As has been the case all season, the men’s poll continues to be a maelstrom while the women’s poll is as placid as a mountain lake. This week, the Top 25 men’s teams compiled a pedestrian 38-14 record (.731), including a mere 8-6 performance by the top 7 teams. By contrast, the Top 25 women were 42-9 (.824), with the top 7 going 12-1…and that one loss was by the #6 team (McMurry) at the hands of the #2 team (Howard Payne). Although it seems like the men’s game is more chaotic and unpredictable than in years past, memories of such things can be unreliable. In an effort to apply an objective statistical measure to this perceived phenomenon, I have created a new measurement I call the “coefficient of chaos.”

In short, the coefficient of chaos attempts to measure the amount of turnover in poll voting from week to week, and is expressed in terms of the maximum possible change. In any given week, there are 8,125 vote-points available, meaning a complete turnover of votes would total 16,250 points. My observations suggest that a turnover of 15% of the vote (2438 votes) indicates a chaotic condition, while a figure of 10% could be described as placidity.

Using these somewhat arbitrary designations, the men’s poll could be described as being in full-blown chaos, with the coefficient topping 15% in each of the past three weeks. So far this season, the men’s coefficient of chaos, expressed as an average of all the weeks, is 14.0%, with five of the ten weeks topping the 15% threshold of chaos. Not since the 2001-02 season (15.4%) has there been a year with a higher average score; however, the polls have a tendency to calm down after week 10. Comparing the first ten weeks of each season, we discover that last season actually had a slightly higher coefficient, at 14.5%, although last year there were just three weeks where the score was over 15%.

There is no question that the last two seasons have been more chaotic than the four relatively calm years that preceded them, seasons where the coefficient sat in the 12-13% range. However, these past two years have a ways to go to catch up to the 2000-01 and 2001-02 seasons, each of which had an average coefficient over 15% and were at 16.2% and 17.2%, respectively, through week 10. Each of those two seasons saw seven chaotic weeks in the first ten, compared to five this season and just three a year ago.

There have been just two weeks of chaos later than Week 10 in the history of the men’s poll, both of which occurred in the 2000-01 season. It will be interesting to see if the men’s poll will settle down at this point like it has in most other seasons.

The women’s poll, in sharp contrast to the men, is at a placid 9.9% for the year to date, and was at a somnolent 8.9% this week, the sixth week this year that the coefficient was below the threshold of placidity (10%). This is just the second season in the poll’s nine-year history that the average score for the first ten weeks has been below 10% (2003-04 was at 9.6%). As with the men, the most chaotic seasons were the 2000-01 (13.3%) and 2001-02 (14.2%) campaigns. On the whole, however, the women’s poll is generally calmer than the men’s; in the 135-week history of the women’s poll, there have been just 17 weeks of chaos (one this season, in week 1, which is traditionally the most chaotic week for both genders), as compared to 37 chaotic weeks for the men (5 this year alone). This could perhaps be explained by the perception that the talent pool for the men is deeper, and that the better women’s programs tend to aggregate the available talent, with the result that the women’s game is a bit more top-heavy than the men’s. But that’s just a theory; maybe I need to concoct another statistic to measure that. Hmmmmm.

Debutantes:
Women: none this week.
Men: The Centre Colonels made their first Top 10 appearance a memorable one, zooming all the way to #5 in this week’s poll. Congratulations to the Kentucky Colonels!

Streakers:
Women: Second-ranked Howard Payne has received votes in 30 straight polls, and has been ranked in each of them. #5 Thomas More has a similar pairing of streaks, reaching 10 straight this week. Fourth-ranked Mary Washington has now been ranked in 40 consecutive polls, while #3 UW-Whitewater has been in the Top 10 in ten consecutive polls. Both #16 Illinois Wesleyan and #23 Lake Forest have garnered votes in 25 straight polls. Other voting streaks were advanced by #13 Medaille (30 weeks), Oglethorpe (20), and #25 Marymount (10 weeks). NYU, losers of four straight games, fell out of the Top 25 for the first time in 23 weeks.
Men: The special “Bo Derek” Trophy goes to Brandeis, awarded for being a Top 10 team for 10 straight weeks—and being #10! ‘Deis has another streak going, that being 25 straight polls in which they received votes. New #1 Amherst appears in the voting for the 90th straight week. #19 St. Thomas and #2 Mass.-Dartmouth also extended voting streaks, to 30 and 10 weeks, respectively. Sixth-ranked Hope and #7 Augustana are each ranked for the 40th straight week, while #25 Elmhurst is a Top 25 team for the 25th straight poll.

Milestones:
Women: Ninteenth-ranked Baldwin-Wallace has become just the ninth women’s program to be ranked in 100 polls. Congratulations! #22 UW-Stevens Point is ranked for the 75th time. #4 Mary Washington is a Top 25 team for the 40th time, while this week marks the 30th ranking for #25 Marymount. Both #11 Southern Maine and NYU are among the vote-getters for the 125th time (in 135 polls). Brandeis received votes for the 70th time, and Oglethorpe is now a 30-time vote-getter. #3 UW-Whitewater has accumulated votes in 20 polls, and been a Top 10 team in ten of them.
Men: Hope, ranked #6 this week, has now made 70 appearances in the Top 25. Fourth-ranked UW-Whitewater is in the top 10 for the 10th time. #10 Brandeis also reached this milestone, doing so in the 25th week that they have received votes. Other vote-getting milestones were reached by #19 St. Thomas (90 weeks), conference foe Gustavus Adolphus (80), #13 Puget Sound (70), #12 Mary Hardin-Baylor, DeSales, and Millsaps (each at 20).

High-Water Marks:
Women: Both #13 Medaille and #15 William Smith achieved new highs this week, while #2 Howard Payne, #5 Thomas More, and #14 Tufts each matched high-water marks set earlier this season.
Men: Mass.-Dartmouth established yet another high mark at #2 this week, with the ceiling fast approaching. Top 10 debutant and fifth-ranked Centre also reached a new high ranking, as did #21 Ursinus, making just its second appearance in the Top 25 (and first in nearly 5 years.) Fourth-ranked UW-Whitewater matched its best-ever ranking, set in the 2006 preseason poll.

Movers and Shakers:
Women: Puget Sound defeated George Fox Saturday in a battle for NWC supremacy, with the result that the Loggers gained 137 points and moved up six spots to #17, while the Bruins shed 130 points and fell six places to #18. NYU, ranked #3 just three weeks ago, has lost five of six games and 541 points since then, and this week was reduced to one single point.
Men: Lots and lots of movement in the men’s poll, with five teams gaining 100 or more points and five others losing that many or more. The gainers were led by #16 Guilford, which won back-to-back road games against Top 25-caliber opponents, gaining 154 points and 7 placements. The biggest falls were recorded by Williams (-234 points, dropping out from #13) and Washington U. (-181 points, falling from #1 to #9), each losers of two games this week.

This week, I have the honor of unveiling the News and Notes Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Men’s and Women’s Hoops, or NNAOAMWH for short. Without further ado…the envelope please.

First, the schools that finished sixth through tenth in the balloting of our panel of experts (well, expert…and even that is debatable!). UW-Stevens Point finishes in sixth place on the strength of having both teams ranked (men #12, women #24). New men’s #1 Washington U. is seventh, conference foe Brandeis eighth, and Randolph-Macon ninth; these schools each have one team ranked with the other in the “receiving votes” category. Coming in tenth is Carthage, with both teams among those receiving votes.

The fifth-place winner, and the best counter-argument to the alleged “east coast bias,” is Puget Sound. The men from Tacoma moved up to #7 in this week’s poll, and are tied with cross-state rival Whitworth atop the Northwest Conference. Their female counterparts are ranked #23, and trail only #12 George Fox in the NWC standings. Together, these programs have compiled a record of 28-5.

In fourth place are the Lord Jeffs of Amherst college. A frequent visitor to the men’s Final Four, and the 2007 men’s champion, Amherst moved up to #2 in this week’s men’s poll after decisively beating archrival #13 Williams on their home court. The women’s team suffered its first loss of the season this week, but still sit at #17 in the poll. Together, these teams have racked up 33 victories against just 3 defeats.

Taking home the Bronze NNAOAMWH Medal are the Rochester Yellow Jackets of the UAA. The women’s team pulled off an incredible comeback at Emory this week, maintaining their conference lead and moving into the women’s Top 10. The men were not so fortunate in Atlanta, suffering their first defeat of the season in an overtime loss to the Eagles, but still occupy the #3 ranking in the men’s poll. Together, the Yellow Jackets are 30-2 on the season.

UW-Whitewater has put together two outstanding basketball teams to complement its national champion football team, and is rewarded by standing second in the coveted NNAOAMWH field. The male Warhawks are ranked #8 in this week’s poll and are in a three-way tie atop the WIAC; their female counterparts are ranked #3 and trail only #20 UW-Eau Claire in the conference standings, with the two set for a rematch this Saturday. Overall the Warhawks are 31-4 on the season.

These great basketball programs are all looking up at the NNAOAMWH Gold Medalists, the Flying Dutch of Hope. The men’s squad reached #4 this week after beating their archrivals from Calvin, while the women’s team recorded their fifth consecutive week atop the women’s poll. These two teams lead the MIAA standings, and have combined for an outstanding record of 31-2.

Tune in next week, when I reveal the winners of the Awards for Excellence in men’s and women’s swimming, also known as a 10,000 word essay on Kenyon. 🙂

Debutantes:
Women: None this week.
Men: #5 UMass.-Dartmouth became the 38th men’s program to join the #1 Votes club. Congratulations to the Corsairs!

Streakers:
Women: This being the tenth poll of the season (including the preseason poll), the number 10 recurs with great frequency in this category. For example, six women’s teams now have 10-poll voting streaks: #3 UW-Whitewater, #15 Tufts, #20 UW-Eau Claire, #24 UW-Stevens Point, #25 Baldwin-Wallace, and unranked Chicago. Longer voting streaks were recorded by top-ranked Hope (50 weeks), #4 Mary Washington (40), #6 McMurry (40), #21 NYU (25), and #12 George Fox (20). Wilmington dropped from the voting rolls for the first time in 25 weeks. Hope is in the Top 10 for the 10th straight week, and in the top 25 for the 40th. #2 Howard Payne is ranked for the 20th consecutive time, while #3 UW-Whitewater, #18 Illinois Wesleyan and #24 UW-Stevens Point have each been ranked in 10 straight polls.
Men: Top-ranked Washington U., #3 Rochester, #12 UW-Stevens Point, and #24 Wheaton (IL) each received votes for the 25th straight week, while #4 Hope and #10 Augustana have voting streaks that have reached 40 weeks. Rhode Island College dropped from the voting for the first time in 25 weeks. Both #6 Capital and #7 Puget Sound have been in both the voting and the Top 25 for 10 straight weeks. Other teams that celebrated a tenth consecutive ranking include #3 Rochester (all ten weeks in the Top 10), #8 UW-Whitewater, #13 Williams, #15 Mary Hardin-Baylor, and #16 Plattsburgh St. #12 UW-Stevens Point has been ranked for 25 straight weeks, while #1 Washington U. has been in 20 consecutive Top 25s.

Milestones:
Women: DeSales re-entered the voting this week, marking their 75th appearance among the vote-getters. #5 Thomas More received votes for the 25th time. Other vote-getting milestones were reached by #8 Simpson (80 weeks), Eastern Conn. (70), and Chicago (40). #2 Howard Payne is ranked for the 30th time, 20 of which have been within the Top 10. #4 Mary Washington is among the Top 10 for the 25th time, while #3 UW-Whitewater is ranked for the tenth time.
Men: #1 Washington U. is in the Top 10 for the 50th time. #10 Augustana is a Top 10 team for the 25th time, and a ranked team for the 50th time. #18 Wooster is in the Top 25 for the 125th time, extending their record in this category. Not far behind is #12 UW-Stevens Point, ranked for the 110th time. #16 Plattsburgh St. has some catching up to do, but has now been ranked in ten polls. Sixth-ranked Capital has received votes in 50 polls, twenty fewer than Randolph-Macon.

High-Water Marks:
Women: #14 Medaille reached a new high for the third straight week. All-time highs were equaled by #2 Howard Payne, #5 Thomas More, and #6 McMurry, as well as by William Smith, whose ranking of #16 matches their best-ever mark established in the very first D3hoops.com women’s poll in 1999.
Men: #5 UMass-Dartmouth’s metoric rise in the poll has set another new all-time high for the program. #6 Capital and #11 Centre also established new high-water marks this week.

Movers and Shakers:
Women: Despite the fact that no teams dropped from the Top 25 this week, the two biggest moves were still made by women’s teams, both downward. #24 UW-Stevens Point had an 0-2 week and lost 309 points, falling 14 slots in the poll. #21 NYU also went 0-2, losing twice at home, and shed 292 points and 13 poll placements. The biggest gain was recorded by #20 UW-Eau Claire, which beat Stevens Point and moved up 100 points and 5 spots.
Men: Ninth-ranked Brandeis, losers of three straight games but two of them to the last two #1-ranked teams, shed 202 points and fell seven poll slots. Millsaps made their first appearance in the Top 25 since 2002 a brief one, losing 163 points and falling out of the rankings after a two-week stay. The largest upward movements were made by #19 Lawrence, entering the poll on the strength of a 128-point gain, and by #11 Centre, which beat Millsaps in overtime and gained 124 points.

It’s mid-January: would you rather be in the Frozen North, or in the Sunny South? While most people in the barest possession of their faculties might give one answer, the poll voters have quite a different response.

Above all, the place to be this week was Rochester. The men’s and women’s teams each rang up 2-0 weeks, each knocking off a team ranked in the top 3, and each moved up strongly in this week’s poll. The distaff Yellow Jackets dispatched #3 NYU and exhibited the largest gain in this week’s women’s poll, moving up nine spots to #12. Not to be outdone, their male counterparts were the victors in the second-ever matchup of the two top-ranked teams in the D3hoops.com poll, knocking off #2 Brandeis. While their ceiling was limited by the fact that they were already ranked #1, the Yellow Jackets have now joined that most exclusive club in poll history, becoming just the 8th team to be voted #1 unanimously during the regular season. In this they join the Washington U. women’s and men’s teams, unanimous #1 teams 17 and 5 times respectively, as well as the men’s teams at UW-Stevens Point (8 times), Hampden-Sydney (6), Carthage (3), and Illinois Wesleyan (2) and the Bowdoin women (5).

As sunny as Rochester was, conditions in Massachusetts (outside of Brandeis, at least) were also quite pleasant. The Bay State is home to two of the hottest teams in D3 basketball. The men’s team at UMass-Dartmouth share with Rochester the distinction of being the only unbeaten teams left among the men’s teams in D3. The Corsairs, absent from the national stage since their 2001 Sweet 16 run was ended by a 49-point drubbing by Carthage at Ohio Northern, are back with a vengeance, cracking the top 10 for the first time in poll history this week. Over in Amherst, home of the 2007 men’s national champs and one of the most successful programs of the decade, the women’s team is threatening to steal the spotlight, having started 16-0 under new coach G.P. Gromacki. The Lord Jeffs ended Tufts’ unbeaten season on the Jumbos’ home court this week, and moved up strongly to a best-ever ranking of #16 this week.

Things were not so nice in the South, however. The Mary Hardin-Baylor Crusaders carried their #4 men’s ranking, an all-time high, into Abilene, TX, and three days later crawled back to Belton with two losses and an eleven spot drop in the poll. Over in the southeast, the Guilford men, a team which carried extremely high expectations into the season, dropped their fourth game (at new #24 Roanoke) and disappeared from the top 25, while the women of Randolph-Macon saw their perfect season come to an end at the hands of Virginia Wesleyan, causing the Jackets to cascade eight spots to #20 in this week’s poll, one spot lower than their male classmates.

Yes, the South may have warm weather in January, but for hot hoops, look to the North.

Debutantes:
Women: None this week.
Men: The eighth-ranked Corsairs of UMass-Dartmouth, one of just two undefeated men’s teams, broke into the Top 10 for the first time ever this week. Congratulations!

Streakers:
Women: Four teams extended ranking streaks to 10 polls this week: #7 Kean, #9 Simpson, #14 George Fox, and #20 Randolph-Macon. This also marks the 10th consecutive week in which Simpson has been in the voting, while #23 Puget Sound’s voting streak has now reached 30 weeks.
Men: Both #2 Brandeis and #21 Stevens have been ranked in ten straight polls. #13 Elmhurst ran its vote-getting streak to 20 weeks, while Stevens and #17 Plattsburg St. have received votes in 10 straight polls.

Milestones:
Women: Tenth-ranked UW-Stevens Point is in the voting rolls for the 100th week, while #4 Mary Washington is on the list for the 50th time. Both St. Thomas and Hardin-Simmons achieved voting milestones in their 2007-08 voting debuts: for the Tommies, it is their 50th appearance, while the Cowgirls are vote-getters for the 125th time. #1 Hope is also in the voting for the 125th time. Other voting milestones were achieved by Wilmington (110 weeks), #6 McMurry (60), and #7 Kean (30.) UW-Eau Claire re-enters the Top 25 this week, marking their 80th time as a ranked team. #11 Messiah is ranked for the 110th time, while William Smith is in the Top 25 for the tenth time.
Men: Tenth-ranked Williams is counted among the top 10 for the 40th time. Both #11 Puget Sound and #20 UW-Oshkosh are ranked for the 60th time, while #21 Stevens is now a ten-time Top 25 team. Vote-getting milestones were reached this week by Trinity (CT) (70 weeks), #13 Elmhurst (60), Whitworth (60), Ursinus (20), and #17 Plattsburgh St. (10).

High-Water Marks:
Women: This poll marks the new all-time high ranking for #5 Thomas More, #6 McMurry, #16 Amherst, and #17 Medaille. #2 Howard Payne matched their highest-ever ranking.
Men: Top 10 debutant UMass-Dartmouth is, at #8, at its highest-ever ranking, as are the SCAC leaders #14 Centre and #18 Millsaps. #2 Brandeis matched their high-water mark for the 5th straight week.

Movers and Shakers:
Women: As discussed above, the biggest gains were recorded by #12 Rochester (up 162 points and 9 places) and #16 Amherst (+154/+6). Five teams lost at least 128 points, led by #20 Randolph-Macon (-167 points and down 8 places.)
Men: #15 Mary Hardin-Baylor’s 0-2 week cost them 302 points and 11 slots in the poll. Preseason #4 Guilford lost 160 points and fell out of the Top 25 for the first time in 17 weeks. UMass-Dartmouth extended its winning streak to 15 games, and showed the best gain of the week (+136 points and six placements), leading a pack of 6 teams that each gained at least 100 points.

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.