do (Point was without a basket for 5:01 in the second half, turning a 5 point deficit to a 17 point deficit).
The thing about UWSP is this: They were #3 in the country in 3 point percentage last year, shot a ton of them, and led all divisions in the little things, TO’s and FT’s… they don’t turn the ball over and they make their free throws. These are key end-game things that will turn the tides. I just don’t know if they have all the pieces to make a deep run in March. Though nearly everyone is back, missing Krull (even though his little bro is now on the team) may be too much of a loss to overcome. Point only really has one player who can be considered a post, and I don’t think a team can realistically make it all the way to Salem (especially coming from the midwest/West) without a credible presence inside.
I disagree with the premise of the question, which is that there is some logical connection between a team’s position in a final poll and their position in the next preseason poll. They are different teams playing in a different competitive landscape. I hope the voters don’t just start with their final polls and move them up and down, but rather more or less start from scratch in the new season.
That said, having 10 teams go from unranked in the final poll to ranked in the following preseason is a lot. It’s only happened once before, in the 2003-04 season. Interestingly, 5 of those teams were ranked in that year’s final poll. On average, the men’s preseason poll contains 6.7 teams that were unranked at the end of the previous year, and a bit less than 3 of them end up in the final poll at the end of that year. That’s a batting average of .426 on ranking previously unranked teams, which ain’t too shabby.
And oh-by-the-way, on two occasions the voters picked unranked-the-year-before teams that subsequently went on to hoist the Walnut & Bronze (Virginia Wesleyan in ’06 and Williams in ’03.)
The top 25 poll will change drastically as the season goes on. So many teams in the East have switched conferences and that will result many surprises. Print the list now and compare on Jan. 10. The Stevens students and Alumn are excited about their new conference “Empire 8”, and hope to make a second appearance at the dance. 7 days to the “TIP”.