This week, I decided to do some number-crunching to see what the historical Top 25 polls might have to say about which regions are the strongest. Be prepared to be bored, and don’t say you weren’t warned!

The first thing that leaps off the page at me is the balance in the men’s polls, relative to the women. At present, there are 386 non-provisional D3 men’s teams; of those, over one in three (138, 35.8%) have been ranked in at least one of the 131 polls taken since 1999. There are 23 more women’s programs, but 16 fewer teams (122, 29.8%) have cracked the poll (and there’s even been one extra women’s poll!) The same pattern holds when you look at voting patterns rather than rankings: nearly 60% of the men’s teams (229) have received votes, while less than half of the women’s programs (195) have earned voting support. What these data suggest to me is that the women’s game tends to be more concentrated at the top, with the best programs sticking in the poll, while the men’s teams have a slightly stronger tendency to come and go. This is perhaps underscored by the fact that there are now eight women’s programs that have been ranked in at least 100 polls, vs. just two for the men.

Looking at the men’s regions, it seems to be the conventional wisdom that the “strongest” regions have generally been the three westernmost–the West, Midwest, and Great Lakes—but the data doesn’t necessarily support this. The Midwest (48%) and West (44.4%) have each produced 24 ranked teams, but third on this list is not the Great Lakes (17) but the South (20 teams). These two regions are roughly equal on percentage terms, as the south is a larger region (33 to 26), meaning that about 40% of each region has been ranked. The four eastern regions lag far behind, with 17 teams each from the large Northeast (24%) and smaller Mid-Atlantic (33%), and less than 30% of the East (10) and Atlantic (9), having been ranked. The voting patterns are somewhat more balanced, with each of the West, Midwest, and South regions having two-thirds of their current members receiving votes, leading the Great Lakes (62%), East (57%), Atlantic (56%), and Northeast (49%).

The women’s polling has been much more balanced. The Central Region (20 ranked teams out of 52 non-provisionals, 38.5%) is on top, but only the Atlantic (11/46, 24%) is more than 12 percentage points behind. The voting show a greater discrepancy, with the Great Lakes a clear leader at 61%, 9 percentage points ahead of the second-place Central. Perhaps this suggests that the Great Lakes has a number of good-but-not-great programs (15 that have received votes but never enough to reach #25), while the Central is filled with haves (20 ranked teams) and have-nots (25 programs that have yet to receive their first vote) with little (7 schools) in between.

On a somewhat related note, by virtue of the three points earned by Middlebury this week, the NESCAC becomes the seventh men’s conference to have every team receive votes at one time or another. (The other six are the HCAC, NJAC, OAC, UAA, USA-South, and WIAC.) Of these, the WIAC stands alone as the only conference in which each team has been ranked. There are four other men’s conferences that are one program short of 100% participation (CCIW, Empire 8, LEC, and NEWMAC), and one conference that is one team away from joining the WIAC with every team ranked: the CCIW (and that team is Millikin.) This is all in sharp contrast to the women, where the only conference to have every team receive votes is the UAA (and all but Emory have been ranked), and just two conferences (HCAC and NESCAC) are one team short.

For those of you who are still awake, on with the categories!

Debutantes:
Women: Two excellent women’s programs that have recently been overshadowed by their male counterparts stepped into the limelight this week. #11 Amherst, one of the dwindling number of unbeatens left, cracked the Top 25 for the first time ever. Down in Jersey, the Stevens Ducks are out to an 8-0 start in the Empire 8, and this week joined the voting rolls for the first time.
Men: Used to success in a wide variety of sports, Middlebury College can now add men’s basketball to their list of honored programs, as the Panthers become the 10th and final NESCAC member to debut as vote-getters in the D3Hoops.com poll.
Congratulations to the Lord Jeffs, Ducks, and Panthers!

Streakers:
Women: Third-ranked NYU, in addition to reaching a pair of significant milestones (see below), extended their streak of Top 25 appearances to 20 weeks. Both #11 Kean and #12 Randolph-Macon have now received votes in 10 straight polls, while Brandeis saw their own voting streak come to an end after 62 weeks.
Men: #3 Amherst finds itself among the Top 10 for the 30th straight week, while #22 Virginia Wesleyan has an ongoing Top 25 streak of identical duration. VWC’s conference mate #17 Guilford has received votes in 20 straight polls, ten more than Amherst’s archrival #8 Williams.

Milestones:
Women: The Violets of #3 NYU are ranked for the 100th time in this poll, with 60 of those rankings being within the Top 10. Ninth-ranked Simpson and #16 George Fox each made their 50th appearance in the Top 25 this week. Other Top 25 milestones reached this week include #15 Southern Maine (110 weeks), #12 Randolph-Macon and #24 Cortland St. (40 weeks), #25 Puget Sound (30), #18 Illinois Wesleyan (20), and #6 Thomas More (10 weeks.) IWU also reached a voting milestone, appearing on the list of vote-getters for the 30th time, a distinction they share with #20 Medaille.
Men: This week marks the 75th time that #3 Amherst has been ranked among the Top 10 teams. Both #2 Brandeis and #4 Mary Hardin-Baylor are ranked for the 10th time. #8 Williams received votes for the 90th time; #17 Guilford and #24 Carnegie Mellon are twenty-time vote-getters, and #15 Stevens received support for the 10th week.

High-Water Marks:
Women: New all-time highs were achieved this week by #2 Howard Payne, #6 Thomas More, #14 Tufts, and Top 25 debutante #22 Amherst. Both #8 McMurry and #20 Medaille equaled their previous high-water mark.
Men: Fourth-ranked Mary Hardin-Baylor and #20 Centre reached new all-time high rankings this week, while #2 Brandeis tied their best-ever mark.

Movers and Shakers:
Women: It seems like the same story every week: the largest moves were again the downward ones. #18 Illinois Wesleyan lost to 2005 champion Millikin, costing them 161 points and 8 poll positions. #24 Cortland St. had their hopes of an undefeated season ended by new #23 William Smith, resulting in a 159-point, 8 position drop for the Dragons and a best-of-the-week 62 point gain for the Herons.
Men: Unbeaten Mass.-Dartmouth was the week’s biggest gainer, adding 104 points in their five-slot gain to #14. Five teams each fell at least four places on the average ballot after losing this week: #18 Wheaton (IL) (-129 points), #9 Augustana (-120), #17 Guilford (-118), Lewis & Clark (-114), and #22 Virginia Wesleyan (-101.)

In the abbreviated week since the Week 5 poll was taken, the teams that made up the women’s Top 25 compiled an overall record of 28-2, and the only two losses were both in Top 25 matchups—with, in each case, the higher ranked team winning. As a result, the Week 6 poll looks amazingly like its predecessor. Nineteenth-ranked Baldwin-Wallace and #20 Lake Forest swapped positions, but otherwise the top 22 teams in last week’s poll remained the same in this week’s edition.

The men compiled a relatively pedestrian 30-8 record, but five of those 8 losses were confined to just two teams, last week’s #3 UW-Stevens Point (which went 0-2 and fell to #14) and then-#11 Brockport St. , losers of three games. Brockport, however, was the only Week 5 ranked team to fall out of the Week 6 poll; this is partly because the heirs apparent had generally bad weeks too—the top 5 teams in the ‘others receiving votes’ category had a composite 5-4 record this week.

This week could well see more of the same. Among the 51 games on the schedules of the Top 25 women’s teams this week, just one matches ranked teams: #15 Southern Maine at #25 Eastern Connecticut this Saturday. Then men’s schedules, on the other hand, are chock full of great matchups, including key games in the CCIW (#10 Elmhurst at #5 Augustana Sat.) and ODAC (#17 Virginia Wesleyan at #11 Guilford Sun.), as well as the Little Three matchup of #4 Williams and #3 Amherst (Saturday at Amherst) and the annual JP Morgan Chase Tournament, featuring #1 Rochester as well as unbeaten and unranked Geneseo St. and a dangerous Brockport St. team looking to rebound from their miserable beginning of 2008.

Debutantes:
Women: None this week.
Men: It’s a happy new year for #24 California Lutheran, which parlayed a Jan. 1 victory over then-#3 UW-Stevens Point into a first-ever berth in the D3Hoops.com Top 25. Congratulations to the Kingsmen!

Streakers:
Women: Twelfth-ranked DePauw has now received votes in the last 120 consecutive polls. Carroll is off to a good start in matching that string, having received votes in 10 straight polls.
Men: #20 Wooster, the holder of most of the men’s poll records, extended one of them this week, receiving votes for the 130th consecutive time. If Wooster were to drop from the voting rolls (something that’s not happened since the poll’s inception in 1999), it would take #3 Amherst (next best at 86 weeks) about 3 years to equal this streak. It would take #14 UW-Whitewater about about 8 years to do it, but they’re off to a good start by receiving votes for the 10th straight week. Mississippi College dropped from the voting rolls for the first time in 45 weeks.

Milestones:
Women: Sixth-ranked Messiah is a Top 10 team for the 50th time in this poll. Lake Forest dropped a notch to #20, but still achieved a Top 25 ranking for the 20th time, while #13 Kean is ranked for the 10th time. #12 DePauw was left out of the Week 10 poll in the 1999-2000 season, but has received votes in every other women’s poll ever compiled, making this week their 130th appearance among the votegetters. Other votes-received milestones achieved this week include #24 Capital (90 weeks), Wheaton (IL) (90), #18 George Fox (75), Puget Sound (50), Washington & Jefferson (40), and William Paterson (25).
Men: Top-ranked Rochester achieved three milestones with this poll: their 90th week in the voting, 60th appearance in the Top 25, and 40th berth among the Top 10. #9 Puget Sound is a Top 10 team for the 30th time. #3 Amherst is ranked for the 90th time in 130 polls. #13 Wheaton (IL) and #15 UW-Whitewater each made their 60th appearance in the Top 25 this week, while #17 Virginia Wesleyan is ranked for the 40th time and received votes for the 60th time. #20 Wooster has received votes in all 130 polls, and is joined in the achievement of votegetting milestones by #5 Augustana (80 weeks), #8 Hope (80), UW-Platteville (60), and Roanoke (30).

High-Water Marks:
Women: With the women’s poll virtually static, no new highs were set, but several were equaled, including #2 UW-Whitewater, #7 Thomas More, #8 McMurry, #10 Illinois Wesleyan, and #17 Tufts.
Men: Top 25 debutante #24 Cal Lu is at an all-time high ranking, while #2 Brandeis equaled their best-ever mark.

Movers and Shakers:
Women: There was very little shaking and almost no moving among the women this week. The biggest move was made by Puget Sound, which shed 78 points and dropped from #23 out of the rankings. The largest upward movements were virtual baby steps, gains of 27 and 26 points by #17 Tufts and #18 George Fox respectively, neither of which was enough to change their ranking. #24 Capital moved into the Top 25, despite actually losing six points from their Week 5 total.
Men: Former #11 Brockport St. had a dismal 0-3 week which cost them 327 points and their berth in the Top 25. Then-#3 UW-Stevens Point dropped two straight, shedding 244 points and eleven slots in the poll. The Pointers were knocked off at home by #12 UW-Oshkosh, which gained 153 points and six places in this week’s poll.